“What matter it, how she wur sittin’! Hain’t ye seed thet afore, ye greenhorn? It’s thur usooal way ’mong these hyur Mexikin sheemales. Ye’re more o’ a woman than she air, I guess; an twenty times more o’ a fool. Thet I’m sartint o’. I know her a leetle by sight, an somethin’ more by reeport. What hev fetched the critter hyur ain’t so difeequilt to comprehend; tho’ it may be to git it out o’ her, seein’ as she kin only talk thet thur Mexikin lingo; the which this chile can’t, nor wudn’t ef he kud.”
“Sowl, Misther Stump! yez be mistaken. She spakes English too. Don’t yez, misthress?”
“Little Inglees,” returned the Mexican, who up to this time had remained listening. “Inglees poco pocito.”
“O—ah!” exclaimed Zeb, slightly abashed at what he had been saying. “I beg your pardin, saynoritta. Ye kin habla a bit o’ Amerikin, kin ye? Moocho bono—so much the betterer. Ye’ll be able to tell me what ye mout be a wantin’ out hyur. Ye hain’t lost yur way, hev ye?”
“No, señor,” was the reply, after a pause. “In that case, ye know whar ye air?”
“Si, señor—si—yes, of Don Mauricio Zyerral, this the—house?”
“Thet air the name, near as a Mexikin mouth kin make it, I reck’n. ’Tain’t much o’ a house; but it air his’n. Preehaps ye want to see the master o’t?”
“O, señor—yees—that is for why I here am—por esta yo soy aqui.”
“Wal; I reck’n, thur kin be no objecshun to yur seein’ him. Yur intenshuns ain’t noways hostile to the young fellur, I kalklate. But thur ain’t much good in yur talkin’ to him now. He won’t know yo from a side o’ sole-leather.”
“He is ill? Has met with some misfortune? El güero has said so.”