It was lucky for me that on this
occasion I condescended to take it. "I will, at all events, call for
a drink of water and see what the people are like," I thought, and in
a few minutes I was standing at the gate, apparently an object of great
interest to half a dozen children ranging from two to thirteen years
old, all staring at me with wide-open eyes. They had dirty faces, the
smallest one dirty legs also, for he or she wore nothing but a small
shirt. The next in size had a shirt supplemented with a trousers-like
garment reaching to the knees; and so on, progressively, up to the
biggest boy, who wore the cast-off parental toggery, and so, instead
of having too little on, was, in a sense, overdressed. I asked this
youngster for a can of water to quench my thirst and a stick of fire
to light my cigar. He ran into the kitchen, or living-room, and by and
by came out again without either water or fire. "_Papita_ wishes
you to come in to drink _mate_," said he.
Then I dismounted, and, with the careless air of a blameless,
non-political person, strode into the spacious kitchen, where an immense
cauldron of fat was boiling over a big fire on the hearth; while beside
it, ladle in hand, sat a perspiring, greasy-looking woman of about
thirty. She was engaged in skimming the fat and throwing the scum on
the fire, which made it blaze with a furious joy and loudly cry out
in a crackling voice for more; and from head to feet she was literally
bathed in grease--certainly the most greasy individual I had ever seen.
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