“Don’t you remember, papa, Coleridge’s poem of Kubla Khan?—
“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea!”
“Our sacred river, when we find it, shall be named Miriam.”
“It ought to be Kamaiakan,” she rejoined; “for, if anybody finds it, it will be he.”
“I think I hear the wings of the angel of whom we have been speaking,” said the general. “Yes, here he is; and he has got the letters. Let us see! One for you Meschines. And this, I see, is from our friend Miss Parsloe, postmarked Santa Barbara. Why, she’ll be here to-morrow, at that rate.”
“Here’s a queer coincidence!” exclaimed the professor, who had meanwhile opened his envelope and glanced through the contents. “The very man I was speaking of,—Harvey Freeman! Says he is in this neighborhood, has heard I’m here, and is coming down to pay me a visit. Methinks I hear the rolling of the sacred river!”
“But you won’t mention it to him, until——”
“Bless me! Of course not. I’ll bring him over here, in the course of human events, and you can take a look at him, and act on your own intuitions. I won’t say on Princess Miriam’s, for Harvey is a very fine-looking fellow, and her intuitions might get confused.”
“A civil engineer!” said Miriam, with an intonation worthy of the daughter of a West-Pointer and the descendant of an Aztec prince.
Kamaiakan (who spoke only Spanish) had been gathering up some cushions that had fallen out of the hammock. Having replaced them, and cast a quick glance at Meschines, he withdrew.