“It won’t be necessary. Do you know how much five thousand acres of the finest grapefruit in the world will bring in New York?”
She shook her head.
“Neither do I. Thousands of dollars, there’s no question. Then your grandfather and you can leave this wilderness.”
“Leave—leave it?”
The girl’s eyes swept the scene before her. In the immediate foreground all green and gold was the orchard; beyond that a broad stretch of green where an occasional cohune nut palm with leaves thirty feet long broke the even green. Back of all that, nestling against the vast, impenetrable jungle, was the long, low house.
“Leave it?” she repeated. “Grandfather would not leave it. He loves the land and his black Caribs too well.
“He left it once.” Her voice grew husky again. “War. He left then. He was gone three years. They made him a captain. They say it was uncanny the way he led his men, his black Caribs from Central America, and how in every bloody battle he escaped unharmed.” She was silent for a moment. The shadows deepened.
“Do you know,” she went on softly, “he never speaks of it now. And he never allows anyone to call him Captain Kennedy. That’s what he was, you know. But somehow I love him a lot more for it.”
“He’s got company!” she exclaimed, springing up and shaking herself as if to break a spell that had come over her. “One of those dark Spaniards. I don’t like him. Br-r-r-r! He makes me think of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. But we must go in. It isn’t respectable not to. He’s been talking some sort of business, but must be through by now.”
“Business?” Johnny had the question on his lips, but did not ask it. He was destined in good time to know what sort of business that was, and to get little enough comfort from the knowledge.