On the next block several dark lads sat on a fence in the approved Montereño style, smoking cigaritos. As Patience passed they lifted their caps as gallantly as ever caballero had done, although they did not fling them at her feet.
She saw no one else until she reached the Custom House. Mr. Foord stood on the corridor that overhung the rocks. He was a large round-shouldered man, with a benign face the colour of aging marble and a brow of the old time intellectual type. The eyes behind his spectacles were dim and kind. The lower part of his face was humorous and stern. He wore a silk hat, a well-brushed suit of broadcloth, and carried a gold-headed cane.
“You’re going to town!” cried Patience.
“I am,” he said smiling, “and I suppose you are going to read your eyes out in the library. Well, I’ll not be back until to-morrow, so you’ll have things all your own way. Tell Lola to cook you some dinner. I must be off.”
“Bring me a box of candy,” she commanded, as she stood on tiptoe to give him the little peck she called a kiss. It was her mark of supreme consideration.
He promised, and she went into the library, a large room opening on the corridor, where many a great ball had been given in the days before and after the Americans came. A half dozen old-fashioned bookcases, crowded with books, stood against the walls of the low room. The books were bound in spotted calf or faded cloth, black cloth with peeling gilt letters. One large case contained John Sparhawk’s library, and Patience knew that it was practically hers. The floor was covered with a thick red carpet. A large easy-chair was drawn before the deep fire-place, in which a huge log crackled: it was still winter within adobe walls.
“Altogether,” thought the philosopher of fifteen, as she flung her sunbonnet on the floor, “I guess that so long as I’ve got my tower and the woods and this room, I’m not so badly off as some.”
She roamed about the room, opening the doors of the bookcases in turn. One case had been filled with books selected for her especial use, but Mr. Foord had not forbidden her the freedom of the others, being wiser than many guardians. Nevertheless, certain books were placed on top shelves, their titles concealed beneath the moulding of the case, and Patience had looked speculatively at them more than once. To-day they exerted a peculiar fascination. And it was rarely that she was alone in the library.
She possessed an investigating and tentative mind, and this forbidden territory appealed eloquently to her unruly will. But to get them out was not an easy task. They were tightly packed, and the moulding was like unto a prison bar. But Patience was a person of resource. She gave one of the books a smart thump, and it slanted inward. She inserted her thumb under its lifted edge and worried it out. It was a small volume bound in black, its lettering worn away. She opened it and glanced curiously at the titlepage. “Boccaccio’s Decameron” winked invitingly. The pages were spotted with yellow. The drawings looked as if the stories might be reasonably interesting.
Patience curled herself in the deep window-seat, quite sure that she had found a treasure. The book had a furtive and apologetic air. “I have grown old, at least,” it seemed to say. “I am but an elderly rake, and can only mumble of the past.”