"Excuse me for keeping you waiting," she said. "I am not the guardian, only his humble wife. In fact he calls me his chattel. I object to the term. We did not expect any one here to-day, and he has just gone out to do a little commission."
But we discovered that this was a stretch of the imagination. In reality the old man, seized with a fit of laziness, was only then dressing. He appeared on the scene almost at once, somewhat to his spouse's confusion. But she made the best of it, and patting her capacious apron and stiffening her neck, walked off with a proud step and a jaunty air to her special quarters.
"We have had no one here for a fortnight," said the guardian. "I began to think we might advertise ourselves as closed for the winter season, like the seaside casinos. Quite worn out with doing nothing, I thought I might as well spend the morning in bed for a change. Of course just as an umbrella brings sunshine, so my staying in bed brought visitors."
"But your wife said that you had gone out to do a commission," cried Francisco, with all a boy's direct statement of the truth.
"Did she indeed now," replied the old guardian calmly. "That was over-zeal on her part; done with a good motive, but still wrong. I shall have to chastise her."
"How shall you do it?" asked Francisco. "Beat her?"
"We don't beat women, young señor," replied the guardian severely. "My chastisement takes the form of admonition."
"When I wanted punishing, my father used to beat me with a cane," returned Francisco. "I don't think admonition would have done me any good at all. I don't suppose it will do your wife any good. On the very next occasion she'll tell another white lie. Much better give her a caning and have done with it."
"Did your father ever cane his wife?" asked the old man drily.
"She would have been much more likely to cane him," returned Francisco emphatically. "Does your wife beat you?"