“With violets?” inquired Driscoll.
“Oh shut up!–Quit, don’t stop me, I’m getting cooled off!–Only do what I say.–In just ten minutes–that is–if you want the girl.”
And Daniel was off again, “with high and haughty steps” towering along.
“That Meagre Shanks, there, isn’t a fool,” Driscoll mentally recorded, and he took out his watch.
The two girls were stopping at a hotel in Plateros Street, for Jacqueline had returned to find her beautiful residence, salon and all, ruthlessly dismantled, looted, robbed by Marquez while she was in Querétaro, which was a manner of levying contributions not unfamiliar to the Lieutenant of the Empire.
In the balcony room of their hotel suite the two girls strove valiantly. Crisp gowns and dainty allied mysteries lay spread over the upholstery. They were vanishing into cavernous trunks, with crushing indifference if Jacqueline seized on a garment, but gently when Berthe rescued it, which she always did. Through the double glass doors of the balcony the street sounds below rose to their ears, clarion notes and vivas, hurrying feet and prancing hoofs, and the National hymn a few blocks away in the Zócalo.
Suddenly a grim apparition loomed before the glass doors on the balcony. Berthe half screamed, in dismay clutching at ruffles and laces to hide them, when into the sweet-scented confusion strode Mr. Daniel Boone. He was the grim apparition. 514Jacqueline withheld her opinion, but she had one. The intruder’s spurs were iconoclastic of carpeting, his abrupt presence of feminine sensibilities. But the lean, perspiring face drove away all thought of the conventions. Jacqueline snatched up a fleecy bank of petticoats, making room for him on the sofa. Daniel stared vacantly. The two girls looked very pretty. They were just flurried enough, and they wore white lawn, with sleeves short to the elbow. His fingers groped, and soon they closed over a small, instinctive hand. He kept hold upon that hand for strength, at the same time collapsing on the sofa.
“Now, if you please,” said Jacqueline calmly, “what––”
“O Lawd!” Boone gulped, fighting for breath. “It don’t matter much–maybe–to you all, but–O Lawd, I got to tell somebody!”
“Tell us, tell us!” cried she of the captured hand.