“Of course.  What do you expect?” It was Flick who spoke.  “What are you doing so far away from home, anyway, Hughie?”

The boy’s wistful, delicate face clouded.  “I had to go somewhere,” he said.  “That Hanson has been there all morning, and mother has been sitting with her head so close to his, talking, talking.”

Pearl laughed a single note, like her father’s.  “Poor Rudolf!” she muttered, “the men are all jealous of him, even Hugh.”

Fortunately, the boy did not hear her, although Bob Flick did, as she intended he should.

“I do love mother,” Hugh added plaintively, “but I can’t love the people she mostly likes, so I came as far away as I could, and here,” his face was irradiated in one of its quick changes, “I’ve been walking up and down and hearing and seeing things; listening to the quail and the doves; and a while ago there was a humming-bird; and did you ever smell the desert as sweet as it is this morning?” He lifted his head and sniffed ecstatically.  “I’ve been turning the whole morning into music.  It’s all gold and green and gay with little silver trumpets through it, and now and again the moan of the doves.  I’m going to work it out as soon as we get home.  That is,” he shrugged his shoulders impatiently, “if that Hanson has gone.  He stops all the music and the color.”  This was Hugh’s invariable plaint when any one was about whom he disliked.

“Oh, forget him,” cried Pearl.  “Don’t be a cross, Hughie.”  She spoke with a half impatient, half teasing tenderness.  It was remarkable that she showed no resentment toward the boy for the difficulties in which she found herself entangled, although his intuitions and the almost superstitious respect which they were accorded in the Gallito household might be said to have caused the disturbing investigations into Hanson’s past.  That Pearl herself disregarded these intuitions in this case was to those about her the strongest proof of her infatuation; but she never dreamed of blaming the boy or harboring rancor against him for this mischief he had done.  On the contrary, she accepted it fatalistically.  He never could account himself for these instinctive likes and dislikes of his; therefore, they were to be accepted and borne with as something of him, and yet apart from him; and that was all there was to it.

“I’ll tell you what to do, Hugh.  You help me work out some new dances,” she cried.  “A lot has been coming to me.  One shall be ’Night on the Desert.’  We can get some great effects.  Something really artistic for the big cities, not the old waltz things we have to do for the desert and mountain villages.  We might try that ‘Desert Morning’ that you’ve just been planning to compose, and I’ve been thinking of another one—­a Cactus Blossom Dance.  Something like this.”  She began to dance.

“Tell me the steps, Pearl; tell me the steps,” called the boy impatiently.  “Oh, that’s a great idea!” His face was flushed; and then suddenly it fell.  “Oh!” he cried despairingly to Flick, “she always gets all sorts of ideas for new dances when she’s in love—­always.  I never knew it fail.”