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How could Don Jaime talk like that? Everything about him was strange! Whenever Febrer climbed up to the tower he sat down near the doorway and looked across the landscape. At the base of the hill spread recently ploughed fields, wooded areas belonging to Febrer which Pèp was clearing for cultivation.

"Yes," mused the colonel to himself, "it's pep all right. But I wonder what put the pep into you? You didn't have it when we started out. Some French dope you take, I'll wager. Well, it may put pep into you now, but it'll take the starch out of you later on."

Pèp had been striding up and down the kitchen, while the women, with tearful eyes and cringing air, shrank away from his gaze. Everything that had happened he attributed to the weakness of his character, to his good nature, but he intended to apply a remedy at once. The courting was to be suspended; he would no longer receive suitors nor visits.

Do you remember that Chinese half-breed, with English blood in her veins and an English education in her brain and Paris clothes on her back, and American pep in her eyes, and Japanese silk stockings on her " "Come on! Come on! We didn't call on you for a lecture on Oriental girls whom you have met," said the first speaker. Then a bell boy paged me and I lost the rest of the conversation.

He evidently did not want to locate an individual called "Little Joe," whom he importuned incessantly to stay away. Side bets were made and bills and silver withdrawn or added to the pile with a rapidity which amazed Bartley. Hitherto craps had meant to him three or four newsboys in an alley and a little pile of nickels and pennies. But this game was of robust proportions. It had pep and speed.

But now I saw that I must carry on as planned. The total absence of pep, ginger, and the right spirit which the man had displayed during these conversational exchanges convinced me that the strongest measures would be necessary. Immediately upon leaving him, therefore, I proceeded to the pantry, waited till the butler had removed himself elsewhere, and nipped in and secured the vital jug.

How had the simple Pèp, who stood beside him, produced this offspring? What obscure combination of race had made it possible for Margalida to be born in Can Mallorquí? Must this mysterious and perfumed flower of peasant stock fade as would the woodland buds growing beside her? Suddenly something unusual distracted Febrer's mind from these thoughts.

Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H. Ridgway in the Sunday School Times: "If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you a prescription. Rx. Invite the Bunch for Supper."

We never scored on Penn, as I recall. "Our coach said one day, at the training table, 'I'll give a raincoat to the fellow who scores on Penn to-day. The manager walked in and overheard his remark and added, 'Yes, and I'll give a pair of shoes to the man who makes the second score against Penn. That put some 'pep' into us. Anyway, we were on Penn's 35-yard line and I kicked a field goal.

Everything else he would present to Pèp, except the gun, which would go to his son; he smiled as he thought of the expression of the young seminarist when he should receive this gift, which came rather late. By the time he could go hunting with it he would be a priest of one of the island districts.