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He was aware of an indefinable resentment at Andrés' attitude: his love for him was all that prevented the acerbity of a voiced irritation. Yet, when the regimental band was leaving to the diminishing strains of its quickstep, Andrés joined Charles and Pilar who had left her quitrin strolling through the Plaza.
He hesitated, uncertain of the wisdom of such a proceeding, when her hand again stole into his. What, anyhow, in the face of that direct request, could he do but agree? They must have, she proceeded, since he hadn't a private equipage, the newest quitrin he could procure, and a calesero more brilliant than any they should pass on the Calzada de la Reina.
She asked, nearing the place where they were to meet the quitrin, when she might see him again; and mechanically he suggested that evening, after the music in the Plaza de Armas. Returning to Ancha del Norte Street, his face was grave, almost concerned, but he was made happy by finding Andrés Escobar in his room.
Once when I was supposed to be going with a servant to the sea baths, I had the quitrin stop at the San Felipe, and I went up the stair, to the roof, to your room, but you were out. You see, I am a very evil girl." He agreed to the extent that she was a very foolish girl. In turn she studied him carefully.
The older woman was assisted into the leather body of the quitrin, Pilar settled lightly in the niña bonita, Charles mounted to the third place, the calesero swung up on the horse outside the shafts, and they rattled smartly into the Queen's Drive.
Forty years ago, such vehicles, only a little changed from the original type, were common enough in Havana itself. About that time, or a few years earlier, the four-wheeler began to supplant them for city use. There is a technical difference between the original type of volante and its successor which, though still called a volante was properly called a quitrin.
There he commanded the carriage to halt, and, in reply to Pilar's surprise, explained that he was following the established course. "We leave the quitrin here, and it meets us at the gates of the Quinta, and meanwhile we walk. There are a great many paths and flowers."
In the older days, say sixty or seventy years ago, the volante or the quitrin was an outward and visible sign of a well-lined pocket-book. It indicated the possessor as a man of wealth, probably a rich planter who needed such a vehicle to carry him and his family from their mansion in the city to their perhaps quite as costly home on the plantation.
The only real difference was that the top of the quitrin was collapsible, and could be lowered when desirable, while the top of the volante was not. I have ridden in these affairs, I cannot say comfortably, over roads that would have been quite impossible for any other wheeled vehicle. At the back, and somewhat behind the body were two wheels, six feet in diameter.
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