“Climate here has something to do with it,” said John, “and also the old Spanish ideas that ladies should wear satin slippers and take as few steps as possible. The Minorcans keep up some of the old ideas still. Courtship is carried on through a window, the maiden within, a rose in her hair, and the favorite Spanish work in her hand, and the lover outside leaning on the casement. Not until a formal acceptance has been given is he allowed to enter the house and rest himself and his aspirations in a chair.”
“We have adopted English ideas of exercise in New York,” said Eugenio, “but they have not penetrated far into the interior as yet, and are utterly unknown south of Mason and Dixon’s line. St. Augustine, however, is still Spanish, and no one expects the traditional Spanish señorita, with her delicate slippers, fan, and mantilla, to start out for a six-mile constitutional--it would not be her style at all. By-the-way, I saw a beautiful Spanish face leaning from a window on St. George Street this morning.”
“Yes,” said Mokes, consequentially. “There are two on St. George Street, two on Charlotte, and one on St. Hypolita. I have taken pains to trace--er--to trace them out; they like it--er--and I have, I may say, some experience in outlines and that sort of thing--galleries abroad--old masters, etc. Paint a little myself.”
“Indeed!” said Eugenio. “Original designs, I suppose?”
Oh no; Mokes left that to the regular profession. They had to do it, poor fellows--wouldn’t interfere with them.
Yes, Mokes thought it was. But gentlemen of--of fortune, you know, had their duties--as--as such.
“How _much_ I should like to see your pictures, Mr. Mokes!” said the poet, assuming an air of deep interest.
The highly flattered Mokes thought that “perhaps--er,” he “might have one or two sent down by express;” he always liked “to oblige his friends.”
“Don’t chaff him any more,” whispered John, with a meaning glance toward Iris.
“What! not that lovely girl!” exclaimed Eugenio, under his breath.
On the red bridge Sara paused a moment and stood gazing down the river. “What a misty look there is away down there over the salt marshes!” she said, “the boats tipped up on shore, with their slender masts against the sky. The river is certainly going down to the sea, and yet the sea-breeze comes from behind me.”