To his profound satisfaction she scratched
him under the jawbone and murmured audibly:
"Never mind, old dear. Some day you'll be my Panchito. He loves you
and didn't he say he could only give you away for love?"
CHAPTER XXII
Dinner that night was singularly free from conversation. Nobody
present felt inclined to be chatty. John Parker was wondering what
Miguel Farrel's next move would be, and was formulating means to
checkmate it; Kay, knowing what Don Mike's next move would be and
knowing further that she was about to checkmate it, was silent through
a sense of guilt; Mrs. Parker's eight miles in the saddle that
afternoon had fatigued her to the point of dissipating her buoyant
spirits, and Farrel had fallen into a mood of deep abstraction.
"Are we to listen to naught but the champing of food?" Mrs. Parker
inquired presently.
"Hello!" her husband declared. "So you've come up for air, eh, Katie?"
"Oh, I'm feeling far from chatty, John. But the silence is oppressive.
Miguel, are you plotting against the whites?"
He looked up with a smiling nod. "I'm making big medicine, Mrs.
Parker. So big, in fact," he continued, as he folded his napkin and
thrust it carefully into the ring, "that I am going to ask your
permission to withdraw. I have been very remiss in my social duties.
I have been home twenty-four hours and I have passed the Mission de la
Madre Dolorosa three times, yet I have not been inside to pay my
respects to my old friends there.
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