"Podesta! Podesta!" we heard everybody calling out then, and the waiters dashed from under the portales to the corner of the plaza to see what was doing. And as we hurried downstairs we heard a voice—Larry's voice.
"This plaza is about the best-lighted place in town," Larry was saying to a group of diners. "The most exposed, but also the safest place—on the defense—in the city. Whatever they decide to do to us here, at least we can see them coming to do it."
The stout majordomo was standing near Larry. "Truly, that is so," he said.
"And these little marble-topped tables," said Larry, "won't be bad little defenses against their rifle fire. We can set them up on edge between the columns of the portales. And we will have our line of retreat open through these big doors, which we can close behind us, and so on in and back and up the stairs to the roof, if they're too strong and the women in danger. Let's get busy with the tables now."
Everybody began to clear the little tables by sweeping whatever was on them to the marble floor. The majordomo cried out: "Careful, if you please, señors!" But no one minded him, and everybody then began to pick up the marble-topped tables, Nan and I among them, and place them between the portales columns.
Larry, if he saw us, paid no attention to us; neither did he pay any attention to Carmen Whiffle when she stood at his elbow. "There's no changing nature, Nan," I said—"the male in war time is a warrior first and a lover afterward."
"Would you want him not to be?" said Nan, who had dropped grabbing tables to stand off and admire Larry; and while she was at that, her mother, in a dressing-gown of a chocolate shade, came down the wide stairs.
"Mamma, there's Larry—look!" cried Nan. "And he won't pay the least attention to us!"
"Why should he?" retorted auntie. "He has his work before him. Let him do it in peace."
By this time the tables were all piled up as Larry had ordered, and half the women in the hotel were clustering around him. You would think they had a special claim on him. But he almost rudely waved them away; among them Carmen Whiffle, who retired, I was pleased to see, in some wonderment.