That was an inspiration. The angelic Alexander turned stiff with responsibility. "I sink," he announced at last, "we s'all all estay after eschool an' Meestair Magheenis s'all tell dhe estory of dhe Princesa who wass esleepy." A stir of approval greeted his pronouncement. The Sleeping Beauty was dear to the hearts of younger Sicaba.
Having made his peace, McGennis passed on to his own little room. And there, while detachments advanced to storm under his leadership the rough terrain of English speech, he fell to thinking again of his wonderful fortune. He would make those Igorrotes work, and he would learn all their legends and crafts and games, and they would be his people. Just as the people of Sicaba were.
McGennis, glancing down at the long bench where a platoon of his people sat with the impishly angelic Alexander at one end—the lower one—and the wan-faced village hunchback at the other, felt a sudden pang. For the first time he realized that some professional pedagogue, some glass-eyed Dictionary, some heavy-handed, solemn fellow, might have those boys he had made his. If any one must come, he hoped it might be—McGennis ransacked his fancy for the sort of man he wanted. And he could not find one! At that he laughed outright. "You're getting green-eyed," he said to himself, in humorous surprise.
"Teacher, what is green-eye?" demanded the hunchback, and McGennis knew that he had spoken his thought.
"Green-eyed means a gazabo that thinks he's It," he explained promptly; and "What is gazabo, Teacher?" demanded the tireless pursuer after knowledge.
"Time's up," said McGennis laughing. "Rush along the next gang, Alejandro, and if I catch you chewing bunga in school again I'll wring your neck, sabe?"
When the one hour of his unmanly work was done and the last detachment had departed, McGennis lingered for a moment in the little room, looking out on the plaza, and his eyes were very thoughtful, almost wistful. "I reckon," he muttered, "a fellow'd hate to leave the Hot Place if he'd been there long enough to get acquainted," and he seized his hat and hurried over to his office in the big, half-ruinous convent which served Sicaba for municipal headquarters. His step was not so wholly buoyant as it had been in the morning, and the world was not quite so youthfully exuberant. Not that it was dead, as he had seen it so often from his window at sunrise. It was simply—homelike.
And in his office, too, buoyancy was lacking. Instead of taking up the work he had laid aside the night before, and it was work which must be finished quickly if he meant to leave his house in order, he sat stupidly for a while, and then, half unconsciously, he reached up to a shelf and took down some blue-prints of work which could not be done for years. Not till all those roads and bridges had some habitation more local than a cat's eye. There was the swamp, Manapla way, a hundred good square miles of rich black mud where cacao would grow like a weed, and only a thousand cubic meters of drainage canal were needed, twelve hundred at the outside—
There was the growing bar at the mouth of Cadiz Viejo river. One jetty, placed knowingly, would scoop that out, and there was an ideal place for a dock—McGennis's short brown hand smoothed the curling blue-prints lovingly, as he fell to thinking again of an unescapable successor. Whom could Stewart send? There was Haskins. Haskins had the education, McGennis admitted reverently, and could draw like a ruling-machine and figure like a comptometer. But Haskins couldn't make a monkey catch fleas, and the North Coast needed a driver, a hard-handed—and yet not too hard. Brown could make 'em hustle all right, but he would have a new fight on every day. What the North Coast needed was a jollier—like Henry? No, Henry was a good fellow all right, but he made things cost like contract work in Frisco, and the North Coast was pitifully poor. What it needed was a contriver like—like—well, like—
"Oh, hell!" said McGennis profanely. Suddenly he stood very straight above his draughting-table, for his door had opened.