第24章

The work which had called Clay to the mines kept him there for some time, and it was not until the third day after the arrival of the Langhams that he returned again to the Palms.On the afternoon when he climbed the hill to the bungalow he found the Langhams as he had left them, with the difference that King now occupied a place in the family circle.Clay was made so welcome, and especially so by King, that he felt rather ashamed of his sentiments toward him, and considered his three days of absence to be well repaid by the heartiness of their greeting.

``For myself,'' said Mr.Langham, ``I don't believe you had anything to do at the mines at all.I think you went away just to show us how necessary you are.But if you want me to make a good report of our resident director on my return, you had better devote yourself less to the mines while you are here and more to us.'' Clay said he was glad to find that his duties were to be of so pleasant a nature, and asked them what they had seen and what they had done.

They told him they had been nowhere, but had waited for his return in order that he might act as their guide.

``Then you should see the city at once,'' said Clay, ``and I will have the volante brought to the door, and we can all go in this afternoon.There is room for the four of you inside, and I can sit on the box-seat with the driver.''

``No,'' said King, ``let Hope or me sit on the box-seat.Then we can practise our Spanish on the driver.''

``Not very well,'' Clay replied, ``for the driver sits on the first horse, like a postilion.It's a sort of tandem without reins.Haven't you seen it yet? We consider the volante our proudest exhibit.'' So Clay ordered the volante to be brought out, and placed them facing each other in the open carriage, while he climbed to the box-seat, from which position of vantage he pointed out and explained the objects of interest they passed, after the manner of a professional guide.It was a warm, beautiful afternoon, and the clear mists of the atmosphere intensified the rich blue of the sky, and the brilliant colors of the houses, and the different shades of green of the trees and bushes that lined the highroad to the capital.

``To the right, as we descend,'' said Clay, speaking over his shoulder, ``you see a tin house.It is the home of the resident director of the Olancho Mining Company (Limited), and of his able lieutenants, Mr.Theodore Langham and Mr.MacWilliams.

The building on the extreme left is the round-house, in which Mr.

MacWilliams stores his three locomotive engines, and in the far middle-distance is Mr.MacWilliams himself in the act of repairing a water-tank.He is the one in a suit of blue overalls, and as his language at such times is free, we will drive rapidly on and not embarrass him.Besides,'' added the engineer, with the happy laugh of a boy who had been treated to a holiday, ``I am sure that I am not setting him the example of fixity to duty which he should expect from his chief.''

They passed between high hedges of Spanish bayonet, and came to mud cabins thatched with palm-leaves, and alive with naked, little brown-bodied children, who laughed and cheered to them as they passed.

``It's a very beautiful country for the pueblo,'' was Clay's comment.``Different parts of the same tree furnish them with food, shelter, and clothing, and the sun gives them fuel, and the Government changes so often that they can always dodge the tax-collector.''

From the mud cabins they came to more substantial one-story houses of adobe, with the walls painted in two distinct colors, blue, pink, or yellow, with red-tiled roofs, and the names with which they had been christened in bold black letters above the entrances.Then the carriage rattled over paved streets, and they drove between houses of two stories painted more decorously in pink and light blue, with wide-open windows, guarded by heavy bars of finely wrought iron and ornamented with scrollwork in stucco.The principal streets were given up to stores and cafe's, all wide open to the pavement and protected from the sun by brilliantly striped awnings, and gay with the national colors of Olancho in flags and streamers.In front of them sat officers in uniform, and the dark-skinned dandies of Valencia, in white duck suits and Panama hats, toying with tortoise shell canes, which could be converted, if the occasion demanded, into blades of Toledo steel.In the streets were priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and ragged ranchmen with red-caped cloaks hanging to their sandals, and negro women, with bare shoulders and long trains, vending lottery tickets and rolling huge cigars between their lips.It was an old story to Clay and King, but none of the others had seen a Spanish-American city before; they were familiar with the Far East and the Mediterranean, but not with the fierce, hot tropics of their sister continent, and so their eyes were wide open, and they kept calling continually to one another to notice some new place or figure.

They in their turn did not escape from notice or comment.The two sisters would have been conspicuous anywhere--in a queen's drawing-room or on an Indian reservation.Theirs was a type that the caballeros and senoritas did not know.With them dark hair was always associated with dark complexions, the rich duskiness of which was always vulgarized by a coat of powder, and this fair blending of pink and white skin under masses of black hair was strangely new, so that each of the few women who were to be met on the street turned to look after the carriage, while the American women admired their mantillas, and felt that the straw sailor-hats they wore had become heavy and unfeminine.