Explore "A Volunteer with Pike" by Robert Ames Bennet on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Before I could pluck up my depressed spirits sufficiently to ask Father Rocus the thousand and one questions about my lady which for months I had been longing to have answered, the Governor-General rose from the table with an abruptness that surprised us. Though by now somewhat informed as to the Spanish-Mexican custom of the siesta, we had supposed that at a formal dinner, served in the usual mode, there would be some lingering over the wine.
We had sat scarcely an hour, all told. Yet His Excellency led us into the _sala_, and awaited our adieus with a manner which, though urbane, did not encourage extended farewells. As his bearing toward myself was markedly less gracious than toward Pike and Malgares, I for one was not so ill-pleased as I might have been over this hurried leave-taking.