The girl glanced at him, agreed to this, and continued peeling her orange with a knife and fork, in the Venezuelan fashion.
The drummer wanted strongly to follow this opening with something brisk and lively to compel her attention and interest, but his head seemed oddly empty. His embarrassment persisted and made him a little uncomfortable. He wondered why. It was irritating. Why didn't he tell her a joke, one of his parlor jokes? Strawbridge knew scores and scores of obscene jokes, and perhaps half a dozen parlor jokes which he kept for women. Now, to his discomfiture, he could not recall a single one of his parlor jokes. For some reason or other, he told himself, the señora crabbed his style.
She was a smallish woman with a rather slender, melancholy face, and her eyes had that slightly unfocused look which is characteristic of all pure-black eyes. Her eyebrows and lips were engraved in black and red against a colorless face. Her nun's bonnet and the white cloth that passed beneath it across her forehead concealed the least trace of hair. And Strawbridge speculated with a sort of apprehension whether or no she really had shaved her head nun fashion. If so, the Virgin had exacted a bitter price for her sister's recovery.
During these meditations, however, the salesman was not dumb. He automatically started one of those typically American conversations which consist in a long string of disconnected questions asked without any object whatever. Strawbridge himself regretted these questions. He had hoped to do something amusing and rather brilliant.
"Have you lived here long, señora?"
"About two years. I came here immediately after I was married to General Fombombo."
"Then you were not married here?"
"No, in Spain."
"Then you are a Spanish girl?"
"Yes, I lived in Barcelona."