wn to mine.

"Anything clever or graceful that occurs to you in French, you may say
to Madame Steele if you like, but you must speak English to me.
There's the gong for dinner."

At the table I am placed at the Captain's right. My friends had given
him special charges about me, and in a rough, kind-hearted way he
shows me every attention. On my right sits a Guatemalan, Senor Jose
Noma, then Mrs. Steele, and beside her, Baron de Bach. Opposite is an
army officer, Captain Ball, and his wife, and several Mexicans. I feel
a little unsteady and disinclined to eat, but the Baron sends me, by
the Chinese waiter, a glass of champagne frappe--and my courage and
interest in life return.

The Guatemalan proves to be a rich coffee planter exiled from home for
political reasons, and returning now after an absence of several years
to make his peace with the government. Senor Jose Noma is a clever,
entertaining person, and one thing about him I am not likely to
forget. He ate more chili-peppers, more mustard, more pickled
chow-chow, more curry, and more cayenne pepper than I would have
believed any mortal could dispose of and live.

I used to wonder whether his diet had any share in making him such a
flaming firebrand of rebellion that he must needs be sent North to
cool off! I am convinced, at least, that had he not drunk a generous
amount of wine he must inevitably have been scorched to a cinder. He
was always passing me his favourite dainties and urging upon me
garlic, and some particularly awful and populous cheese. I was
especially impressed in this, my first intercourse with a
Spanish-speaking race, by their invincible habit of paying
compliments, and yet their inability to convince even an
unsophisticated person like myself that they meant one word they were
saying.

The afternoon I devote to Mrs. Steele in our airy, pleasant stateroom.
She is not exactly ill, but wants to lie down and to be read to. So we
begin the "Conquest of Mexico." Towards evening I emerge from
retirement, and Baron de Bach drops from somewhere at my side.

"Gude-efening, Mademoiselle. You haf us long deserted."

I explain that my friend is not well.

"But she vill make you ill vhen you stay inside. I vill tell her."

"In French it may be safe, but don't attempt it in English."

He looks mystified.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle, you look efer as if you laugh at me, but I am
not sure."

"No, it's only my natural buoyancy that gives me a smiling as