Honor followed his eyes. "Aren't they delicious?" They hurried toward them. "The girl's adorable!"
"They all are." Stephen Lorimer performed the introductions with proper grace and seriousness and they all stood about in strained silence until the Señora was nervously sure they ought to be getting on board. "Might as well, T. S.," her stepfather said. She was looking rather white, he thought, and they might as well have the parting over. Honor was very steady about it. "Good-by, Stepper. I'll write you at once, and you'll keep us posted about Mr. King?" She stood on the observation platform, waving to him, gallantly smiling, and he managed his own whimsical grin until her train curved out of sight. One in a thousand, his Top Step. How she had added to the livableness of life for him since the day she had gravely informed her mother that she believed she liked him better than her own father, that busy gentleman who had stayed so largely Down Town at The Office! Stephen Lorimer was too intensely and healthily interested in the world he was living in to indulge in pallid curiosity about the one beyond, but now his mind entertained a brief wonder ... did he know, that long dead father of Honor Carmody, about this glorious girl of his? Did he see her now, setting forth on this quest; this pilgrimage to her True Love, as frankly and freely as she would have gone to nurse him in sickness? He grinned and gave himself a shake as he went back to the machine,—he had lost too much sleep lately. He would turn in for a nap before luncheon; Mildred would not be out of her Madame's deft hands until noon.
The family of Menéndez y García beamed upon Honor with shy cordiality. Señor Menéndez was a dapper little gentleman, got up with exquisite care from the perfect flower on his lapel to his small cloth-topped patent leather shoes, but his wife was older and larger and had a tiny, stern mustache which made her seem the more male and dominant figure of the two. Mariquita, the girl, was all father, and she had been a year in a Los Angeles convent. The mother wore rich but dowdy black and an impossible headgear, a rather hawklike affair which appeared to have alighted by mistake on the piles of dusky hair where it was shakily balancing itself, but Mariquita's narrow blue serge was entirely modish, and her tan pumps, and sheer amber silk hose, and her impudent hat. The Señor spent a large portion of his time in the smoker and the Señora bent over a worn prayer book or murmured under her breath as her fingers slipped over the beads in her lap, but the girl chattered unceasingly. Her English was fluent but she had kept an intriguing accent.
"Ees he not beautiful, Mees Carmody, my Pápa?" She pushed the accent forward to the first syllable. "And my poor Madrecita of a homely to chill the blood? But a saint, my mawther. Me, I am not so good. Also gracias a Dios, I am not so——" she leaned forward to regard herself in the narrow strip of mirror between the windows and—a wary eye on the Señora—applied a lip stick to her ripe little mouth. She wanted at once to know about Honor's sweethearts. "A fe mia—in all your life but one novio? Me, I have now seex. So many have I since I am twelve years I can no longer count for you!" She shrugged her perilously plump little shoulders. "One! Jus' like I mus' have a new hat, I mus' have a new novio!"
They were all a little formal with her until after they had left El Paso and crossed the Mexican border at Juarez, when their manner became at once easy, hospitable, proprietary. They pointed out the features of the landscape and the stations where they paused, they plied her unceasingly with the things they purchased every time the train hesitated long enough for vendadors to hold up their wares at the windows,—fresas (the famous strawberries in little leaf baskets), higos (fat figs), helado (a thin and over-sweet ice cream), and the delectable Cajeta de Celaya, the candy made of milk and fruit paste and magic. They were behind time and the train seemed to loiter in serenest unconcern. Señor Menéndez came back from the smoker with a graver face every day. The men who came on board from the various towns brought tales of unrest and feverish excitement, of violence, even, in some localities.
If his friends could not be sure of meeting Honor at Córdoba and driving her to the Kings' hacienda the Señor himself would escort her, after seeing his wife and daughter home. Honor assured him that she was not afraid, that she would be quite safe, and she was thoroughly convinced of it herself; nothing would be allowed to happen to her on her way to Jimsy.
"Your father is so good," she said gratefully to Mariquita.
"Yes," she smiled. "My Pápa ees of a deeferent good; he ees glad-good, an' my Madrecita ees sad-good. Me—I am bad-good! You know, I mus' go to church wiz my mawther, but my Pápa, he weel not go. He nevair say 'No' to my mawther; he ees too kind. Jus' always on the church day he is seek. So seek ees my poor Pápa on the church day!" She flung back her head and laughed and showed her short little white teeth.
But Señor Menéndez had an answer to his telegram on the morning of the day on which they were to part; his friend, the eminent Profesor, Hidalgo Morales, accompanied by his daughter, Señorita Refugio, would without fail be waiting for Miss Carmody when her train reached Córdoba and would see her safely into the hands of her friends. Honor said good-by reluctantly to the family of Menéndez y García; the beautiful little father kissed her hand and the grave mother gave her a blessing and Mariquita embraced her passionately and kissed her on both cheeks and produced several entirely genuine tears. She saw them greeted by a flock of relatives and friends on the platform but they waved devotedly to her as long as she could see them. Then she had a quiet and solitary day and in the silence the old anxieties thrust out their heads again, but she drove them sturdily back, forcing herself to pay attention to the picture slipping by the car window,—the lovely languid tierra caliente which was coming to meet her. The old Profesor and his daughter were waiting for her; shy, kindly, earnest, less traveled than the Menéndez', with a covered carriage which looked as if it might be a relic of the days of Maximilian. Conversation drowsed on the long drive to the Kings' coffee plantation; the Señorita spoke no English and Honor's High School Spanish got itself annoyingly mixed with Italian, and the old gentleman, after minute inquiries as to her journey and the state of health of his cherished friend, Señor Felipe Hilario Menéndez y García, sank into placid thought. It was a ridiculous day for winter, even to a Southern Californian, and the tiny villages through which they passed looked like gay and shabby stage settings.
The Profesor roused at last. "We arrive, Señorita," he announced, with a wave of his hand. They turned in at a tall gateway of lacy ironwork and Honor's heart leaped—"El Pozo." Richard King.