“My gracious, Bill, but I am so very glad to see you! Ricardo has told me much about you, but it will give you the swelled head if I repeat it.”
William blushed to the very last freckle and impetuously replied:
“He don’t have to tell me a thing about you, Mrs.—Mrs. Dick Cary. You win.”
Teresa laughed and glanced, with a vivacious interest, down the quiet street, at the square Colonial houses, the three or four stores, the brick post-office, and the Grange hall, all shaded beneath the arching elms. She turned to Richard to say:
“It is almost as sleepy as my old Cartagena, but different. It is your home, where your ancestors have lived, and I shall love it.”
“For a while, perhaps,” smiled Richard Cary. “It will be soothing. I am homesick for it myself, like finding a safe harbor to rest in.”
He went to look after the luggage while Teresa chose to sit in the front seat of the battered little car with William. She had questions to ask, by way of forewarning herself, and the younger brother answered them artlessly.
“Well, it’s this way, Mrs.—Mrs.—do you really want me to call you Teresa, honest?—all mother knows is what Dick wrote her from Panama after he got shipwrecked or something. He didn’t spill much news—he never does—about all he said was that he had made a voyage in the Pacific and came near going to the bottom—and he was coming home to see the folks for a spell before he beat it off somewheres else. Then he mentioned that he had got married in Panama to a Miss Fernandez. And there’s that.”
“And was his mother angry with him, Bill?” demurely inquired Teresa with the air of a timid saint.
“Oh, not mad, but upset. Dick has always kept her guessing, and this was one thing too much. Why, he told her last time he was home that he was off the girls for keeps. She don’t think Dick is fit to look after himself. Mothers get some funny ideas, don’t they? But say, Mrs.—Miss—Teresa, you don’t have to worry. I’m hard to please myself, and mighty particular when it comes to women. And you’ve put it across with me already, let me tell you.”