Rodrigo looked bewildered. "I regret you spik so rapeedth, no I can walk behindth you."
Anita could not forbear laughing, at which Rodrigo looked rather offended. "I beg your pardon," she made haste to say, drawing down her mouth though the laughter lingered in her eyes, "I say just as funny things in Spanish of course, and you are too polite to laugh at me." She tried to speak slowly, "You may laugh at me all you wish," she went on.
"I will not make laugh at you," he returned gravely. "I could not, but if you will please you tell me when I am make mistake I am grateful. What is thees I say no right?"
"You should have said you could not follow me; in English it does not always mean the same as walk behind."
"The dictionary tell me."
"Oh, the dictionary; but dictionaries and idioms do not always agree."
"Ediom, ediom? Ediom is a language, no?"
"A peculiarity of a language, as we understand it."
"Ah, I perceibay. Is difficult thees English."
However the difficulties were eagerly hunted out and presented from time to time by this zealous seeker for information, and Anita discovered that her cousin Rodrigo was far more persevering and eager than herself in acquiring facility, although she was in a country whose speech she much desired to know. They spent most of their period of rest on the old porch of the church in exchanging lessons, but tarried long enough to go into the building and examine the tarnished gilt of its images, the frayed altar cloths and the dingy hangings. Here, Doña Benilda told them, "our grandfathers had their first lessons. An old priest was their teacher. They learned to write, to cipher, upon the bone of an ox, the shoulder blade it was. Those days are past, but Ave Maria! we are no better in spite of the schools of to-day."