" The anxious ones, hearing so
good an augury, would pass on, their thoughts upon the day-of-days and
on their lips a little smile.
CHAPTER XX
LOST! TWO HASTY TEMPERS
"One more throw, and then no more until the contest," Jack announced
placatingly, when he spied a lone bull standing just before a thicket of
chaparral and staring at them with stupid resentment that his siesta had
been disturbed. "A kiss for luck, little one!"
Riata coiled in his hand, Jack rode closer and leaned to the girl, his
eyes and his voice caressing, his lips quivering for the kiss he craved.
It had come to kisses long before then, and to half promises, when her
mood was tender, that she would marry her blue-eyed one--sometime.
Just now her mood was not tender. Jack was not to blame, nor was the
pretty Senora Simpson, although Mrs. Jerry was quite innocently and
unconsciously the cause. Mrs. Jerry had a headache, that day, and a fit
of the blues; and from the first moment when Teresita had entered the
cabin she had felt a lack of warmth in the pretty senora's manner that
had piqued her, who had lived upon adoration all her life. Mrs. Jerry
had even shown a disposition to shirk keeping her promise anent the new
way of doing Teresita's hair.
She said that she didn't think she'd go to the fiesta, after all--which
was like calmly telling a priest that one does not, after all, feel as
if heaven is worth striving for.
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