Page:Arrow of Gold.djvu/238

 off picking them up industriously. Dona Rita's voice behind me said indifferently:

"Don't trouble, I will ring for Rose."

"No need," I growled, without turning my head, "I can find my hat in the hall by myself, after I've finished picking up . . . "

"Bear!"

I returned with the box and placed it on the divan near her. She sat cross-legged, leaning back on her arms, in the blue shimmer of her embroidered robe and with the tawny halo of her unruly hair about her face which she raised to mine with an air of resignation.

"George, my friend," she said, "we have no manners."

"You would never have made a career at court, Dona Rita," I observed. "You are too impulsive."

"This is not bad manners, that's sheer insolence. This has happened to you before.  If it happens again, as I can't be expected to wrestle with a savage and desperate smuggler single- handed, I will go upstairs and lock myself in my room till you leave the house.  Why did you say this to me?"

"Oh, just for nothing, out of a full heart."

"If your heart is full of things like that, then my dear friend, you had better take it out and give it to the crows. No! you said that for the pleasure of appearing terrible.  And you see you are not terrible at all, you are rather amusing.  Go on, continue to be amusing.  Tell me something of what you heard from the lips of that aristocratic old lady who thinks that all men are equal and entitled to the pursuit of happiness."

"I hardly remember now. I heard something about the unworthiness of certain white geese out of stuffy