g and laughter, or by that frivolous flirtation which,
in others, he had always regarded as commonplace and vulgar.

Howbeit, at the end of two weeks he found himself regularly installed
in the Hacienda de los Osos. His little household, re-enforced by
his cousin Cecily and three peons picked up at Los Pinos, bore
their transplantation with a singular equanimity that seemed to him
unaccountable. Then occurred one of those revelations of character with
which Nature is always ready to trip up merely human judgment. Aunt
Viney, an unrelenting widow of calm but unshaken Dutch prejudices,
high but narrow in religious belief, merged without a murmur into the
position of chatelaine of this unconventional, half-Latin household.
Accepting the situation without exaltation or criticism, placid but
unresponsive amidst the youthful enthusiasm of Dick and Cecily over
each quaint detail, her influence was, nevertheless, felt throughout
the lingering length and shadowy breadth of the strange old house. The
Indian and Mexican servants, at first awed by her practical superiority,
succumbed to her half-humorous toleration of their incapacity, and
became her devoted slaves. Dick was astonished, and even Cecily was
confounded. "Do you know," she said confidentially to her cousin,
"that when that brown Conchita thought to please Aunty by wearing white
stockings instead of going round as usual with her cinnamon-colored
bare feet in yellow slippers--which I was afraid would be enough to send
Aunty into conniption fits--she actually told her, very quietly, to take
them off, and dress according to her habits and her station? And you
remember that in her big, square bedroom there is a praying-stool and
a ghastly crucifix, at least three feet long, in ivory and black,
quite too human for anything? Well, when I offered to put them in the
corridor, she said I 'needn't trouble'; that really she hadn't noticed
them, and they would do very well where they were. You'd think she had
been accustomed to this sort of thing all her life. It's just too sweet
of her, any way, even if she's shamming. And if she is, she just does
it to the life too, and could give those Spanish women points. Why, she
rode en pillion on Manuel's mule, behind him, holding on by his
sash, across to the corral yesterday; and you should have seen Manuel
absolutely scrape the ground before her with his sombrero when he let
her down." Indeed, her tall, erect figure in black lustreless s