Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/98

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78
OFFICIAL VISIT
[CH. VI.

large silver salvers, filled with various kinds of sweetmeats, disposed in fantastic shapes. It was a present, they said, from a lady to me. I had no difficulty in resolving from whom this mark of polite attention came: it was the present of the amiable Doña Gertrudis, who, at times, sent me also other dainties to satisfy for, what, I have no doubt, she felt a breach of hospitality on her part,—her not having prevailed upon me to take up my abode in her house.

I must now introduce my readers to Don Simon B—o, a dependiente or managing man of the establishment of the family to which I was consigned at Guatemala. He was about five feet six in height, dark complexion, black eyes and hair, with hollow cheeks and of slender stature. His employment was to make sales of the indigo and other articles produced on the family estate, also to purchase wearing apparel and other European goods at the capital; disposing of them either wholesale at the warehouse at Sonsonate, or retailing them,