About midnight
They 're my Indians , and there are damned few of them left . ' `` Padre Dominic , my father , and I will , in all probability , get just a little bit jingled at dinner . After dinner , we 'll sit on the porch flanking the patio and smoke cigars , and I 'll smell the lemon verbena and heliotrope and other old-fashioned flowers modern gardeners have forgotten how to grow . About midnight , Father Dominic 's brain will have cleared , and he will be fit to be trusted with his accursed automobile ; so he will snort home in the moonlight , and my father will then carefully lock the patio gate with a nine-inch key . Not that anybody ever steals anything in our country , except a cow once in a while -- and cows never range in our patio -- but just because we 're hell-benders for conforming to custom . When I was a boy , Pablo Artelan , our majordomo , always slept athwart that gate , like an old watchdog . I give you my word I 've climbed that patio wall a hundred times and dropped down on Pablo 's stomach without wakening him .