"Then you will be relieved to hear, possibly, that five hundred reis is no more than half a dollar."
"The simplicity of them!" cried Angus Jones. "Do you know, it is a relief. And yet, it scarce betters us, for he who lacks the penny also lacks the pound.
"However, we will concede the point of departure, temporarily. Remains the populace, the great and generous heart that animates the bosom of the native race. What is a steamship agent?... Man, he also is a stranger living on their simplicity."
We turned into a maze of cobbled ways behind the market, passing between rows of shuttered shops. It was the offseason, and in this midday hour the city dozed.
"Here should be the local version of a delicatessen," said Angus Jones before the store of Joao Gomez. We entered where Joao sat intrenched amid sugar loaves and tinned goods and silvered sausages, beneath a flock of lard balloons no rounder nor shinier than his face.
"Good morning," said Angus Jones. "I hope you are quite well. I hope all your family are quite well. Behold in me, sir, a learned medico recently come from London with healing for these islands. Any and all ills to which flesh is heir are banished by a certain marvelous drug of which I am the happy possessor. Have you boils, fever, gangrene, distemper? Do you sneeze, palpitate, or feel pain in sinciput or occiput, tibia, diaphragm or appendix? Are you subject to measles, dropsy, pyromania, or falling arch?"
Joao Gomez had opened one eye far enough to envisage the eloquent intruder and to locate his broom.
"Va-se'mbora!" quoth Joao, and we were eager so to do, for the broom was the ancient kind made of switches, and it stung....
"Note the error in style," said Angus Jones with a slight frown. "My context is too sauced and savored. I must mend it. A crisper brevity serves our need with such simple people."