Ramon grinned.
“No,” he countered, “I was just trying to get up the nerve to ask if you’ll let me come to see you.”
“That doesn’t take much nerve,” she assured him. “Practically every man I’ve danced with tonight has asked me that. I never had so many dates before in my life.”
“Well; may I follow the crowd, then?”
“You may,” she laughed. “Or call me up first, and maybe there won’t be any crowd.”
CHAPTER V
His mother and sister had left early, for which fact he was thankful. He walked home alone with his hat in his hand, letting the cold wind of early morning blow on his hot brow. Punch and music and dancing had filled him with a delightful excitement. He felt glad of life and full of power. He could have gone on walking for hours, enjoying the rhythm of his stride and the gorgeous confusion of his thoughts, but in a remarkably short time he had covered the mile to his house in Old Town.
It was a long, low adobe with a paintless and rickety wooden verandah along its front, and with deep-set, iron-barred windows looking upon the square about which Old Town was built. Delcasars had lived in this house for over a century. Once it had been the best in town. Now it was an antiquity pointed out to tourists. Most of the Mexicans who had money had moved away from Old Town and built modern brick houses in New Town. But this was an expensive proceeding. The old adobe houses which they left brought them little. The Delcasars had never been able to afford this removal. They were deeply attached [pg 39] to the old house and also deeply ashamed of it.