“The doctor told us to call the priest, so I went and got Father Acosta, our old family padre, who baptized me, and when he confessed father, he found out about the seven thousand pesos. Well, he said at once that father could not go to heaven with that on his conscience. So he told me to take the money and come to Buenos Aires at once—for of course there is no hope now of finding any of the beggar’s heirs—to see this Dr. Martinez and, giving him two thousand pesos for his poor patients, as a sort of commission, to have him take the other five thousand and send half of it to some church to say masses for the repose of that poor aviator who was killed the other day, and the other half to some good hospital, to be used for the poor and those with bad hands and feet....”
“Ah, he means cripples,” put in the Porteño; “that’s what we call that kind of poor people here in the city,” smiling upon our simple companion. Naturally we two had looked at each other frequently during this tale, for it scarcely seemed possible that even a campesino from the utmost pampa could be so unsophisticated. Now, was it a question of the priest and this Dr. Martinez being confederates, or was the priest as simple as the other yokels?
“If you don’t mind another personal question,” said the Porteño, “do you know this Dr. Martinez?”
“Ah, no, but he has his name in the paper, in La Prensa.”
“My dear señor!” gasped the townsman. “Why, don’t you know that either I, who am no doctor, or this gentleman, whom I think I am right in saying is none either, can pay a newspaper sixty or eighty centavos to put in an announcement that we are doctors, or anything else? Why, my poor compatriot, a newspaper is merely a beast of burden that carries anything you put upon it.”
“But,” gasped the countryman, “don’t the editors know people before they put in their notices?”
“Poor simpleton,” murmured the Porteño. “Now, I must be getting on, for I have friends coming to see me, but I’ll tell you what I should do in your case. I should go to some of the largest and most respectable commercial houses here in the city and turn this matter over to them, taking their receipt and....”
“Ah, señores,” cried the countryman, almost in tears, “this is purely a matter between my father and his conscience. I would not have it become public under any circumstances; and besides, my poor father is so sick that I must take the evening train back to Bahía Blanca at all odds. And—excuse me, gentlemen, for mentioning it, but I have an infirmity—and where can I go and sit down for a few minutes? Here on the sidewalk?”
In Buenos Aires I became “office-boy” to the American consul general