He was a tall, gentlemanly-looking Spaniard, of some forty years or over, and spoke beautiful English, though with a slightly foreign intonation.
A supper was spread here that a king might have sat down and enjoyed.
Two tall black servants, dressed in snow-white linen, waited at the table. They were exceedingly polite, but they had rather larger mouths and considerably thicker lips than suited Archie’s notions of beauty.
Out into the verandah again after supper, seated in rocking-chairs; the cool mountain air, so delicious and refreshing, was laden with the perfume wafted from a thousand flowers. There were the stars up in heaven’s blue, and myriad stars, the fire-flies, that danced everywhere among the trees and bushes. Archie said they put him in mind of dead candles.
“And now for your story, Kenneth.”
“It is a long one, but I must make it very brief. You know most of it, dear Archie, so why should I repeat it?”
“Because,” said Archie, “I do so love to hear you speak. Your voice is not changed if your face is, and when I sit here in this semi-darkness, and listen to you, man, I think we are both bits of boys again, wandering through the bonnie blooming heather that clothes the hills above Glen Alva.”
“Now you have done it,” cried Kenneth, laughing.
“Done what?” said Archie.
“Why, you have to tell the first story. If you hadn’t mentioned home, if you hadn’t spoken about the hills and the heather, I would have told my tale first.”