“Oh, my patience can keep step with your own will, Excellency,” retorted the lad. “I’ve no fancy for halting the expedition, or of making a winning through another man’s arms.”
“Your conceit of yourself is quite up to your inches,” observed his patron. “When you’ve had a few floutings you’ll be glad to send signals for help.”
“One flouting would be enough to my fancy––I’d straightway borrow myself a monk’s robe.”
“We all think that with the first love affair––or even the second––” volunteered Don Ruy––“but after that, philosophy grows apace, and we are willing to eat, drink––and remain mortal.”
Ysobel giggled most unseemly, and Chico stared disapproval at her.
“Why laugh since you know not anything of such philosophy, Dame Ysobel?” he asked. “It is not given many to gather experience, and philosophies 256 such as come easily to the call of his Excellency.”
The woman hung her head at the reproof, and his Excellency lifted brows and smiled.
“You have betimes a fine lordling’s air with you,” he observed. “Why chide a woman for a smile when women are none too plentiful?”
But they had reached the place of the camp, and the secretary swung from the saddle in silence. Don Ruy watching him, decided that the Castilian grandfather must have been of rank, and the Indian grandmother at least a princess. Even in a servant who was a friend would the lad brook nothing of the familiar.
Tahn-té stood apart from the Spanish troop while camp was being made, and a well dug deeper in a ravine where once the water had rippled clear above the sand. The choice of camp had not been his. The old men and the warriors had held up hands, and the men of iron were not to see the women at Shufinne,––so it had been voted.