"I could be a farmer if it weren't for the impossibility of my sleeping
through the early part of the night; my hands are too stiff to learn a
trade. I don't want to learn a trade!" he exclaimed. "And as for
starting more stock companies, rolling greater quantities of refuse
into cigarettes or bottling harmless colored water, or controlling a
news sheet in the interest of my other interests--" he could think of
no term sufficiently descriptive of his remoteness from all that. "I
shall have to be what a universal Eastlake will prefer to call me. I'd
stay here, at La Quinta, if you could find something for me to do--like
picking the limes fresh for the Daiquiri cocktails. Do you think your
company would carry me on its rolls for that? I could gather them in
the morning and evening, when it was cooler. Thank God, I haven't any
material ambition. I like the clothes, the life, of that nigger, the
capataz, who rode by, as well as most. I'd sit up on the mirador and
keep--what do you call it?--the veija, for months on end."
The servant, Juan, small and dark in his white house coat, appeared
with a tray on which two glasses with stems held a fragrant amber
liquid.
"That is perfection," Lee murmured; "where else could it be found?
Advise me, Daniel," his voice was both light and serious. "You have
never been known to give advice, but certainly my case is unusual
enough to warrant extraordinary pains.
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