"I don't know what the old man is driving at myself," replied Hicks, "but of one thing I am sure: there's more money put into it than there is in it. The army is a pretty expensive toy, for instance. Just what it is for I do not know. The only job it ever tried was collecting rents, and it made a mess of that. We don't sell enough coffee in a year to stand those duffers a month's pay. We get skinned right and left back here and down on the coast. Mr. Tetson thinks he still possesses a clear business head, but the fact is he cannot understand his own bookkeeping. It's no fun running a hundred-square-mile ranch, with a fair-sized town thrown in."
Hemming wrinkled his forehead, and stared vacantly out of the window. Below him a gray parrot, the property of Miss Tetson, squawked in an orange-tree.
"If I had money, I should certainly live somewhere else. Why the devil he keeps his wife and daughter here, I don't see."
Just then the secretary caught the faint strumming of a banjo, and left hurriedly, without venturing an explanation. He found Miss Tetson in her favourite corner of the garden, where roses grew thickest, and breadfruit-trees made a canopy of green shade. A fountain splashed softly beside the stone bench whereon she sat, and near by stood a little brown crane watching the water with eyes like yellow jewels.
The girl had changed from her riding-habit into a white gown, such as she wore almost every day. But now Hicks saw her with new eyes. She seemed to him more beautiful than he had dreamed a woman could be. Yesterday he had thought, in his indolent way, that he loved her. Now he knew it, and his heart seemed to leap and pause in a mad sort of fear. The look of well-fed satisfaction passed away from him. He stood there between the roses like a fool,—he who had come down to the garden so carelessly, with some jest on his lips.
"Something will happen now," she said, and smiled up at him. Hicks wondered what she meant.
"It is too hot to have anything happen," he replied.
"That is the matter with us,—it is too hot, always too hot, and we are too tired," she said, "but Mr. Hemming does not seem to mind the heat. I think that something interesting will happen now."
This was like a knife in the man's heart, for he was learning to like the Englishman.
The girl looked at the little crane by the fountain. Hicks stood for a moment, trying to smile. But it was hard work to look as if he did not care. "Lord, what an ass I have been," he said to himself, but aloud he stammered something about their rides together, and their friendship.