“I made one hundred and forty cases,” said I. “But are they all dollars?”
And bursting into a laugh, I left him to chew upon that thought, and returned to the cabin.
I bowed to the lady, and took the chair I usually occupied at the table. She rose, came to my side with a bottle of claret, poured some into a glass, and made as if she would wait upon me. I was not a little confounded. Her handsome presence, her fine person embarrassed me. My career had but poorly qualified me for an easy address in conversing with ladies. Much of my life had been spent upon the ocean, in the society of some of the roughest of my own calling. For months at a stretch I had never set eyes on a woman, and when I was ashore, whether in foreign parts or in my own country, the girls I fell in with were not of a sort to teach me to know exactly what to do when I chanced upon the company of a Señorita Aurora.
I did the best I could with the imperfect and monkey-like speech of the hands and shoulders to induce her to desist from waiting upon me and return to her chair; and in this I was helped by the arrival of Jimmy, to whom I gave several unnecessary orders, merely to emphasize to the lady the desire. I gesticulated that she should sit, and cease to do me more honor than I had impudence to support.
Presently she pointed to the bottle of claret—there stood but one bottle on the table—and looked at me in silence, but with an expression of such eloquence as Jimmy himself could not have missed the meaning of.
“Wine,” said I.
“Vine,” she repeated; and then to herself, “Vino—vine; vino—vine.”
She next pointed to the piece of salt beef.
“Meat,” said I.
“Meat—carne; meat—carne,” she repeated.