"You must come at once. I want you." A reply came that afternoon. It was from Wilmington, and it said: "Union Station, 7.33 P. M." Manuela and Catherine met the General at the hour named. The man who alighted from the Congressional Limited and whom Manuela rushed to kiss was slender and undersized, with a swarthy, weather-beaten face, curly gray hair and a white moustache, twisted and re-twisted to the limit. He was in white flannels and was so altogether neat and immaculate that Catherine, perspiring under the sultriness of the August evening,[Pg 36] thought him the coolest person she had ever seen. He greeted her with gallantry when introduced, and, though he spoke English with slowness, his pronunciation was good and his voice musical. [Pg 36] After he had made a similarly good impression at the Caroline-street dwelling it was Manuela who proposed that they should leave the two fathers "to smoke together and get acquainted." As the girls went out of the library Moreto laid half a dozen cigars on the table. "From my own plantation," he said to Captain Franklin, with rather a pompous manner. "I hope you'll like them." The Captain found them the finest Havanas he had ever puffed. "You go to Costa Rica for bananas, do you not?" the General asked in Spanish. "Sometimes Port Limon; sometimes Bocas del Toro," answered Catherine's father, in the same tongue. "Bocas del Toro this trip." "When do you sail?" "Next Saturday." There was another silence. Franklin studied his cigar. Moreto studied the fruit captain. Presently he leaned forward on the arm of his Morris chair, in which, truth to tell, he looked rather insignificant. "My daughter," he said, this time in English, "tells me you are with us in our revolution." The Captain turned his clear blue eyes on the Cuban. "Your daughter, Senor," he replied, "is a fine girl." He saw the shadow of disappointment[Pg 37] pass over Moreto's countenance. "I'm not much on revolutions. I've seen too many of the bloody things in the
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