"Well—how about it, Maddy? Think we're all cheerful enough? We know that two of us are! All right!" He called down the request and it seemed to Honor that a little quiver went through the singers in the shadow. The guitars broke into a poignant, sobbing melody.
"I don't know what the words mean," said the personage under his breath. "I don't believe I want to know. I fancy every one fits his own words to it."
"Or his own need," said Richard King's wife. She slipped her hand into her husband's. The melody rose and fell, sobbed and soared. Honor drew closer to Jimsy and he put his arm about her and held her hard. "Yes," he whispered. "I know." The man who had asked for Golondrina sat with bent head and his cigar went out. Only Carter Van Meter, as once long ago in Los Angeles, seemed unmoved, unstirred, scatheless.
There was a little silence after the music. Then the personage said, "You know, I fancy that's Mexico, that song!"
Jimsy King wheeled to face him through the dusk. "Yes, sir! It's true! That is Mexico,—everything that's been done to her,—and everything she'll do, some day!"
"It's—beautiful and terrible," said Honor. "I had to keep telling myself that we are all safe and happy, and that nothing is going to happen to us!"
Carter laughed and got quickly to his feet. "I suggest indoors and lights—and Honor! Honor must sing for us!"
She never needed urging; she sang as gladly as a bird on a bush. The Kings were parched for music; they begged for another and another. She had almost to reproduce her recital in Florence. Jimsy listened, rapt and proud, and at the end he said—"Not too tired for one more, Skipper? Our song?"
"Never too tired for that, Jimsy!" She sat down again and struck her stepfather's ringing, rousing chords. Instantly it ceased, there in the room, to be Mexico; it was as if a wind off the sea blew past them. The first verse had them all erect in their chairs. She swung into the second, holding a taut rein on herself:
The sand of the desert is sodden red;