Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/52

 apparently sole design, in this was to air his knowledge of the English tongue.

He began to exercise this accomplishment upon the American with a volubility that was rather embarrassing, considering that expletives such as a mule-driver generally addresses to his animals formed the greater part of Simon's vocabulary. These he delivered with force and due regard for expression, coupling them up with words here and there that made a slender chain of sense which Henderson could, with great difficulty and nimble mental leaping, follow along its lurid course.

Henderson hurried through breakfast, uncomfortable under the fire of Simon's learning, anxious to get out of its range. He excused himself on the plea that the mayordomo was expecting him. He managed to gather from Simon's remarks that this was a bad precedent to establish, this concern for duty, this precipitate haste to rush away and work. It was a thing that would make a great amount of sadness in a man's lot. One fast mule in a team of slow ones, said the sage, was no end of distress, for its master, its mates, and itself. Simon was saying more as Henderson left the room, the gentle, silent Indian woman turning her head in slow gracefulness to watch him out of the door.

The nimbleness of the sea was in the sailor's legs, for the sea will purge young joints of their slothfulness as it will purify old ones of their ills. The pace that he set for those dreamy, sun-nur-