Wyndham's Pal by Harold Bindloss — Read

One got up early at the Finca Buenavista, and when they had been given some black coffee and a small hard roll, Wyndham and Marston went to a bench in the patio. The house was built in a hollow square and its occupants used the patio when the rooms were hot. One wall was pierced by arches opening to the kitchen and stable; outside stairs, balconies, and windows with green shutters, broke the straight front of the others. In places, purple masses of Bougainvillea glowed against the ochre wash, and beyond the flat roof a steep hill, darkly green with foliage, rolled up against a background of distant mountains. In the middle of the square a pepper tree stretched its thin branches across a marble fountain, in which shining water splashed. The _finca_ dated back to days when the country prospered under Spanish rule.

Wyndham lighted his pipe and looked thoughtful when he began to smoke.