“No, no,” he said, cheerfully; “but I shall go out early to-morrow morning, and raise the flood-gate, just to be well on the safe side. One can’t be too careful about reservoirs. They are the very devil if the dam bursts. But mine is as solid as a fortress. I’d stake my life on that. I worked like ten navvies over that earth dam. I used to feel rather like that man in Victor Hugo’s ‘Toilers of the Sea.’ Do you remember how he slaved over his self-imposed task?”
“Poor old Bob,” she said, bending over him, and speaking in a gentler voice than was her wont, “and you are not in the least fit for such hard work. I believe you have worn yourself out; and all for me, and I, if you only knew, so little worthy of it.”
“I wanted our little ranch to be just as compact as possible,” he said, “so that I might offer to you the best I could in this distant land. As for myself, I am perfectly well, now you’ve come out to me: only I am always wishing that I could have made a home for you in the old country. I never forget it whatever I am doing.”
He seemed to be waiting for an answer, but Hilda was silent, and when at last she spoke, it was about her seven callers, and the next moment there was a terrible blast of wind, and the door was blown in and hurled with a crash to the ground. After that, their whole attention was taken up in trying to keep out the rain, and in securing the windows, until at last, worn out with their long watch, they slept.
Hilda dreamed of England, and of everything she had left there. She dreamed that she heard Robert saying: “And next year there will be the lemons to be cured.” “Next year,” she answered, and her heart sank.
Robert dreamed of the eight acres of olives ruined by the floods three years ago, and of his own ranch situated so safely on the hill-slope, and of his reservoir. He dreamed he was still working at it, still strengthening the earth dam, and still scraping out the cañon so as to have room for about five hundred thousand gallons of water.
“HE LIFTED A PIECE OF IRON PIPING.”
“It’s nearly done,” he said; “about three weeks more, and then I’m through with it.”