"I've heard of a very good house out there—Stephens and Jarrott. Do you happen to know anything about them?"
"Wool," the Englishman grunted again. "Wool and wheat. Beastly brutes."
"They were horribly impertinent to my husband," the woman spoke up, with a kind of feverish eagerness to have her say. "They actually asked him if there was anything he could do. Fancy!"
"Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to you," Ford said. But the lady hurried on.
"As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than anywhere else in the world. It's one of the standing jokes of the place, both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp. Of course, the old Spanish families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism wouldn't do. That's one of the reasons the place didn't agree with us. We wanted people to know who we'd been before we got there; but that branch of knowledge isn't cultivated."
"More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin' under names not their own," said the man, moved to speak, at last, "than in all the rest of the world put together. Heard a story at the Jockey Club—lot of beastly native bounders in the Jockey Club—heard a story at the Jockey Club of a little Irish Johnny who'd been cheatin' at cards. Three other asses kicked him out. Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge. 'Say boys, d'yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here? Because it's me na-ame.' Beggar 'd got 'em all there."
Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.
"Oh, there's lots of cleverness among them," the lady observed, before he had time to get away. "In fact, it's one of the troubles with the country—for people like us. There's too much competition in brains. My husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin' mind—and for us that was out of the question."
Ford never spoke to them again, but he meditated on their words, finding himself at the end of twenty-four hours in possession of a new light. "I've got to use my bloomin' mind." The words seemed to offer him the clew to life. It was the answer to the question, "What should I do there?" which positively asked itself, whenever he thought of seeking a refuge in this country or in that. It came as a discovery that within himself was the power that would enable him to make the best of any country, and the country to make the best of him.
He could hardly have explained how his decision to try Argentina had become fixed. Until he saw whether or not he should get successfully ashore at Liverpool there was a paralysis of all mental effort; but once on the train for London his plans appeared before him already formed. The country where few questions were asked and the past had no importance was clearly the place for him. Within a fortnight he was a second-class passenger on board the Royal Mail Steam Packet Parana, bound for Buenos Aires—thus fulfilling, almost unexpectedly to himself, the suggestion made by the girl in the Adirondack cabin, whose star, as he began to believe, must rule his fate.