"What? Have you more, then? I am glad of it. I only speak according to report."
"I have five hundred thousand dollars, and not a lapiz[J] less."
The three friends exchanged a significant look, and Manuel Antonio, not being able to keep from laughing, embraced him, saying:
"All right, Santos, all right! But this about the lapiz quite affects me."
Garnet was a man who was continually tripping in his vocabulary. He really was ignorant of the proper way of expressing many colloquial terms, and the result was often very funny. Doubtless it was due to his not hearing well; it was some years since he had left America, and consorted with people of culture. His dreadful solecisms were quite proverbial in Lancia.
"But this unhappy fellow surely does not think," continued the Chatterbox, regardless of Garnet's resentful look, "that because Fernanda Estrada-Rosa is a bit coquettish, that he is not taken with her little set-up airs like every other man! Fool, fool, more than fool!" and so saying he gave him a few taps on the large red nape of his neck. "Besides she is a daughter of Don Juan Estrada-Rosa, the greatest Jew in the province!"
"But, man, Fernanda is quite different," said the Pensioner, who was not in the plot. "She is a very rich girl, and there is no need for her to marry for money."
Then the others came down upon him with a vengeance: Where there is money more is wanted. Ambition is insatiable. Fernanda was very proud, and she would never stand being outdone in show by any other girl in Lancia. Now if Don Santos chose a wife in the town she would find her such a formidable rival that it would be a continual annoyance to her. The only person Don Santos had to fear was the Count of Onis, but he seemed to have gone off, for his eccentric character, and the strange attacks to which he was frequently subject, had ended by disgusting the young girl.
Won over by these arguments, backed up by nods of intelligence from Paco, the Pensioner saw the wisdom of the idea, and went over to their side, and then the three tried their best to persuade the Indian that no young girl would hold out long against him, if he once laid siege to her.
Paco alluded mysteriously to certain information in his possession, which was the strongest evidence that the girl's treatment of him was nothing but little airs of vanity put on to make herself more valuable. But it was a secret, he said, which could not be revealed without a breach of the confidence and regard due to the friend who had revealed it.