"This is a wash for the wound." She patted a large fat jug. "This other is to be taken every hour. Of this liquor you must take a glass at bed-time. Those pills must be swallowed when you rise. This"--noting Billy's furtive grin, she finished with a laugh--"you will not have room for more. Give the rest to Mr. Thornton. But under pain of the good mamma's severest displeasure I am to see you drink at least two cups of this soup."
"You shall if you stay to lunch," Seyd said. "Billy makes gorgeous biscuit, and they'll go finely with the honey."
"If you can eat bacon--we have only that and a few canned things," Billy added, a little dubiously, and would have extended the list of shortcomings only that she broke in:
"Just what I like. I'm tired of Mexican cooking, and I am dreadfully hungry."
That this was no idle assertion she presently proved, and while she ate of their rough food with the appetite of perfect health their acquaintance progressed with the leaps and bounds natural to youth. Before the end of the meal she had drawn Billy completely out of his painful bashfulness, and he was telling her with great pride of his beautiful sister while she contemplated her photograph with head held delicately askew.
"Yes, she's fair," he told her, adding with great pride, "but not a bit like me."
"The most wonderful hair!" Seyd volunteered. "Darkest Titian above a skin of milk."
"Oh, you make me envious!" she cried, with real feeling. "I love red hair. Luisa Zuluaga, my schoolmate in Brussels, had it combined with great black Spanish eyes. She got her colors from an Irish great grandfather who came over a century ago to coin pesos for the Mexican mint. Now, why couldn't I have had them?"
Observing the fine-spun cloud that flew like a dark mist around the ivory face, Seyd could not find it in his heart to blame her grandfather, and, if good taste debarred him from saying it, the belief was nevertheless expressed through the permitted language of the eyes. Perhaps this accounted for the suddenness with which her long dark lashes swept down over certain mischievous lights.
Any but an expert in feminine psychology might indeed have found himself puzzled by certain phases of her manner. Its sympathy, addressing Billy, would give place to a slight reserve with Seyd, then this would melt and give place to unaffected friendliness. Occasionally, too, she offered all the witchery of her smiles, yet the hypothetical expert would never have suspected her of coquetry. The feeling was far too mischievous for the fencing of sex. Its key was to be found in the thought that passed in her mind. "'Almost pretty enough to marry,' you said. The trouble is that my girlish beauty is in inverse ratio to my future fatness. What a pity!"
