"You no, don't be frightened, you are not one of the bad ones. Always we will be friends."
"Mind you remember that, little rascal," said Marcelino, patting him on the cheek.
"If he ever forgets it you will remind him," said Gordon: then raising the boy to his shoulder he danced with him up and down the long room, the child shouting and tossing his arms about with delight.
Doña Josefina, the boy's mother, had meanwhile sunk back again upon her cushions, following him with her eyes, and seemed to care little whether Marcelino resumed the conversation or not, but there were other ladies there younger than she, who had listened eagerly to what Marcelino had told them of the English invasion, and wished to hear more. The twilight deepened into darkness, the mate-pot ceased its rounds amongst them, lamps were lighted, fresh faces were seen in the room, and others who had been there disappeared, but still Marcelino talked on in glowing, enthusiastic language of the changes during the last sixteen months in the city of Buenos Aires, and of the greater changes which he foresaw in the future. He had often talked thus before among men of his own age and of his own class, and he had seen weariness in their faces, and scorn curling on their lips; he had talked thus to men his seniors in age, and had been treated as a visionary, or had been silenced by a stern rebuke; but here he found an audience who hung upon his words, who sympathised in his hopes, and saw no folly in his wildest aspirations; it was an audience of women, of women learned in needlework and household lore, skilled in the art of dressing themselves and making the most of the natural graces to which they were born, of beautiful women who could barely write their own names, who knew little of the world in which they lived, and nothing of the world which had passed away. These women were incapable of following out the abstruse reasonings by which at times he sought to elucidate his argument, the illustrations he drew from history conveyed no lesson to their minds, his logic was thrown away upon them, yet they understood him and sympathised with him, and learned from him to believe that their country would one day be a great nation, governed by its own laws, and free from all foreign control.
Several of them joined in conversation with him, asking him questions, making shrewd observations of their own and deductions from his arguments, some of which were very wide of the conclusion to which he wished to point. One of them, a young girl, plainly dressed, and of very plain features, with a sallow complexion and brown hair, asked him no questions, and spoke to him no word. Listening to him, she had crept nearer till she leaned upon Doña Josefina, resting her folded hands upon her shoulder, and her chin upon them, her thin lips pressed tightly together, and her whole life seemingly concentrated in her large grey eyes.
Marcelino felt her gaze and moved uneasily on his chair, but he continued the conversation without pause till one of his audience, drawing herself up and pressing her hands together, exclaimed:
"Look! look at Malena!"
"What have you, Niña?" said Doña Josefina.
Malena, raising herself from her leaning posture, heaved a deep sigh, and looked round her in a bewildered sort of manner as though she had just awakened from a dream.