They were now spinning along the winding avenue leading to Mr. Keith’s house. At their right was a green lawn, bordered with orange-trees; on their left, a thrifty olive-orchard, in which a Chinaman was plowing.
“They’re always plowing somewhere,” commented the captain. “I understand the soil has to be turned over pretty often to keep it light and moist.”
“And it has to be irrigated, too, doesn’t it?” asked Kirke, watching Shot, skipping nimbly across the field toward the mule-team.
“Irrigated? Oh, yes. But there’s not water enough at present to do the thing thoroughly, and that is why Mr. Keith is having a new well dug over yonder.”
“I see it,” said Kirke, glancing in the direction indicated by the captain; “and he has got the curb up already.”
“So he has. Ah, here comes Paul. I”—
The sentence was cut short by a prolonged howl from Shot. The confiding little creature had ventured too near the Chinaman’s heels, and Sing Wung, suspecting him of evil intentions, had driven him away by a vigorous kick.
“The old wretch!” cried Kirke, springing over the carriage-wheel. “He’s been abusing my poor little Shot!”
And as the yelping dog ran up to him for protection, Kirke soothed him as he would have soothed a baby.
Before Captain Bradstreet could hitch his horse to the post under the pepper-tree, Paul was beside him, his face aglow with pleasure as well as with sunburn. The sunburn caused him to look more than ever like his father. Each had large, frank, blue eyes and a ruddy complexion; but while the captain’s hair was snow-white, his son’s was flaxen, or, as Pauline would have it, “a light écru.”