“No,” he mourned regretfully from his hammock, “I have not been able to find a chicken. Nobody wants to sell.”
“But, señor corregidor,” I protested, “we haven’t a thing with which to make dinner—Christmas dinner, and the Minister of the Interior in La Paz told me—”
The official name brought him slowly from the hammock to his feet, a worried look on his face.
“Very well,” he sighed, “then we will make you an almuerzo here in my house, which is your own.”
“Not at all, señor; we would not dream of troubling you. But if you have wherewith to make an almuerzo, let us have the ingredients and we will cook them to suit ourselves.”
“Well, there is charqui—”
“Don’t mention it. We don’t want to insult our stomachs, even on Christmas. I was speaking of food.”
“Well, there is a house down at the edge of the river where they have killed a beef—”
“Yes, three days ago; and the lump of it my compatriots bought this morning all but lifted the roof off our hut. A slice carved out of the middle of it was grass-green. The yellow dog that picked up both chunks of it when we threw it into the street may have had the Christmas dinner of his life, but he is not likely to see another.”
“Ay, Diós, señor, then there is nothing else.”