The blue smoke curling peacefully up from the chimney and the white gleam of the walls through the shady trees—for this rancho actually boasted a chimney and whitewashed walls—looked exceedingly inviting to my tired eyes. How pleasant a good breakfast, with a long siesta in the shade after it, would be, thought I; but, alas! was I not pursued by the awful phantoms of political vengeance? Uncertain whether to call or not, my horse jogged straight on towards the house, for a horse always knows when his rider is in doubt and never fails at such times to give his advice. It was lucky for me that on this occasion I condescended to take it. “I will, at all events, call for a drink of water and see what the people are like,” I thought, and in a few minutes I was standing at the gate, apparently an object of great interest to half a dozen children ranging from two to thirteen years old, all staring at me with wide-open eyes. They had dirty faces, the smallest one dirty legs also, for he or she wore nothing but a small shirt. The next in size had a shirt supplemented with a trousers-like garment reaching to the knees; and so on, progressively, up to the biggest boy, who wore the cast-off parental toggery, and so, instead of having too little on, was, in a sense, overdressed. I asked this youngster for a can of water to quench my thirst and a stick of fire to light my cigar. He ran into the kitchen, or living-room, and by and by came out again without either water or fire. “Papita wishes you to come in to drink maté,” said he.
Then I dismounted, and, with the careless air of a blameless, nonpolitical person, strode into the spacious kitchen, where an immense cauldron of fat was boiling over a big fire on the hearth; while beside it, ladle in hand, sat a perspiring, greasy-looking woman of about thirty. She was engaged in skimming the fat and throwing the scum on the fire, which made it blaze with a furious joy and loudly cry out in a crackling voice for more; and from head to feet she was literally bathed in grease—certainly the most greasy individual I had ever seen. It was not easy under the circumstances to tell the colour of her skin, but she had fine large Juno eyes, and her mouth was unmistakably good-humoured, as she smiled when returning my salutation. Her husband sat on the clay floor against the wall, his bare feet stretched straight out before him, while across his lap lay an immense surcingle, twenty inches broad at least, of a pure white, untanned hide; and on it he was laboriously working a design representing an ostrich hunt, with threads of black skin. He was a short, broad-shouldered man with reddish-grey hair, stiff, bristly whiskers and moustache of the same hue, sharp blue eyes, and a nose decidedly upturned.
He wore a red cotton handkerchief tied on his head, a blue check shirt, and a shawl wound round his body in place of the chiripa usually worn by native peasants. He jerked out his “Buen dia” to me in a short, quick, barking voice, and invited me to sit down.
“Cold water is bad for the constitution at this hour,” he said. “We will drink maté.”
There was such a rough, burr-like sound in his speech that I at once concluded he was a foreigner, or hailed from some Oriental district corresponding to our Durham or Northumberland.
“Thank you,” I said, “a maté is always welcome. I am an Oriental in that respect if in nothing else.” For I wished everyone I met to know that I was not a native.
“Right, my friend,” he exclaimed. “Maté is the best thing in this country. As for the people, they are not worth cursing.”
“How can you say such a thing,” I returned. “You are a foreigner, I suppose, but your wife is surely an Oriental.”
The Juno of the grease-pot smiled and threw a ladleful of tallow on the fire to make it roar; possibly this was meant for applause.
He waved his hand deprecatingly, the bradawl used for his work in it.
“True, friend, she is,” he replied. “Women, like horned cattle, are much the same all the world over. They have their value wherever you find them—America, Europe, Asia. We know it. I spoke of men.”
“You scarcely do women justice—
La mujer es un angel del cielo,”
I returned, quoting the old Spanish song.
He barked out a short little laugh.
“That does very well to sing to a guitar,” he said.
“Talking of guitars,” spoke the woman, addressing me for the first time; “while we are waiting for the maté, perhaps you will sing us a ballad. The guitar is lying just behind you.”
“Señora, I do not play on it,” I answered. “An Englishman goes forth into the world without that desire, common to people of other nations, of making himself agreeable to those he may encounter on his way; this is why he does not learn to perform on musical instruments.”
The little man stared at me; then, deliberately disencumbering himself of surcingle, threads, and implements, he got up, advanced to me, and held out his hand.
His grave manner almost made me laugh. Taking his hand in mine, I said:
“What am I to do with this, my friend?”
“Shake it,” he replied. “We are countrymen.”
We then shook hands very vigorously for some time in silence, while his wife looked on with a smile and stirred the fat.
“Woman,” he said, turning to her, “leave your grease till tomorrow. Breakfast must be thought of. Is there any mutton in the house?”
“Half a sheep—only,” she replied.
“That will do for one meal,” said he. “Here, Teofilo, run and tell Anselmo to catch two pullets—fat ones, mind. To be plucked at once. You may look
