Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/83

 nod of Roberto. He felt that he could not endure much more of it. Come what might, he was in the spirit for taking a flying chance at liberty, making his way to Monterey, even San Francisco, and finding a ship that would carry him home.

Don Felipe was among the guests, the equal of any of them, it appeared. His black pepperings of whiskered barnacles were more apparent than ordinarily, groomed up as he was in his finery. No amount of shaving could reduce their prominence. It seemed as if they must be exceptionally fertile spots in which his beard took prolific root, as the holly and sage thrived in little communities of green luxuriance where the soil was deep on the hills.

Don Felipe turned his back as Henderson drew near. Whatever had passed between them once on the level of man to man could not be renewed in that company, his action plainly said. Henderson was moved by a reckless desire to approach the mayordomo with familiar address, but put the temptation of humiliating the little man, who was not so bad in his way as he might have been, behind him, and made his way to the servants' end of the table.

There were many among his late companions in the fields who now looked on Henderson as a strong reflection of Don Roberto, such being the virtue of even the cast-off garments of the great. These were deferential to a degree little short of embarrassing as Henderson now came among