The professor looks very Spanish in brown velvet coat, red necktie, shoes shining like a looking-glass, a moustache waxed into long points on each side of his top lip, and hair hanging in a curling brown mat down to his shoulders. Seated at the piano, his thin yellow fingers sprawl over the white and black ivory keys, while in response to my efforts he keeps ejaculating, "Goot! Goot! Excellent! Superb!"
I, dressed in muslin, cream-coloured ground dashed over with wild roses, or blue ground with white chrysanthemums (the latter is not very becoming to my yellow skin) stand at his left hand stretching my mouth to the utmost, trying to give utterance to the tones he is striking on the piano, and trying to look Spanish, too.
Señor de la Prisa is teaching me the Spanish language—a lesson every day, and I am beginning to jabber the strange gibberish like a parrot: "Es un dia bonita. El viento es frio. Se esta haciendo tarde. Es temprano." I'll soon believe myself that I am really Spanish, and have never come from "the country of yellow gods and green dragons," as Uncle Theodore calls my dear native land.
I have been watching people, reading the daily newspapers and my Chinese books, and asking grandmother questions until I feel very wise. I am almost as wise as a real American now.
Some weeks following Mrs. Paton's Sunday visit to my grandmother, I was out for a short walk of pleasure when I overtook her. She was pleased to meet me again, she said, and we walked along together, chatting, at least she talked and I listened, sometimes asking questions.
"Just think of it, my dear," she said, "this is the day on which men are applying for licenses to sell poison to kill their fellow-men."
Then she told me story after story of the terrible misery caused by intoxicating drinks, and the sin and crime they caused people to commit, until I was almost in tears.
A noise of voices and tramping feet interrupted her, and there came around a corner, marching toward us, a long procession of men.
"Who are they?" I inquired, slipping my arm into hers. I had never before seen so many men together.
"Strikers," she returned sadly.