Part 18 (2/2)
”All right. Am I Spanish? Have I any Spanish blood in me?”
”She didn't look Spanish. She was light-complexioned, for one thing. We both know plenty of people with a Latin strain in them who look like Anglo-Saxons. Isn't there anything else?”
”Nothing I can lay my finger on, except some kid fancies and--that hunch I spoke about.”
Ellsworth sat back with a deep breath. ”You were educated in the North, and your boyhood was spent at school and college, away from everything Mexican.”
”That probably accounts for it,” Law agreed; then his face lit with a slow smile. ”By the way, don't tell Mrs. Austin that I'm a sort of college person. She thinks I'm a red-neck, and she sends me books.”
Ellsworth laughed silently. ”Your talk is to blame, Dave. Has she sent you The Swiss Family Robinson?”
”No. Mostly good, sad romances with an uplift--stories full of lances at rest, and Willie-boys in tin sweaters. Life must have been mighty interesting in olden days, there was so much loving and killing going on. The good women were always beautiful, too, and the villains never had a redeeming trait. It's a shame how human nature has got mixed up since then, isn't it? There isn't a 'my-lady' in all those books who could bust a cow-pony or run a ranch like Las Palmas. Say, Judge, how'd you like to have to live with a perfect lady?”
”Don't try your d.a.m.ned hog-Latin on me,” chided the lawyer. ”Alaire Austin's romance is sadder than any of those novels.”
Dave nodded. ”But she doesn't cry about it.” Then he asked, gravely: ”Why didn't she pick a real fellow, who'd kneel and kiss the hem of her dress and make a man of himself? That's what she wants--love and sacrifice, and lots of both. If I were Ed Austin I'd wear her glove in my bosom and treat her like those queens in the stories. Incense and adoration and---”
”What's the matter with you?” queried the judge.
”I guess I'm lonesome.”
”Are you smitten with that girl?”
Dave laughed. ”Maybe! Who wouldn't be? Why doesn't she divorce that b.u.m--she could do it easy enough--and then marry a chap who could run Las Palmas for her?”
”A man about six feet three or four,” acidly suggested the judge.
”That's the picture I have in mind.”
”You think you could run Las Palmas?”
”I wouldn't mind trying.”
”Really?”
”Foolish question number three.”
”You must never marry,” firmly declared the older man. ”You'd make a bad husband, Dave.”
”She ought to know how to get along with a bad husband, by this time.”
Both men had been but half serious. Ellsworth knew his companion's words carried no disrespect; nevertheless, he said, gravely:
”If you ever think of marrying I want you to come to me. Promise?”
”I'll do it--on the way back from church.”
”No. On the way to church. I'll have something to tell you.”
<script>