"But as to saying anything on horseback, who could
do that?"
"Why not?"
"The question!" said he. "Have you not observed that when liquor is
drawn from a cask--wine, or bitter orange-juice to make orangeade, or
even rum, which is by nature white and clear--that it runs thick when
the cask is shaken? It is the same with us, senor; our brain is the
cask out of which we draw all the things we say."
"And the spigot--"
"That is so," he struck in, pleased with my ready intelligence; "the
mouth is the spigot."
"I should have thought the nose more like the spigot," I replied.
"No," he gravely returned. "You can make a loud noise with the nose
when you snore or blow it in a handkerchief; but it has no door of
communication with the brain. The things that are in the brain flow
out by the mouth."
"Very well," said I, getting impatient, "call the mouth spigot,
bung-hole, or what you like, and the nose merely an ornament on the
cask. The thing is this: Dona Demetria has entrusted you with some
liquor to pass on to me; now pass it, thick or clear."
"Not thick," he answered stubbornly.
"Very well; clear then," I shouted.
"To give it to you clear I must give it off and not on my horse, sitting
still and not moving."
Anxious to have it over without more beating about the bush, I reined
up my horse, jumped off, and sat down on the grass without another
word.
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