“I think I must go back now,” said the young man, not thinking so. He had a guitar from the cabin.
“Oh!” said she, diverted by his youthful feint. “Well, if you think it is so late.” She busied herself with the harvest. Her red handkerchief and strands of her black hair had fallen loosely together from her head to her shoulders. The red peppers were heaped thick, hiding the whole roof, and she stooped among them, levelling them to a ripening layer with buckskin gloves (for peppers sting sharper than mustard), sorting and turning them in the bright sun. The boy looked at her most wistfully.
“It is not precisely late—yet,” said he.
“To be sure not,” she assented, consulting the sky. “We have still three hours of day.”
He brightened as he lounged against a water-barrel. “But after night it is so very dark on the trail to camp,” he insincerely objected.
“I never could have believed you were afraid of the dark.”
“It is for the horse’s legs, Lolita. Of course I fear nothing.”
“Bueno! I was sure of it. Do you know, Luis, you have become a man quite suddenly? That mustache will be beautiful in a few years. And you have a good figure.”
“I am much heavier than last year,” said he. “My arm—”