-day I found such a bored old bear dancing for
a bored crowd. I've never seen anything quite so tired and patient as
his eyes. His little old master was half asleep but he whacked his
tambourine and whined his mournful song without a pause. I left Lupe
and the C.E. and went out and patted the bear and asked the man (I am
as handy as that with my Spanish!) how much he earned in a day. Less
than fifteen cents in our money! Well, I asked him if I could buy the
bear a week's vacation if I paid him three weeks' earnings in
advance. He accepted thankfully and I believe he will keep his word,
being just as bored as the bear. The old beast came down on his four
feet with a gusty sigh and they padded peacefully away. The crowd
thought me mildly mad and the C.E. was a little annoyed with me. He
said he would gladly have attended to it for me if I had asked him.
I answered him very impertinently--something Lupe had taught
me--"_Cuando tu vas, ya yo vengo!_" which means in crude English,
"By the time you get started I'll be on the way back!"

I purr with pleasure when I think of the bear!

JANE.

P.S. One hopes it isn't a habit with him ... being a little
annoyed....

_Cordoba._

Sally, dear, this isn't a comic opera country at all, but a land of
grim melodrama; stark tragedy.

We're here in the prettiest city, on the edge of the _tierra
caliente_, but it's been a horrid day. It started wrong. An
unsavory but beautiful cherub of eight or so, smoking a cigarette,
tried to sell me a baby lizard. You remember how I've always loved
lizards, but I couldn't take it on a day's sight-seeing so I gave him
a copper and refused. He said in liquid Spanish, "So, Your Grace will
not buy my little lizard? Very well! Behold!"--and before my
horrified eyes he held it to his cigarette and burned it to death
before I could jump out of the machine and get to him. I suppose I'm
tired out with all this rushing about, for I just went to pieces
over it, and when Lupe said sympathetically, "Oh, deed you _want_
it?" it made me turn on her. I made the rest go on the drive without
me and I sat down in the Plaza alone to think things over. There was
a little old fountain with a gurgling drip, and I rested in the
ragged shade of the banana trees and heard two hours tinkled from
the crumbling, creamy-col