These latter were youths of some family standing.  Before the war they had been dandies, and they still had an excellent opinion of their physical charms, but, unfortunately, they spoke no English and hence their attentions to Norine had been somewhat vague and pointless.  They possessed eloquent eyes, however, and now they languished melting glances upon her, the meaning of which she had no difficulty in translating.

“We’ve been talking about food,” Leslie Branch advised his commanding officer.  “Miss Evans isn’t a burning patriot like the rest of us, and so of course she can’t share our ravenous appetite for beef cooked and eaten on the hoof.”

“So?” Lopez’s handsome face clouded.  “You are hungry, then?”

Norine confessed that she was.  “I’m starving!” said she.  “I haven’t had a decent meal for a week.”

“God be praised!  I know where there is a goat, not two leagues away!” said the colonel.

“But I don’t want a goat,” Norine complained.  “I want—­well, pickles, and jam, and sardines, and—­candy, and—­tooth-powder!  Real boarding-school luxuries.  I’d just like to rob a general store.”

Lopez furrowed his brows and lost himself in thought.  Later, while the others were talking, he drew Ramos aside and for a while they kept their heads together; then they invited Judson to join their council.

It was not until perhaps an hour later that O’Reilly had a chance for a confidential talk with Norine, for in the mean time other officers came to pay their respects.  But when the last one had reluctantly departed he said: 

“I’ve been talking to Joe about you, and I don’t think it’s right for you to be running around alone this way.”

“You know how mad that sort of talk makes me,” she warned him.

“Yes.  Just the same, I’ll never feel easy until you’re safe home again.  And I’ll never stop bothering you until—­”

“In the first place, I’m not alone.  I take a woman with me everywhere, a Mrs. Ruiz.”

“Bah!  She’s no more of a chaperon than I am.”

Norine uttered an impatient exclamation.  “Is this a time to consider such things?”

“Oh, I dare say the nature of your work is unconventional and excuses a good deal, but you don’t understand the Latin mind as I do.  These Cubans have different standards than ours.  They’re very apt to think—­”

“I don’t care what they think,” the girl declared, “so long as I think I’m doing right.  That’s final.”

There was a brief pause.  Then O’Reilly admitted:  “I’m not seriously concerned over that part of it, either, for you are the best judge of what is right and proper.  What does concern me, however, is the effect all this may have upon you, yourself.  You’re impractical, romantic”—­Norine laughed shortly, but he went on, stubbornly—­“and just the sort of girl to be carried away by some extravagant impulse.”

“What makes you think I’m impractical and romantic?”