"
"Why, then, do you not take a walk?" she said, with kind concern.
I said I would gladly do so, and thanked her for the permission; then
she immediately offered to accompany me. I protested very ungallantly
that I was a fast walker, and reminded her that the sun was excessively
hot, and I should also have liked to add that she was excessively fat.
She replied that it did not matter; so polite a person as myself would
know how to accommodate his pace to that of his companion. Unable to
shake her off, I started for my walk in a somewhat unamiable mood, the
stout lady resolutely trudging on at my side, perspiring abundantly.
Our path led us down to a little canada, or valley, where the ground
was moist and abounding with numerous pretty flowers and feathery
grasses, very refreshing to look at after leaving the parched yellow
ground about the estancia house.
"You seem to be very fond of flowers," observed my companion. "Let me
help you gather them. To whom will you give your nosegay when it is
made?"
"Senora," I replied, vexed at her trivial chatter, "I will give it to
the--" I had almost said to the devil, when a piercing scream she
uttered suddenly arrested the rude speech on my lips.
Her fright had been caused by a pretty little snake, about eighteen
inches long, which she had seen gliding away at her feet. And no wonder
it glided away from her with all the speed it was capable of, for how
gigantic and deformed a monster that fat woman must have seemed to it!
The terror of a timid little child at the sight of a hippopotamus,
robed in flowing bed-curtains and walking erect on its hind legs, would
perhaps be comparable to the panic possessing the shallow brain of the
poor speckled thing when that huge woman came striding over it.
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