"Positively green-eyed with rage if you are alone for half a minute with another man—even so harmless a specimen as myself?"
"Don't be silly," said I, with finality.
"I'm not, and if he is going to be jealous as all that, why don't you get to him first before he can accuse you, and demand that he cease baying at the moon with that human leopardess who vamps around these diggings?"
"She'll be here this afternoon, on a visit," I announced, laughing. "Why don't you monopolize her yourself?"
"I never went in for that kind," said Wright with firmness. "I might get scratched. Gentle and soft-spoken, that's my type. Besides, Miss Howells is going to look just like her mother, and that's a warning to any man!"
That afternoon Mercedes arrived. Her bag proved to be a trunk, and within an hour of her arrival, she had charmed the kitchen, made eyes at Silas, called Wright by his first name, hurt her finger—with resultant medical attention, and confided to me that she "hated men!"
After which, she departed in the direction of the palm-grove with "Billy" and "Wright."
I went to her room and viewed her gowns, hanging, like flowers, in her innovation steamer-trunk. After which, I went to my own room and took stock of my chiffon and satin armor.
Bill came back at tea time.
"Wright is reciting poetry to Mercedes on the stone bench under the orchids, and sketching her between verses," he announced, "but I crave more material food."