Francisco, Our Little Argentine Cousin

by Eva Cannon Brooks

In all countries on the other side of the Equator the seasons are the reverse of those on this side. In Argentina the children are having their summer holidays in December, January, and February, when the children of the Northern hemisphere are busy in school, or skating and sleighing; and they are having their winter when the Northern children are dressed in their thinnest clothing and are going away to the seashore or mountains.

Francisco had just completed a wonderful set of bent pin horns for one of the red cows when he was called to breakfast, and it was half-past eleven. But you see their meal hours, like their seasons, are different from ours. At eight o'clock he had had his cafe con leche, or coffee with hot milk, and a roll; at half-past eleven he was accustomed to having his breakfast; at four he would have máte or tea; and at seven dinner would be served.

Francisco gathered his treasures into the tin box, and hurried to the bath-room to make himself ready for almuerzo. When he entered the dining-room his mother and Guillerma, the elder sister, were seated, and the little Indian serving-maid was arranging a tray to carry to Elena in the bed-room.

The meal consisted of beef broth and rice, called caldo and the usual beginning to every hearty meal in that country; then came fried fish with garlic, followed by a stew of mutton, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, and large pieces of yellow pumpkin, this being the native dish of the Argentines and commonly known as puchero. After that came fruit and coffee.

Guillerma chatted continuously of the wonderful new gowns which she had seen being packed at the great house in Calle San Martin, where she had been the day before, to bid her aunt and six cousins good-bye, before their departure for Mar-de-la-Plata, the fashionable watering place on the Atlantic Ocean, a day's ride by rail from Buenos Aires.

Meanwhile, as they sat thus, eating and talking, over in the great house of the Coronel[2] the master sat at his massive library table playing solitaire. He always ended his meals thus with his after-dinner coffee-cup beside him. The walls were lined with well-filled bookcases, for the Colonel was a scholar.

Indeed, he cared little for the gay life that ebbed and flowed about him because of his high social position, and because of the six comely daughters, ranging from fourteen to twenty-four; the eldest ones of whom were favourites in exclusive Buenos Aires society. He suffered it because of his love for them, but his natural fondness for quiet and study led him to think longingly of the large estate in the Province of Santa Fé, where he could spend the remaining years of his life in the free open air, enjoying the quiet and solitude he so loved. But the daughters must be educated and their mother did not like the country, so the Colonel was forced to live through the winter months in the noise and roar of the great city; contenting himself with a few months each summer at the estate, when he rode at will over the wide prairies on his swift Argentine horse, or read for hours under the shade of the wide spreading ombú trees which surrounded the country house. This estáncia, as they term a very large farm or ranch, was really his wife's; in fact, so was the city house, for no retired colonel's pay, nor general's pay, for that matter, could have met the expenses of his large family, accustomed to every luxury; indeed, it was just enough to cover his own personal expenses, and provide a living for his widowed sister, who had been left penniless, but dared not earn her own living, since the custom of the country forbids women of class to do work of any kind.

His matronly wife with her six daughters (large families are the rule among these Latin Americans) had left the evening before, with several French maids, for Mar-de-la-Plata to spend the entire summer; he would be detained in the city for two weeks, and then—for freedom and the life he loved.

But he was strangely lonely; the house echoed his and the servants' footfalls with an intensity that made him nervous; the pillared corridors rang with no merry girlish laughter, and the luxuriantly furnished patio with its marble floors, and softly pattering fountains, seemed to mock him of his loneliness. Always before, he had left for the estáncia before his family had gone to Europe or the seashore for their summer outing, and he never would have believed that he—an old soldier—could be so overcome by sentiment.

He was minded to take up his abode for the next two weeks, previous to his leaving for the country, in his widowed sister's humble home, when the splendid thought came to him;—he would bring Francisco, his nephew, there with him to the lonely house.