"Where is it?"
"Yust ofer dthere, dthree steps—dthat round house."
"I'd better see it perhaps while I have time," I think, and I walk towards the circular building indicated. Baron de Bach keeps at my side. He tries the door—shakes it—but it is evidently locked; he leans down and looks through the keyhole.
"Oh, you can zee qvite vell dthrough here."
I put my eye to the little opening and can dimly descry an open arena with seats in tiers opposite.
"Dthey zay dthey haf a bull-fight Dthursday"—the Baron is reading the Spanish bill posted at the door. "Ve had better stay and let you zee."
"There's the carriage!" I exclaim, and we hurry back, take leave of Mrs. Steele's friends and drive over roughly cobbled streets to the Gran Hotel. Our rooms are secured to us in three languages by the Baron; he scolds the proprietor for delays in German, conciliates the wife in French, and gives orders to the servant of this polyglot establishment in Spanish. Finally we are stowed in rooms opening on the wide veranda that encloses the patio. A hasty toilet and we meet the Baron in the vestibule downstairs. We wander about the crooked streets from shop to shop, getting at a jeweller's some ancient coins, unalloyed gold and silver rudely stamped and cut out in irregular shapes, the only currency when Central America was a Spanish province. We are longest in the great market, buying curious pottery from the Indians—calabash cups, brilliant serapes of native weaving and lovely silk rebosas. We order a variety of fans—one kind is of braided palm with clumsy handle ending in a rude brush. An Indian girl shows me how the fan is used to make the fire burn more brightly, and the brush to sweep the hearth. From market into the main Plaza, and then to the cool shelter of the Cathedral, brings our short afternoon to an end; we must hurry back to our dinner appointment. The Baron grumbles vigorously when he discovers he was included in the invitation, and that Mrs. Steele promised to bring him.
"Really, he hasn't seemed like himself all this afternoon," says Mrs. Steele, when we are once more in our rooms, which conveniently adjoin.
"No, he can be conspicuously disagreeable when he likes." I have in mind the "baranca" episode.
"What do you suppose makes him so absent-minded and constrained, Blanche?"