“Concha, Teresa, Jollypot! We must hurry. The car will soon be here to take us to mass,” said the Doña.
Concha hesitated a moment—Teresa’s eye was on her—then said to herself, “I’ll _not_ be downed by her,” and aloud, “I don’t think I’m coming this morning, Doña.”
The Doña raised her eyebrows; Teresa’s face was sphinx-like.
At that moment in walked David—looking a little embarrassed.
He gravely faced the friendly sallies; and then he said, with an evident effort:
“No; I didn’t sleep in, its ... I’ve been to early mass.”
“Oh, Mr. Munroe, I’m so sorry!” cried the Doña, “you should have told me last night ... you see, I didn’t know you were a Catholic.”
“I bet you don’t know what ‘to sleep in’ means,” Rory whispered to Concha.
“Why didn’t you tell me Mr. Munroe was a Catholic?” said the Doña as she was putting on her things for mass.
“How could I have told you when I didn’t know myself?” answered Dick from his bed.
“Well, he is, anyhow ... and what we’re going to do with him to-day with you in bed ... it’s very odd, every time you invite any one down who isn’t your precious Hugh Mallam or one of your other cronies you seem to catch a cold. Poor Dick, you won’t be able to play golf to-morrow!” and with this parting thrust the Doña left the room.
But Dick was too comfortable to be more than momentarily ruffled.
There he lay: bathed, shaved, and wrapped in an old padded dressing-jacket of the Doña’s (sky-blue, embroidered in pink flowers), which he had surreptitiously rescued from a jumble sale, against his own colds.
At the foot of the bed snored ’Snice, at his elbow stood a siphon and a long glass into which four or five oranges had been squeezed, and before him lay a delicious day—no Church (“I say, Dick! That’s the treat that _never_ palls!” Hugh Mallam used to say), an excellent luncheon brought up on a tray, then a sleep, then tea, then, say, a game of Bézique with little Anna ... but the best thing of all that awaited him was a romance of the Secret Service.
He put on his eyeglasses and glanced through the headings of the chapters: _Mr. ?_; _A Little Dinner at the Savoy_; _The Freckled Gentleman Takes a Hand_; _Double Bluff_.
Yes; it promised well. It was always a good sign if the chapters took their headings from the language of Poker.