“Father!”
“Fact. Prima facie fact. If there’s supper to be had go get it. That old blubbering Marta has never cooked a morsel that ever I heard of, except that much-lamented podrida, which I still believe is a myth. Anita—well, I’ll not abuse her. Only for her we should all starve. She’s no cook. Not by any stretch of imagination can she be considered one, all pepper and spice—”
“Like herself!” suggested Mr. Rupert.
“Like nothing fit to set before an eastern palate. Go get your supper. I’ve been looking over this map that Adrian Manuel made of this region and I find there are some habitations marked to the north of us where other maps show a plain space. Indicates what sort of country it is when every mud-cabin has to be named as if it were a town. I think— Never mind. Go get your supper, if there is any.”
He was promptly left alone and as promptly regretted it. Whatever happened now, he was miserable. The refectory had been, by Marta’s advice, given over to the use of and as a “cage” for “that ne’er-be-quiet Señor Disbrow, with the rattling teeth in his ugly mouth.” During all that memorable week just past, the unhappy gentleman had come in for all of the afflicted Marta’s sharpness. Even Anita, who fancied that she had herself run the gamut of the housekeeper’s abuse, acknowledged that not until now had she had “the pleasure of the acquaintance of that most amiable Señora Cardanza, no.”
But now the dame had neither strength nor spirit left to abuse anybody. She ate little and incessantly murmured her prayers, while she slept scarcely at all. Nobody had suspected her of such deep feeling, but she declared to old Guadalupo, who alone had time to listen that:
SHE STARTLED THE MAID
“Being thrice a widow might be trouble for some, yes. Yet not for Marta. I tell thee, Guadalupo Sanchez, sorrow has not come near me until now. It is so. In truth. Soul of my life, Carlota! Where sleepest thou, my angel? To the shearing would she go, no? Till I promised I would not sing to my guitar with her away. For I can sing, yes, in truth. She will come if I sing!” A moment later she startled the maid, who was serving the supper, with her sudden cry. “Anita, Anita!”
“What now, mother Marta? I am busy, I. Here is Señor Disbrow, and yonder is Miguel, of the heavy heart; whom I used to tease but only pity now.”