I shall never forget their faces. I have but to place my hand over my eyes at this moment, and I see them once again.
Alas! little did they know what was before them. And little did any one there expect what happened before the sun of another day crimsoned the peaks of the lofty mountains.
Peter, Jill, and I sat long that night in our little room before turning in, talking of home. But Peter had something else to speak about. Need it be said that Dulzura—as he still delighted to call her—formed his chief subject for discourse to-night.
“Oh,” he said, “I only wonder you fellows did not hear my heart going pit-a-pat, when Castizo told us his daughter was coming round in the yacht.”
“My dear Peter,” Jill said, “I do believe you are actually in love.”
“Is it the first time you’ve discovered it, my honest Greenie? Haven’t I cause to be? Was there ever such a lovely or fascinating creature in the world as Dulzura! And I’m a man now, remember. Twenty-one, boys, or I will be in a month.”
He stroked an incipient moustache as he spoke, and appeared savage because Jill and I laughed at him.
“Suppose Dulzura is already engaged?” said Jill, somewhat provokingly.
“Jill, you’re a Job’s comforter,” replied Peter. “Of course, if she is engaged, there’s an end to the matter. I’d enter a convent and turn a father.”
“A pretty father you’d make,” cried Jill, laughing again.