I had finished, and, luckily, had just sealed up my letter, when the little clerical apprentice entered my room unceremoniously. If it were not for circumstances which will appear in due time, I would not describe so minutely the appearance of that priest in embryo; but it will be a help to say that he had a sort of rat’s snout, a small mouth without lips, which displayed his decayed and irregular teeth when he smiled; that he had a small hooked nose, eyes drawn up toward his brain, which could hardly have been larger than a sparrow’s; a white face spotted with large freckles; and that he was beardless, while his hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows were red. I was in doubt whether he was a simpleton or a puppy. At the same time he was something like a forward child, which prevented any one from taking his words or actions seriously.
“Bathe?” he asked, addressing me impersonally as he was wont to do.
“Do I bathe?”
“Do you bathe in the ocean, sir,—in San Andrés? I ask because I go down to the beach every day, and might accompany you.”
“Very well; we’ll take a dip.”
“I thought it would please you, that about the sea-baths. Your uncle also takes a dip every morning. He does it like a cod-fish: but he does not seem to get any cleaner for all that. He, he!”
“The worst of it is, I have no bathing-suit.”
“Nor I, neither. But if you are so squeamish—all you have to do is to go to some corner behind a rock.”
“What?”
“Or put on an extra pair of drawers.”