“Som muttin,” replied the girl, with a pursing of the little mouth that indicated a tendency to laugh.
“It is not mutton. It’s beef, I think.”
“Well, bee-eef very naice—an’ som’ gravvie too, plee-ese.”
She went off at this point into a rippling laugh, which, being infectious in its nature, also set her companion off, but the entrance of the landlord checked them both. He sat down at a small table near to them, and, being joined by a friend, called for a bottle of wine.
“Hotter than ever,” he remarked to Lawrence.
“Yes, very sultry indeed.”
“Shouldn’t wonder if we was to have a sharpish touch or two to-night.”
To which his friend, who was also an American if not an Englishman, and appeared to be sceptical in his nature, replied, “Gammon!”
This led to a conversation between the two which is not worthy of record, as it was chiefly speculative in regard to earthquakes in general, and tailed off into guesses as to social convulsions present, past or pending. One remark they made, however, which attracted the attention of our hero, and made him wish to hear more. It had reference to some desperate character whose name he failed to catch, but who was said to be in the neighbourhood again, “trying to raise men to join his band of robbers,” the landlord supposed, to which the landlord’s friend replied with emphasis that he had come to the right place, for, as far as his experience went, San Ambrosio was swarming with men that seemed fit for anything—from “pitch-and-toss to manslaughter.”
Not wishing, apparently, to hear anything more about such disagreeable characters and subjects, Manuela rose at the conclusion of the meal and retired to her apartment, while Lawrence continued to sip his coffee in a balcony which overlooked the vineyard behind the hotel.