e."

"Could eyes be made so dull as not to light to your poetic touch,
Andie?" And then, in a low voice, "Wait for the sunset." She stood upon
her toes for her brother's kiss. "Another hard, hot day, Greg?"

"No, no, a fine day, Marie. Pedro"--he motioned to the negro at their
rear--"put Mr. Balfe's suit-case in the corner of the veranda there.
That'll be all to-night, except to see that Mr. Balfe's trunks come up
from the towboat."

He paused on the veranda steps to get a view of the bay. As he stood
there in silence, the lively notes of a dozen buglers came sharply to
them. He still held the boy's hand.

"Mess call, papa?"

"Getting so you know them all, aren't you, Sonnie-Boy? One minute from
now ten thousand husky lads out there will be doing awful things to the
commissary grub. But look there! Andie, did any of your kings or
presidents ever offer you sights more gorgeous than that to view from
their palace walls?"

It was the afterglow of the sunset, a red-and-orange glory fading into
the blue-black velvet of a Caribbean twilight.

"It's by way of greeting to the far traveller. This may be the last
place on earth here, Andie, but we warrant our sunsets to be the best on
the market. But let's go inside and make ready to eat. What do you say,
Sonnie-Boy?"

"But, papa, you said that when godfather came you would have the Little
Men sing you a song for the steam-engine he sent me from Japan!"

"That's right, I did. But where is it?"

"Right here, papa." From the veranda corner he picked up a toy
locomotive. "Look! _Lightning_, I've named it."

"A fine name for it, too. Well, let me see. How was it? Oh, yes!
Lunch-time to-day it was, and your papa was smoking his cigar and
looking out to sea all by himself. It was very quiet, with all the
donkey-engines stopped and the men eating inside the walls. On the bluff
beyond the fort I was sitting, with my feet hanging over the edge, and
the mango-tree I've told you so often about was shading me from the sun.
The wind was blowing just a wee mite, and every time the wind would blow
and the tree would wave, a mango would drop into the bay. Plump! it
would go into the ocean below, and every time a mango dropped down a
Little Man in a green coat popped up."

"All wet, papa?"

"Shiny wet, Sonnie-Boy, and blowing their cheeks out like so many
blub-blubs."

"What's blub-blubs, papa?"

"A blub-blub is a fat little fish who takes big long gulps deep down in
the ocea