Mr. O'Hagan did not continue his rebuke. In his mind's eye he saw the recent scene, and remembered the time when he himself might have yielded to the temptation to which Tim had succumbed. Years before, when quite a young man, just arrived from home, he had thrown himself with Irish impetuosity into the struggle between Peru and Chile; and having been a lieutenant of volunteers when living in London, he had made use of his military knowledge in his new domicile. He had been given a commission in the Peruvian cavalry, and had led many a daring sortie, many a gallant charge. With those reckless feats still clear in his memory, he could not bear hardly on the boy who so much resembled him. "You can't put old heads on young shoulders," he thought; "but I was a fool to buy him that motor-cycle."
The conversation between father and son had, of course, been carried on in English. The Peruvian clerk, bending over his books, listened attentively, but could understand only a word or two here and there. What little he picked up whetted his curiosity, and by and by, when he found an opportunity of speaking to Tim alone, he tried to pump him. But Tim did not like Miguel Pardo. He could scarcely have told why; it was an instinctive feeling which did not need explanation. When the young Peruvian began to ply him with questions in Spanish, perfectly polite, but yet, as Tim thought, rather too pressing, he gave short and vague answers. Pardo saw that he was being fenced with, and presently desisted, breaking off the conversation with a smile.
A little later, when the O'Hagans were having tea in the patio, Pardo spent the last few minutes before closing work for the day in writing a letter. Then, locking up his books, he left the house by the servants' entrance and, instead of going to the huts half a mile away, in which Mr. O'Hagan's employees lodged, he set off for the town.
He had not gone far when he was met-by Nicolas Romaña, the young Peruvian who was storekeeper and general factotum of the estate. The two men were always so excessively polite to each other that Mr. O'Hagan shrewdly guessed them to be hostile at heart. They never quarrelled; but it was impossible to be in their company long without feeling that at any moment sparks might fly.
"Ah, señor," said Romaña, on meeting Pardo, "you are about to take the air? Let me give you a friendly warning: beware of a storm. I just now heard rumblings of thunder."
"Many thanks, señor," replied Pardo. "I shall not go far afield. Perhaps to the town. San Rosario is not Lima, unluckily. There I should have a friend's house at every few yards to give me shelter."
This, as Romaña very well knew, was a mere boast, an assumption of superiority: every Peruvian wishes to be regarded as a native of Lima.
"How strange we never met there!" he said politely. "I myself was born at Lima, and lived there fully twenty years."
"What a loss to me!" said Pardo. "I bid you good-evening."
He swept off his hat and passed on.