He barked his short laugh and led me back to the house, where the arrangements for breakfast were now completed. The children took their meal in the kitchen, we had ours in a large, cool room adjoining it. There was a small table laid with a spotless white cloth, and real crockery plates and real knives and forks. There were also real glass tumblers, bottles of Spanish wine, and snow-white pan creollo. Evidently my hostess had made good use of her time. She came in immediately after we were seated, and I scarcely recognized her; for she was not only clean now, but good-looking as well, with that rich olive colour on her oval face, her black hair well arranged, and her dark eyes full of tender, loving light. She was now wearing a white merino dress with a quaint maroon-coloured pattern on it, and a white silk kerchief fastened with a gold brooch at her neck. It was pleasant to look at her, and, noticing my admiring glances, she blushed when she sat down, then laughed. The breakfast was excellent. Roast mutton to begin, then a dish of chickens stewed with rice, nicely flavoured and coloured with red Spanish pimenton. A fowl roasted or boiled, as we eat them in England, is wasted, compared with this delicious guiso de potto which one gets in any rancho in the Banda Orient. After the meats we sat for an hour cracking walnuts, sipping wine, smoking cigarettes, and telling amusing stories; and I doubt whether there were three happier people in all Uruguay that morning than the un-Scotched Scotchman, John Carrickfergus, his un-ding-donging native wife, and their guest, who had shot his man on the previous evening.
After breakfast I spread my poncho on the dry grass under a tree to sleep the siesta. My slumbers lasted a long time, and on waking I was surprised to find my host and hostess seated on the grass near me, he busy ornamenting his surcingle, she with the maté-cup in her hand and a kettle of hot water beside her. She was drying her eyes, I fancied, when I opened mine.
“Awake at last!” cried Don Juan pleasantly. “Come and drink maté. Wife just been crying, you see.”
She made a sign for him to hold his peace.
“Why not speak of it, Candelaria?” he said. “Where is the harm? You see, my wife thinks you have been in the wars—a Santa Coloma man running away to save his throat.”
“How does she make that out?” I asked in some confusion and very much surprised.
“How! Don't you know women? You said nothing about where you had been—prudence. That was one thing. Looked confused when we talked of the revolution—not a word to say about it. More evidence. Your poncho, lying there, shows two big cuts in it. 'Torn by thorns,' said I. 'Sword-cuts,' said she. We were arguing about it when you woke.”
“She guessed rightly,” I said, “and I am ashamed of myself for not telling you before. But why should your wife cry?”
“Woman like—woman like,” he answered, waving his hand. “Always ready to cry over the beaten one—that is the only politics they know.”
“Did I not say that woman is an angel from heaven,” I returned; then, taking her hand, I kissed it. “This is the first time I have kissed a married woman's hand, but the husband of such a wife will know better than to be jealous.”