“But you don’t understand,” he found himself saying to the rich Spaniard. “It is only the six hands I ask. They are not contracted for. Two-thirds of a ship load is all I need.”
“Ah! Six hands you say.” Don del Valle stroked his beard. “It might be arranged.”
“But you are hungry!” he exclaimed. “The walls of my house are cracked, but it has not fallen. The great shudder is over, please God. My servants have cleared away the rubbish and put things to right. We will have coffee and hot corn cakes in the garden. After that we will talk of these six hands. Come!”
He led the way through streets strewn with debris. The child, flitting back and forth like a sunbeam, placed a confiding hand first in Johnny’s, then in her father’s brown palm.
In spite of the havoc wrought by the earthquake, Don del Valle’s garden was still very beautiful. The broken fragments of a great flower-filled urn had been cleared away. Two fallen trees still lay prone amid a blazing bed of flowering plants. In the background, in the midst of a luxuriant growth of strange tropical and semi-tropical plants, a path led to inviting realms beyond.
On a broad piazza they sat in rosewood chairs around tables of solid mahogany, munching hot corn cakes and sipping coffee. There was Don del Valle and his wife, a very beautiful Spanish lady. Besides Johnny and the little girl, there were no others.
“She is their only child,” thought Johnny as he noted how tenderly they cared for the dark-eyed girl. “What a privilege to show her a kindness.”
The talk ran on about matters quite foreign to business. They speculated regarding the extent of damage done by the earthquake and the area shaken by it.
“And have you many earthquakes in the United States?” asked the lady.
“I have never experienced one before,” Johnny replied. “Our land is very broad and flat. It has little backbone. Mountains are the backbone of the land. At times the backbone appears to shake up a bit.”