"It is a fable, an invention of the poet's. It is a pretty idea but not true."
The Marquesa, quite disappointed by this realistic view of the matter, refused altogether to accept it, and argued that possibly the manchineels of India were not the same as the American kind.
"Is it true, Ballesteros," asked Clementina, "that you have eight hundred thousand cows?"
"Oh, Señora, that is an exaggeration! My herds number three hundred thousand at most."
"If they were mine," said Fuentes, "I would build a tank as large as the Retiro Gardens, and fill it with milk and sail a boat on it."
"We make no use of the milk, Señor, nor of the butter. We sometimes dry the meat for exportation, don't you see? But generally we only save the skin. And the horns also are sold for various forms of manufacture."
"Plague take him for a bore!" said Pepe Castro in a low voice, but loud enough for Jimenez Arbos to hear where he sat by Pepa Frias, who was taken with a fit of laughter which she had the greatest difficulty in choking down.
She addressed herself to Clementina to conceal her mirth as far as possible:
"Pass me the mustard, there's a trump," said she.
"Trump, trump? What is a trump?" asked the Baroness de Rag, in her eagerness to learn the language, and Osorio explained the use of the word.