Children of the Desert. Louis Dodge

and figs—black figs, a little withered, and candied tunas. And there was a roast of beef with herbs and chili sauce, and enchalades.

      The electric lights were turned on up-stairs and down when they entered the house, and Sylvia had an alarmed moment when she pictured a lot of guests waiting for them. But there proved to be nobody in the house but just they two and the old Mexican woman. Antonia, her name was.

      Harboro took her by the hand and led her up-stairs to the door of her room. It didn’t occur to him that Antonia might better have attended to this part of the welcoming. Antonia was busy, and she was not the sort of person to mother a bride, Harboro thought. She wouldn’t have been asked to perform this task in any case. You would have thought that Harboro was dealing with a child rather than a woman—his wife. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to take complete charge of her from the beginning.

      She uttered a little cry when she entered the bedroom. There by the bed was her trunk, which she had left at home. She hadn’t known anything about its having been transferred from one house to the other.

      “Who brought it?” she asked, startled.

      “I sent for it,” explained Harboro. “I knew you’d want it the first thing.”

      “You didn’t go to the house?”

      “Oh, no. I sent the expressman to the house and instructed him to ask for your things. I suppose he met your father. It’s all right.”

      She looked at him curiously. There was a little furrow in her forehead. “Do you always do things—that way?” she asked.

      He didn’t appear to understand what she meant. He had other things on his mind. He stood away from her, by the door. “If I were you I’d take off that—harness,” he said. “It makes you look like a picture—or a sacrifice. Do you know the old Aztec legends? It would be nicer for you to look just like a little woman now. Put on one of the dresses you wore when we walked together. How does that strike you?”

      “Well, I will.” She looked after him as if she were a little bewildered as he turned away, and closed the door. She heard him call back: “I’ll see if there’s anything I can do for Antonia. Supper will be ready when you come down.”

      It seemed to her that his conduct was very strange for a lover. He was so entirely matter-of-fact. Yet everything about him seemed to be made up of kindness—to radiate comfort. She had never known any other man like this, she reflected. And then an unfamiliar light dawned upon her. She had had lovers before, certainly; but she realized now, with a deep and strange sensation, that she had never really been loved until Harboro came.

      She had some difficulty in getting out of her wedding-finery. There was a momentary temptation to call for help. But she thought better of this, and in the end she came down-stairs like a girl, in a light, clinging dress of Chinese silk, with a girdle and tassel at the waist, and a red ribbon woven into the throat. You might have thought she was seventeen or eighteen. As a matter of fact, she was only twenty-two.

      Harboro met her and kissed her, and led her to the table. He had a forceful manner. He was hungry, and it seemed that his efficiency extended to a knowledge of how a dinner should be served.

      He took his seat at the end of the table where the roast was, and the carving implements. At Sylvia’s place there was a percolator, and the coffee-cups, and the sugar and cream.

      Antonia, wizened and dark, came and went silently. To the people of her race a wedding means a fiesta, a village hubbub, a dance, and varying degrees of drunkenness. She was not herself in this house of a wedding supper for two, and a prosaic attitude toward the one event in life when money ought to be spent freely, even in the face of impending bankruptcy.

      But Harboro speedily set her at ease. They were there to eat their supper—that was all there was to it. He wasn’t drinking toasts, or making love. He seemed thoroughly contented; and it didn’t occur to him, clearly, that there was any occasion for making a noise or simulating an excitement which he did not feel.

      Antonia regarded him furtively, from over his shoulder, as she waited for Sylvia’s plate with its portion of the roast. He was a strange hombre. Well, she had known big, quiet men before. They were like rocks. It was all very well for a woman if she stood behind such a man for protection as long as she remained quiet; but Heaven help her if she ever undertook to beat him with her fists. She would only break her hands and accomplish nothing else whatever.

      Sylvia was not in a mood, seemingly, to eat very heartily; but Harboro thought he understood that, and he made allowances. He did not urge her, unless reassuring tones and comfortable topics may be said to consist of urging.

      He regarded her with bright eyes when she poured the coffee; and when her hands trembled he busied himself with trifles so that he would not seem to notice. He produced a cigar and cut the end off with his penknife, and lit it deliberately.

      Only once—just before they got up from the table—did he assume the rôle of lover. He turned to Antonia, and with an air of pride and contentment, asked the old woman, in her own language:

      “Isn’t she a beautiful child?”

      Sylvia was startled by his manner of speaking Spanish. Everybody along the border spoke the language a little; but Harboro’s wasn’t the canteen Spanish of most border Americans. Accent and enunciation were singularly nice and distinct. His mustache bristled rather fiercely over one or two of the words.

      Antonia thought very highly of the “child,” she admitted. She was bonisima, and other superlatives.

      And then Harboro’s manner became rather brisk again. “Come, I want to show you the house,” he said, addressing his wife.

      He had taken a great deal of pride in the planning and construction of the house. There was a young Englishman in one of the shops—a draftsman—who had studied architecture in a London office, and who might have been a successful architect but for a downfall which had converted him, overnight, into a remittance-man and a fairly competent employee of the Mexican International. And this man and Harboro had put their heads together and considered the local needs and difficulties, and had finally planned a house which would withstand northers and lesser sand-storms, and the long afternoons’ blazing sun, to the best advantage. A little garden had been planned, too. There was hydrant water in the yard. And there was a balcony, looking to the west, over the garden.

      She preceded him up-stairs.

      “First I want to show you your own room,” said Harboro. “What do you call it? I mean the room in which the lady of the house sits and is contented.”

      I can’t imagine what there was in this description which gave Sylvia a hint as to his meaning, but she said:

      “A boudoir?”

      And Harboro answered promptly: “That’s it!”

      The boudoir was at the front of the house, up-stairs, overlooking the Quemado Road. It made Sylvia’s eyes glisten. It contained a piano, and a rather tiny divan in russet leather, and maple-wood furniture, and electric fixtures which made you think of little mediæval lanterns. But the bride looked at these things somewhat as if she were inspecting a picture, painted in bold strokes: as if they would become obscure if she went too close—as if they couldn’t possibly be hers to be at home among.

      It did not appear that Harboro was beginning to feel the absence of a spontaneous acceptance on the part of his wife. Perhaps he was rather full of his own pleasure just then.

      They closed the door of the boudoir behind them after they had completed their inspection, and at another door Harboro paused impressively.

      “This,” he said, pushing the door open wide, “is the guest-chamber.”

      It would have been small wonder if Sylvia had felt suddenly cold as she crossed that threshold. Certainly she seemed a little strange as she stood with her back to Harboro and aimlessly took in the capacious bed and