'
"Padre Dominic, my father, and I will, in all probability, get just a
little bit jingled at dinner. After dinner, we'll sit on the porch
flanking the patio and smoke cigars, and I'll smell the lemon verbena and
heliotrope and other old-fashioned flowers modern gardeners have
forgotten how to grow. About midnight, Father Dominic's brain will have
cleared, and he will be fit to be trusted with his accursed automobile;
so he will snort home in the moonlight, and my father will then carefully
lock the patio gate with a nine-inch key. Not that anybody ever steals
anything in our country, except a cow once in a while--and cows never
range in our patio--but just because we're hell-benders for conforming to
custom. When I was a boy, Pablo Artelan, our majordomo, always slept
athwart that gate, like an old watchdog. I give you my word I've climbed
that patio wall a hundred times and dropped down on Pablo's stomach
without wakening him. And, for a quarter of a century, to my personal
knowledge, that patio gate has supported itself on a hinge and a half.
Oh, we're a wonderful institution, we Farrels!"
"What did you say this Pablo was?"
"He used to be a majordomo. That is, he was the foreman of the ranch
when we needed a foreman. We haven't needed Pablo for a long time, but
it doesn't cost much to keep him on the pay-roll, except when his
relatives come to visit him and stay a couple of weeks.
Pages:
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38