"I am. I'm a graduate of the University of California Agricultural College, at Davis. I'm a sharp on pure-bred beef cattle, pure-bred swine, and irrigation. I know why hens decline to lay when eggs are worth eighty cents a dozen, and why young turkeys are so blamed hard to raise in the fall. My grandfather and my father were educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and were sharps on Latin and Greek, but I never figured the dead languages as much of an aid to a man doomed from birth to view cows from the hurricane-deck of a horse."
"But you have such a funny little clipped accent."
He opened his great black eyes in feigned astonishment.
"Unfortunate young woman!" he murmured to his water-glass. "No wonder she sits in public with that pudgy son of a chrysanthemum, when she isn't even able to recognize a greaser at a glance. Oh, Lord!"
"No?" he bantered. "You ought to see me squatting under an avocado tree, singing the 'Spanish Cavalier' to a guitar accompaniment. Listen: I'll prove it without the accompaniment." And he hummed softly:
"The Spanish cavalier, Went out to rope a steer, Along with his paper cigar-o, '_Car-ramba_!' says he. '_Mañana_ you will be _Mucho bueno carne par mio_!'"
"That doesn't prove anything except that you're an incorrigible Celt. When you stooped down to kiss the stone at Blarney Castle, you lost your balance and fell in the well. And you've dripped blarney ever since."
"Oh, not that bad, really! I'm a very serious person ordinarily. That little forget-me-not of language is a heritage of my childhood. Mother taught me to pray in Spanish, and I learned that language first. Later, my grandfather taught me to swear in English with an Irish accent, and I've been fearfully balled up ever since. It's very inconvenient."
"Be serious, soldier, or I shall not cut your meat for you at dinner."
"Excuse me. I forgot I was addressing a hot-cake queen. But please do not threaten me, because I'm out of the army just twenty-four hours, and I'm independent and I may resent it. I can order spoon-victuals, you know."
"Not really. Mostly. I'd fight a wild bull this minute for a single red-chilli pepper. I eat them raw."
"And you're going home to your ranch now?"
"_Si_. And I'll not take advantage of any stop-over privileges on the way, either. Remember the fellow in the song who kept on proclaiming that he had to go back--that he must go back--that he would go back--to that dear old Chicago town? Well, that poor exile had only just commenced to think that he ought to begin feeling the urge to go home. And when you consider that the unfortunate man hailed from Chicago, while I--" He blew a kiss out the window and hummed: