"I will if dad will promise to like Manuela," answered Catherine, wistfully eying her father. The Captain was master and part owner of a steamer in the Central American banana trade, and the family knew from repeated outbursts that he had no very high opinion of the Spanish-American.

"I'm not stuck on those Dagos as a rule," said the Captain, doubtfully, "but if all you say is correct this s'norita must be a fine girl, and you know I cotton all right to fine girls."

"Is she pretty?" asked Will Franklin of his sister. Will was at the age when young men think a great deal of girls.

"She's dark," explained his mother, "and she was thin when I used to see her with Catherine at Notre Dame. But if she has filled out as she should have, she ought to be a handsome girl."

Two days later the whole family was at Camden Station to welcome their foreign visitor. Will Franklin whistled as he saw the splendid-looking young woman whom his sister rushed to kiss as she came through the gate. "Gee!" he[Pg 33] exclaimed, "she's a stunner!" For Senorita Manuela Teresa Dolores Inez Moreto de la Rivera—to give her all of her names—had not only "filled out" until she had a fine, well-rounded figure and a handsome dark, oval face, but had also engaging animation and the gift of wearing her clothes well. She looked as trim as can be imagined in her cream-colored linen suit, with a couple of touches of light blue at the wrists and neck.

[Pg 33]

They sat up late that night in the library of the Franklin home. After supper they had begun to ask questions of Manuela, and she had in response given them her own personal account of the new revolution. It was a narrative that awakened their sympathies for her and her family and all others who had suffered by the internal strife, and it made them strong partisans of the rebels. "They call it Cuba libre, free Cuba!" she exclaimed, with flashing eyes, "and yet the days of Spanish tyranny were no worse than the oppression of Palma's crowd. They have held the offices since Roosevelt gave them the government, and they lined their pockets with what you Americans call 'graft.' That made them determined to hold on at all costs, and so my father's party—the Liberals—was not only over-taxed and annoyed by extortions on every hand, but was cheated and robbed at the polls when it tried to get control by an honest election."

And then she told of a night in July when a half-drunken crowd of Government rurales, sent to arrest her father,[Pg 34] had set 

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