I nodded--I couldn't very well do anything else, with Sarah there, and Norah beaming, and Peter dashing in to shriek loudly for milk. In the general tumult, the macaw had started again, "Norah!" it squawked. "Coffee! Coffee!" "For heaven's sake," I said, "what sophisticated sort of a bird is that?" "That's Arthur," said Norah proudly, and disappeared. Later, I left Bill and Peter exchanging pleasantries over the breakfast table and went to the kitchen porch to watch Arthur being fed bread, lavishly sopped in coffee, from a spoon. He was an utterly gorgeous bird, yellow and blue, and "a great talker," as Norah informed me. Me, however, he regarded for some time with a glassy eye, and merely reiterated his desire for strong drink. Returning, I found my room empty and closing the door, proceeded, with mixed emotions, to dress. Last night ... the moonlight and the surge of regret and longing which had threatened to drown me, seemed very far away. And it was mentally on tip-toe that I joined a white flannelled Bill for my first stroll about my temporary domain. We were alone, Peter having long since appropriated the services of Silas and gone forth with him to view the country. The sun was very hot, and I tilted my parasol low over my face. Through avenues of palms we walked to the big, red-roofed garage, and on to the little orange grove behind the out-buildings. Beyond, the cane fields stretched, green and tall and waving. Figures, stunted, wiry, moved in the fields ... far off I saw a patient donkey stand, his back loaded with long lengths of cane tips. It was all hot and still, clear-cut and unreal to look at. Silas, Peter and one of the natives came toward us, Peter rapt at the tremendous flow of Cuban-Spanish which surged above his small blonde head. They stopped to speak to us, Bill growing suddenly foreign and gesticulating as he answered the bent brown man's greetings. "That's Juan," he told me, as we moved off. "Great old character. He has a daughter whom he adores, a girl who must be sixteen now, I should judge. He used to beat her unmercifully...." "Horrible creature!" I said, with a shudder, my mind flashing back to that beautiful, sinister fortress rising, towered, from the sea, a symbol and a reminder.... Bill pushed his panama back from his broad forehead and whistled. "I don't know," he said thoughtfully.... "After all, he beat her to keep her good." A peacock, tail unfurled, minced colorfully toward us, down the white pathway. "To keep her good!" I repeated scornfully, "with whipping?" "I'm not advocating it," he answered quickly, "but his motives are unquestionably admirable. And there's a Spanish proverb, you may recall--it runs, tersely, 'A woman, a dog, and a chestnut-tree, the more you beat them, the better they be!'" Wiggles, his eyes on the stately departing peacock, pranced down the path toward us, and, deflected by my whistle from his original, doubtless destructive purpose, leaped gaily at my ruffles.