–As You Like It.
“Strange there’s no motion,” thought Jacqueline the next morning, rubbing her eyes. “Why, what ails the old boat, I wonder?” Then she remembered. She was in the Tampico hotel which called itself a café, and the landlord’s wife was knocking on her door and calling “Niñ-a, niñ-a” with a plaintive stress on the first syllable. The word means girl, and oddly enough, is often used by a Mexican servant to address her mistress.
“I’m not a n-e-e-n-ya,” Jacqueline assured her drowsily, “and if I were, madame, why make a fête out of it this way in the middle of the night?”
“Niñ-a,” the unctuous nasal rose higher, “if Your Mercy goes with Don Anastasio, she must hurry. It is late. It is four o’clock, niña.”
“Four o’clock–late?” gasped the luxurious little marquise. “And how much difference, exactly, would your four o’clocks make on the planet Mars, my good woman?”
“But niña, there is Don Anastasio, he is ready to start.”
“And who is Don Anastasio, pray?”
“The trader, niña, at the mesón. He is to take Your Mercy to Valles, as Don–as the Capitan Morel told Your Mercy yesterday.”
“The Capitan Morel, pardi! Faith, if any man had told 56 me it meant rising at any such unholy hour. Oh well, I suppose it is the hour for larks, too.”
And sighing at the sacrifice of an age of slumber, Jacqueline reached out for the matches. But there was no dainty limbed night table of a Louis XV. beside her bed, which helped her again to remember where she was, and if doubts still remained, they were gone when her bare feet touched the fibrous, prickly native carpet instead of soft furs.