"So it is really you, Gremo! Do they smell sweet, those air-plants?"
Gremo shifted from one leg to the other. One of Gremo's legs was shorter than the other. He generally settled down on the short one to argue. When he was indignant he raised himself upon his long leg and hurled defiance from the elevation.
The mass of bloom seemed to exhale a delicate aroma. So evanescent was it that Gremo often said to himself, "Have they any scent after all?" And then, in a moment, a breeze blew from left to right, across the open calix of each delicate flower, and Gremo said, "How sweet they are!"
"I sometimes think they are the sweetest things on God's earth," said Gremo. "That is, when the Señorita is not by," he added, remembering that his grandfather had brought some veneer from old Spain; "and then again I ask myself, is there any perfume at all?"
"Oh, now I smell it, Gremo!" said Agueda, sniffing up her straight little nose. "Now I smell it! It is delicious!"
"It is better than the perfume down below there," said Gremo, with a grimace. Agueda turned pale again.
"And what do you do with them, Gremo?" asked she.
"I take them to the Port of Entry, Señorita. I get good payment there. Sometimes a half-dollar, Mex. They stick them in the earth. They last a long, long time."
"Were you going there when you called me from--from--down there?"
"Si, Señorita. I was walking along the bank. I had just come from my casa"--Gremo gestured backward with a dignified wave of the hand--"when I heard El Castaño's hoofs on the hard sand there below." He turned and looked along the beach to where the noisome birds hovered. "I was too late to warn the Señor. Had I been here, I should even have laid down my plants and have run to the edge of the cliff"--Gremo jerked his head towards the humped-up pit of sand--"and called, 'Olá! Porque hace Usted eso? It is Gremo who has the kind heart, muchacho.'"
"I am not a boy, Gremo," said Agueda, glancing down at her riding costume.
"It is the same to me, Señorita," said Gremo, who in common with his fellows had but one gender of speech.
Agueda was looking at the hand which thrust itself out from the sand of the shore. It seemed as if the fingers beckoned. She shuddered.