“I've been thinking,” said he, and I found myself cheering up at the statement; for I had noticed that, though the Cherub often had the air of being silent through laziness; that from his mellifluous Andaluz he discarded all possible consonants as he would discard the bones of fish; yet, with his murmurings, invariably rolled from his tongue some jewel of good sense.
“We have a friend near Madrid,” said he, “who has an automobile. I know little about such things; but when I heard that you had a twenty-four horse-power Gloria, I thought, ‘It is the same as the Conde de Roldan's.’ It will be days before your new parts can come from Paris, even if you send Ropes; and there are few automobiles on sale here, if any. It's a hundred chances to one you could get parts to fit your car in that way. But if Don Cipriano's car is what I think, he will give you what you want. When the new parts arrive, they will be for him.”
“Colonel O'Donnel,” said Dick, “you and your family are bricks!”
“That's true,” said I; “but if you could persuade your friend to such an act of generosity, I couldn't accept. I—”
“Oh,” said the good man, with cherubic slyness, “he would [pg 131]give his left hand for such a chance to please us! Perhaps you haven't noticed that my nina is rather attractive; but it has not escaped the observation of Don Cipriano.”
So the wind blew from that quarter! I threw a glance at Dick, and saw on his face the same expression of disconcerted amour propre I had once seen when a bullet went whistling by his nose. But he said nothing about either missile; and now it was left for me to justify our appreciation of the señorita.
Ordinarily, if there is one thing which the Cherub loves, it is to dawdle, but now he rose without a sigh and remarked that there was no time to waste. He must fetch Pilar.
“She will have gone to bed,” I objected.
The Cherub smiled. Pilar go to bed at half-past ten on her first night in Madrid after months of absence? Not she. Her father was willing to bet that she was at her window looking down upon the street, and wishing she had been born a man that she might be in it. “Night is the time for amusement in Madrid,” said he. “One can lie in bed till afternoon without missing anything; but at night—that is the time to be alive here! And though our home is in the southern country, when we are in Madrid my Pilar and I, we are true Madrileños. Had she and I been alone, she would have made me take her to the theatre or circus. We should not have got home till one: and then I should have had to give her supper. Oh, she will be enchanted when I call her back to life!”
With that he trotted off, and before it seemed that he could have explained anything, he had brought Pilar to us in triumph, her hat on her head, dimples in her cheeks, and stars in her eyes. “I'm ready!” she exclaimed.