“Cousin grasshopper! He could eat you—if he could see you.”
“There are other things in this world besides brute muscle, Lolita. Your gringo thinks I am worth notice, if you do not.”
“How little he knows you!”
“It is you he does not know very well,” the boy said, with a pang.
The scornful girl stared.
“Oh, the innocent one!” sneered Luis. “Grasshopper, indeed! Well, one man can always recognize another, and the women don’t know much.”
But Lolita had run off to meet her chosen lover. She did not stop to read his face. He was here; and as she hurried towards him she had no thought except that he was come at last. She saw his eyes and lips, and to her they were only the eyes and lips that she had longed for. “You have come just in time,” she called out to him. At the voice, he looked at her one instant, and looked away; but the nearer sight of her sent a tide of scarlet across his face. His actions he could control, his bearing, and the steadiness of his speech, but not the coursing of his blood. It must have been a minute he had stood on the ledge above, getting a grip of himself. “Luis was becoming really afraid that he might have to do some work,” continued Lolita, coming up the stony hill. “You know Luis?”
“I know him.”
“You can fill your two canteens and carry the olla for us,” she pursued, arriving eagerly beside him, her face lifted to her strong, tall lover.