"Why not?" she asked, her hands on the latch.
"Flying things! Tropical night-birds! Bats!"
"Bats! Ugh-h-h!" cried Nan, and let the lattice alone.
"Let's sit here," I said, setting our chairs almost against the lattice. Larry could not escape then if he wanted to, because it was a twenty-foot drop onto a lot of marble vases or the spiked edges of some cactus plants, and more than a twenty-foot drop to a marble walk or into the depths of some kind of a spouting fountain in the patio.
He had to stay, and, being an officer and a gentleman, of course, he was trying not to hear; but the lattice slats were loose-fitting and we were sitting not two feet from them.
"Where did you hear of Larry last, Nan?" I began.
"Oh," said Nan, "I've been getting mamma to take all kinds of trips, Nettie, and every trip with the one idea of seeing Larry somewhere. Wherever I thought any of our war-ships came, there I'd specially get mamma to go. I can draw a map of this coast-line with all its ports in their proper places with my eyes shut. And the places in the different ports I've peeked into, Nettie!—knowing how curious Larry always was to see everything going on and hoping to run across him in that way. I even got mamma to go to a bull-fight last Sunday."
"A bull-fight, Nan!" I said.
"Why not?" retorted Nan. "In our country we have prize-fights. And which is worse—for men to maul beasts or to maul each other?"
"I know, Nan, but women who have seen them——"