broke into a torrent of Spanish oaths. "Dios!" she paused at last,
panting for breath, "you must be crazy to talk to me like that, Bob
Flick."

"I told you how I hated it," he answered, with that sad, unaltered
patience with which he always took her unspared blame, "but I had to do
it. You got to know these things, Pearl, and it's better for me to tell
you than for your Pop to try."

"He wouldn't have gotten very far," she muttered.

"That's just it. You'd both have got to scrapping and screaming at each
other and nothing told."

"Better nothing told, as far as you are concerned," she flashed at him
fiercely, and then lapsed into sullen silence.

"Hello! Hello!" Hughie's voice came to them from a side avenue or
narrower path down which he had wandered.

"Hello, yourself," Flick answered. "We'll wait for you right here."

"Bob." Pearl's soft voice held no evidence of rancor. "Tell me something
quick, before he reaches us. Tell me true, and I'll be good friends,
honest, I will."

"You know I'll tell you anything I can."

"Then--then--is she--that woman in Colina--pretty? As pretty as I am?"