'No one can be traced,' said Peter.
'This affair of the child in Rosario is probably a mare's nest,' said Mr. Purvis in his hopeless way, as he closed his pocket-book and put a strap round it.
'Well, at least find out all you can about him,' said Peter, as Hopwood appeared with coffee, and Ross and Toffy joined them and sat down under the paraiso trees. There had been some heavy work on the estancia that morning, followed by a lazy afternoon.
'Can you tell me, Purvis,' said Toffy, breaking off an earnest conversation with Ross, 'why there should be such an enormous difficulty about getting a boiled shirt to wear? I suppose it really does cleanse one's linen to bang it with a stone in the river, but the appearance of greyness makes one doubtful.'
'You and Peter are both so beastly civilized!' said Ross, in a flannel shirt with baggy breeches and long boots. 'You don't even like killing cattle, and the way Hopwood polishes your boots makes them look much more fitted for St. James's Street than for the camp.'
'You ought to make friends with Juan Lara's wife,' said Purvis. 'She often washes Dick's little things for him, and does it very nicely.'
'I believe that Lara, on purely economical grounds, wears our shirts a week or two before he hands them over to his wife to wash,' said Ross, laughing.
'Ross,' said Peter, 'employs the gaucho's plan, and wears three shirts, and when the top one gets dirty he discloses the next one to view.'
'Remember, little man,' said Ross, stretching out a huge foot towards Peter's recumbent figure on the deck-chair, 'I 'm a head and shoulders taller than you are.'
'I 'm sure Mr. Ogilvie's remark was only in fun,' interposed Purvis. He rose and went to summon his boy to come and have coffee, and the three men left behind under the trees watched him disappearing into the house.