“Well,” said Señorita Felicia, doubtfully, “there isn’t much, but I suppose there is some almost ready to come.”
“I’m tired of waiting for it,” replied Ned, “and if there isn’t to be any war news, I wish I had some books!”
The thought that was in Ned Crawford’s mind had broken out suddenly, as he sat at the dinner-table of Señora Mercedes Paez, at the end of those first days after his arrival in the city of Mexico. There were a number of persons at the table, and at the head of it was Señora Paez herself. She was shorter and stouter, but she was every ounce as stately and imposing as was even Señora Tassara. In front of her sat one affair which had, from the beginning of his visit in that house, made him feel more at home than he might otherwise have done. He had become used to it, and it seemed like an old friend. That Seville coffee-urn had ornamented the table in the house at Vera Cruz, his first refuge after he came ashore out of the destructive norther. It had winked at him from a similar post of honor in the country-house out in Puebla, and Señora Tassara had affectionately brought it with her to the residence of her city cousin. She had said that she thought it would be safer here, even if the city should be captured by those terrible robbers, the Americans. They could not be intending to steal and melt up all the old silver in Mexico.
“Why, Señor Carfora!” exclaimed Señorita Felicia, indignantly. “Did you not know? Aunt Paez has piles and piles of books. They are up in the library. If you wish to read them, she will let you go there. I had forgotten that you know how to read. He may do it, may he not, Aunt Mercedes?”
“Of course he may,” replied the señora, “but it is a curious idea for a boy of his age.”
“Oh, thank you!” exclaimed Ned. “But what I’d like to have are some books that tell about old Mexico and about the city of Tenochtitlan, that stood here before the Spaniards came. I’ve been all around everywhere. I’ve seen the swamps and the lakes and the walls and forts and everything. The great cathedral—”
“That,” interposed Señora Tassara, “stands on the very spot where an old temple of the Aztec war-god stood. There were altars in it, where they used to kill and burn hundreds and thousands of human sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli, and there were altars to other gods.”
“I can’t exactly speak that name,” said Ned, “but I want to know all about him and the sacrifices. I want to learn, too, just how Cortes and his men took the old city. I suppose that when the Americans come, it will be a different kind of fight—more cannon.”
“They won’t get here at all,” quietly remarked a military-looking old gentleman sitting near the other end of the table. “It is a long road from the Rio Grande, and President Paredes is to march, in a few days, to crush our enemies with an army of twenty thousand men. They have not so much as taken Monterey yet. You are right, though. If they should ever get here, they will find the city harder to take than Cortes did. They will all die before the walls.”
He spoke with a great deal of patriotic enthusiasm, and Ned knew that it was his turn to keep still, for the old gentleman had no idea that he was talking to a wicked young gringo. Señora Paez, however, calmly replied: