“Very well,” we whispered, slipping rapidly through the open door, “tell him we are out.” And behind the wall we heard the message duly delivered.
But the Señor saw no reason in our being out why he should not make himself at home. He drew two chairs into the verandah, called for cigars and sherry, fanned himself with his dirty brown cotton pocket-handkerchief, and sat there patiently awaiting our return.
We did not forcibly eject that Señor. The fact is, memory began to be busily at work, and dim scenes of past times, happy days spent in our dear old distant native land were floating and flashing before our mental eye. Again we saw our neat little rooms at ⸺ College, Oxford, our omnipresent dun, Mr. Joye—what a name for a tailor!—comfortably ensconsed in the best arm-chair, with the best of our regalias in his mouth, and the best of our Port wine at his elbow, now warming his lean hands before the blazing coal fire—it was very near Christmas—now dreamily gazing at the ceiling, as if £ s. d. were likely to drop through its plaster.
And where were we?
Echo cannot answer, so we must.
Standing in the coal-hole—an aperture in the wall of our bedchamber—whence seated upon a mass of coke, we could distinctly discern through the interstices of the door, Mr. Joye enjoying himself as above described.
Years of toil and travel and trouble had invested that coal-hole with the roseate hue which loves to linger over old faces and old past times; so we went quietly to bed, sacrificing at the shrine of Mnemosyne the sherry and the cheroots served to us, and the kick-out deserved by the Señor Gaetano de Gama, son of the Collector of Ribandar, and a lineal descendent of the Gran Capitaõ.
CHAPTER III.
OLD GOA AS IT WAS.
“Señor,” said our cicerone, entering unannounced, at about ten A.M., “it is time for your Excellency to prepare for an interview with his Excellency the Governor-General of all the Indies; and if it meet with your approbation, we can see the library, and the celebrated statue of Alfonso de Albuquerque on our way to the palacio.”