Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/133

Rh “Good morning, Mr. Knox,” she said. “Oh, please don’t interrupt your breakfast. May I sit down and talk to you?”

“I should be most annoyed if you refused.”

She was dressed in a simple summery frock which left her round, sun-browned arms bare above the elbow, and she laid a huge bunch of roses upon the table beside my tray.

“I am the florist of the establishment,” she explained. “These will delight your eyes at luncheon. Don’t you think we are a lot of barbarians here, Mr. Knox?”

“Why?”

“Well, if I had not taken pity upon you, here you would have sat over a lonely breakfast just as though you were staying at a hotel.”

“Delightful,” I replied, “now that you are here.”

“Ah,” said she, and smiled roguishly, “that afterthought just saved you.”

“But honestly,” I continued, “the hospitality of Colonel Menendez is true hospitality. To expect one’s guests to perform their parlour tricks around a breakfast table in the morning is, on the other hand, true barbarism.”

“I quite agree with you,” she said, quietly. “There is a perfectly delightful freedom about the Colonel’s way of living. Only some horrid old Victorian prude could possibly take exception to it. Did you enjoy your ride?”

“Immensely,” I replied, watching her delightedly as she arranged the roses in carefully blended groups.

Her fingers were very delicate and tactile, and such is the character which resides in the human hand, that whereas the gestures of Madame de Stämer were curiously stimulating, there was something in the