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"I've got our concession to look after." "Well, you're not running the town, too, are you?" asked Burke. "No, but I'm going to run you out of it," Clay answered. "Now, what are you going to do, make it unpleasant for us and force our hand, or drive down quietly with our friend MacWilliams here? He is the best one to take you, because he's not so well known."
The men stood for some short time together, after they had reached the office, discussing the great events of the day, and then with cheerful good-nights disappeared into their separate rooms. An hour later Clay stood without his coat, and with a pen in his hand, at MacWilliams's bedside and shook him by the shoulder. "I'm not asleep," said MacWilliams, sitting up; "what is it?
Langham was gratified, and proud of the manner in which his son and heir had conducted himself; and MacWilliams, who had never before been taken so simply and sincerely by people of a class that he had always held in humorous awe, felt a sudden accession of dignity, and an unhappy fear that when they laughed at what he said, it was because its sense was so utterly different from their point of view, and not because they saw the humor of it.
"Listen," said Langham, holding up his hand. "There goes the call for prayers in the convent, and now it's too late to go to town. I am glad, rather. I'm too tired to keep awake, and besides, they don't know how to amuse themselves in a civilized way at least not in my way. I wish I could just drop in at home about now; don't you, MacWilliams?
MacWilliams saluted the three men civilly, and, according to the native custom, apologized for appearing before them in his spurs. He had been riding from Los Bocos to the capital, he said, and his horse had gone lame. Could they tell him if there was any one in the village from whom he could hire a mule, as he must push on to the capital that night?
But he liked "good form," and had adopted the Englishman's code of "things no fellow could do" therefore his impulsiveness was without offense and his partisanship was not quarrelsome. In the circumstance of this story of "Soldiers of Fortune" he could himself have been either Clay or Stuart and he had the humor of MacWilliams.
At ten o'clock that same evening Clay began to prepare himself for the ball at the Government palace, and MacWilliams, who was not invited, watched him dress with critical approval that showed no sign of envy.
She leaned back on the cushions and put her arm around the older woman's waist, and listened to the light beat of his pony's hoofs outside, now running ahead, now scrambling and slipping up some steep place, and again coming to a halt as Langham or MacWilliams called, "Look to the right, behind those trees," or "Ahead there! Don't you see what I mean, something crouching?"
"She's a fine, sweet girl." "Fine, sweet girl!" growled MacWilliams. "I should hope so. She's the best. They don't make them any better than that, and just think, if she's like that now, what will she be when she's grown up, when she's learned a few things? Now her sister. You can see just what her sister will be at thirty, and at fifty, and at eighty.
"I was an officer in the English army once in the Soudan, when they were short of officers." Clay shook his head and looked wistfully at the ranks of the blue-jackets drawn up on either side of them. The horses had been brought out and Langham and MacWilliams were waiting for him to mount. "I have worn several uniforms since I was a boy," said Clay. "But never that of my own country."
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