Their hostess could no longer be denied: her thirst
gleamed in her eyes, and flesh and blood could not have withstood
her plea for tidings of those distant, rosy lands whose laden
wharves she could never see, nor ever glimpse their tiled roofs
under foreign sunsets, their white spires beneath mysterious moons.
Their clothes: was it true that the French wore wooden shoes? She
had read that men in Italy walked in gay capes, colored like birds.
Was there water in the streets, and were boats really their
carriages? Did soldiers, red-coated, demand passports? Had her guest
seen the snow tops of green slopes? Did dogs drag milk carts for
white-capped women?
The girl, sulky at first, yielded finally, and in quick, nervous
phrases poured out of her full budget. Taken from her convent
school in California at fifteen, she had roamed the world with the
tireless "J. G." From Panama to Alaska, from Cairo to Christiania,
with her uncreased Paris frocks and the discontented line between
her dark eyes, she had steamed and sailed and ridden; she had
ridden a camel in Algeria, a gelding in Hyde Park, a broncho
on the Western plains.
"Why do you call your father 'J. G.'?" Caroline demanded suddenly.
"Do you like 'Klondike Jim' any better? That's his other name,"
Gold-bag shot at her defiantly.
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