The one he sent in its place said he was getting
better, but that the climate was not so mild as he had expected it
would be.
Holcombe engaged the entire first floor of the hotel the next day, and
entertained the officers and the residents at breakfast, and the
Admiral made a speech and said how grateful it was to him and to his
officers to find that wherever they might touch, there were some few
Americans ready to welcome them as the representatives of the flag
they all so unselfishly loved, and of the land they still so proudly
called "home." Carroll, turning his wine-glass slowly between his
fingers, raised his eyes to catch Holcombe's, and winked at him from
behind the curtain of the smoke of his cigar, and Holcombe smiled
grimly, and winked back, with the result that Meakim, who had
intercepted the signalling, choked on his champagne, and had to be
pounded violently on the back. Holcombe's breakfast established him as
a man of means and one who could entertain properly, and after that
his society was counted upon for every hour of the day. He offered
money as prizes for the ship's crew to row and swim after, he gave a
purse for a cross-country pony race, open to members of the Calpe and
Tangier hunts, and organized picnics and riding parties innumerable.
He was forced at last to hire a soldier to drive away the beggars when
he walked abroad. He found it easy to be rich in a place where he was
given over two hundred copper coins for an English shilling, and he
distributed his largesses recklessly and with a lack of discrimination
entirely opposed to the precepts of his organized charities at home.
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