"Yes," murmured the Secretary. "It is a very good idea. I comprehend with clearness, and up to a certain point I agree--"
"I don't believe it," said McGennis flatly. "Listen, Secretario. I'm going away, _sabe_? No more Sicaba in mine! No more bridges and harbors in a cat's eye, but some real live Igaroots and a bunch of picks and shovels and a road you can _see_! And _dynamite_! Lord, Secretario, you don't know how good it'll seem to hear a real noise again, and--"
McGennis stopped suddenly, for something in his words had at last penetrated to the Secretary's understanding. Slowly the worthy officer put down his cup. Slowly he got to his feet, and over his broad, dull face a little procession of emotions made its slow way. Jovial interest gave place to surprise, surprise to dismay, and at last a heavy hopelessness settled on it. "You go away from Sicaba, Magheenis?" he asked. And then he plumped down into his chair again and sat there, an embodiment of chuckle-headed woe.
"Lord," said McGennis to himself, looking at his victim contritely, "I ought not to have tossed it out at him that way."
It was a relief that just at that moment a white-clad native teacher should come to the door of the schoolhouse on the far side of the _plaza_ and ring a bell with nervous, insistent strokes. McGennis jerked out his watch, and realized that for the first time in Sicaba he was late in beginning his day. "Stay as long as you want to, Secretario," he called back, rushing for the stairs. The Secretary sat motionless, and McGennis, plunging out into the sunshine, felt a second pang of contrition for having tossed it out so suddenly.
But his regret was only momentary. Somehow the morning sparkled as never morning had outside God's own country, and the Deputy Supervisor, pushing across the _plaza_ with long, boyish strides, responded to it. "Going away, going away," was the refrain his feet patted out. Away from Sicaba, away from isolation and obscurity, out to the big, big chance which waited him. And the chief had been watching him, canny old Stewart who said so little and saw so much with those narrowed gray eyes of his; hard-mouthed Stewart, who handled his forces for the overthrow of Botany and Geology, down there in Bacolot, as a general handles his troops. And Stewart, whose approval was a grunt, had said in so many words that he, McGennis, had made good. Truly, it paid to cut your notches and let the Stewarts look out for the meaning of them.