“Sit quietly and watch a bullfight!” Adair MacKenzie had heard Nan’s counsel to Bess. “Never heard of such a thing. Never saw such a thing happen. Couldn’t possibly sit quietly and watch a bullfight. Too exciting. Too much blood and gore. No place to bring a woman.”

Adair had been upset by Grace’s fainting spell and now he was sorry he had ever brought the girls here. Already he was casting about in his mind for something else to do that would wipe the memory of the unpleasantness of the spectacle out of their minds. He was oblivious of the fact that none of them outside of perhaps Nan and Amelia had witnessed the fight with their whole attention. He didn’t yet know the story of Linda. The fact that her presence distracted them consequently had gone unobserved.

“Got your things? Come on. We’re going now.” Abruptly he made up his mind and plunged into action without further ado.

“But father,” Alice demurred.

“Don’t ‘but’ me,” Adair answered. “We’re going to get out of this outlandish place right away. Can’t have you all fainting on my hands. Ready?” He was already halfway out the row and effectively blocking the view of the ring of all the people who had seats behind his party. But it didn’t matter to him. In fact, he was so concerned with his own immediate problem that no one else in the world existed. Now he turned around again to see if the girls were following him.

“Fine spectacle for civilized people to put on,” he muttered. “Hurry, you people. Can’t be all day getting out of here.”

“That’s right.” The voice that agreed with him was an American voice and it startled him. Adair looked up. “What’s that?” he asked the question gruffly.

“I said, ‘that’s right,’” the stranger answered. He was sitting about three rows behind where Adair was standing.

“What do you mean?” Adair looked more belligerent than ever.

“I mean you can’t be all day getting out of here.” The voice in back answered positively.

“W-w-why, you old—old—old,” Adair spluttered. He could think of no epithet appropriate and yet forceful enough to call his critic in the presence of the girls. So his spluttering died away as he brandished his cane and just stood and looked.

“Daddy, daddy,” Alice put a soft hand on his arm. “Do come. We are blocking the view.”

“Nothing to see down there anyway,” Adair returned. “These Americans,” he went on talking loudly and looking back at the man above him, “come down here and think they can run everything. Want to tell us to move on. Who do they think they are anyway?”

“Sh, daddy.” Alice was worried for fear her father would start a fight, even while she was secretly amused that he was accusing a fellow countryman of doing the very thing that he was guilty of. “We must get down and out so that we can find how Grace is,” she added tactfully.

“Well, I’m hurrying just as fast as these Mexicans will let me,” Adair answered. “I always said they were the slowest, most inconsiderate people in the world.”

Adair was wrong in what he said, and he knew it. As he was now sputtering about them being inconsiderate, so often he had sputtered because of their patient consideration for other people. Then he had said that they were too polite.

However, Adair prided himself on his willingness to change his mind. “Only dunces never contradict themselves,” he often said.

Now, Alice and the girls were themselves moving along as fast as they could behind him, so, though he continued to mutter and even brandish his cane at others whom he suspected of calling at him in Spanish, he was soon safely out in the aisle and they all hurried up the stairs and out.

“O-o-ooh, but that was close,” Laura’s eyes were dancing at the recollection of the scene in the stands as she and Nan stepped out into the street.

“Wasn’t it though?” Nan was laughing too, now, though at the time, she, like Alice, had been worried for fear Adair would come to blows with the American.

“Two Americans come to blows at a bullfight,” Laura said, “and the bullfight is forgotten.”

“That’s just what I was afraid of,” Nan whispered. “These people in this country are so hot-headed that I was afraid there would be a general riot, before we got out of there. They were all worked up so over the first fight that they would have entered our private little fray without any question.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Laura agreed. “And did you see the expression on Bess’s face?”

“No,” Nan returned, “but I can just imagine what it was like. She hates scenes of any kind. I do too, but this one was almost funny. Cousin Adair is so quick tempered that he glides in and out of trouble with the greatest of ease.”

“Doesn’t he though?” Amelia contributed. “It fascinates me when I see one of his explosions coming. Every time he opens his mouth, he gets in deeper.”

“That is funny when you see it happen to someone else,” Laura agreed somewhat ruefully. “But when it happens to you, if you have a sensitive soul, like mine, it’s pretty embarrassing.” Laura was in earnest, for her quick tongue often did its work before she had a chance to stop it. “Oh Laura,” her mother had more than once shaken her head over her daughter’s failing, “you need to count to a hundred at least when you feel your cheeks flushing and your head getting hot with anger. And you need to button your mouth up tight, or you’ll always be terribly unhappy.”

Laura thought of this now, and giggled.

“Well, I don’t know what’s so funny,” Bess remarked. She still felt irritated at what had happened. “Maybe if you had seen Linda Riggs looking around at us, you wouldn’t be giggling the way you are. I wish I could have just gone right through that floor.”

“But it was concrete and you couldn’t.” Laura pretended to be very practical.

“That is, not without hurting herself,” Amelia appended.

“Oh, it isn’t funny.” Bess was genuinely upset. She would have hated the scene anyway, and when it occurred in Linda’s presence, she hated it doubly. “You should have seen the look of pity and disgust and triumph on her face when she saw that it was our party that was making all the fuss,” Bess went on, growing more vehement the more she talked. “It was positively humiliating.”

More than any of the others, Bess cared about what other people thought of her. Always conscious of herself and eager to make a good impression, she was always upset when things went wrong at all. When they did not run just according to the way she thought they should, in public especially, she felt like hiding her head and running. “It’s the way I am and I can’t help it,” she retorted once when Nan accused her of being over-sensitive, and so she never made the proper effort to overcome her failing.

“Who cares what Linda thinks?” Laura said airily as Walker and Grace joined the party, and the incident was forgotten, for the moment, while everyone made a fuss over Grace.

“You’re just a sissy,” Laura teased. “See a little bit of blood and you go off in a faint. What will you do when we start dissecting things in biology at school next fall?”

“I don’t know.” Grace looked worried as though she was going to have to do the dissecting right away.

“Tut! Tut! We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Adair MacKenzie answered as though it was his problem to be handled in due course. “How are you now?” He looked at Grace closely while he asked the question. “Feeling all right again, are you?” He spoke gently, as he might have spoken to Alice, his daughter, and a warm feeling of sympathy toward him went through all those standing around.

“Why,” Nan said afterward, and Bess had to agree, “I believe he was irritable up in the stands because he was worried about Grace.”

“I suppose so.” Bess was much less tolerant of other people’s failings than her friend. “But that was no excuse for him to get all riled up. I can’t forget the way Linda looked.”

“Bessie, forget it.” Nan spoke sharply. “It’s not important at all. It doesn’t matter what Linda thinks of us. And it is important that we not criticise Cousin Adair. After all, we are his guests.”

“You are right,” Bess agreed. She could, on occasion, be generous in yielding when she knew she was in the wrong.

As they talked these things over, the whole party walked toward the waiting car. Again, it was a voice from the United States that arrested them, but one more softly spoken than that they had heard in the grandstands.

“I beg your pardon,” it said. Nan and her Lakeview Hall companions looked up startled. The speaker who had accosted them was accompanied by none other than Linda Riggs!