Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
José, who are a genuine old Roman—vir Romanus—eloquent and inflexible."
Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced, young Scarfe had been eager to express his simple feelings. In a loud and youthful tone he hoped that this Montero was going to be licked once for all and done with. There was no saying what would happen to the railway if the revolution got the upperhand. Perhaps it would have to be abandoned. It would not be the first railway gone to pot in Costaguuna. "You know, it's one of their so-called national things," he ran on, wrinkling up his nose as if the word had a suspicious flavor to his profound experience of South American affairs. And, of course, he chatted with animation, it had been such an immense piece of luck for him at his age to get appointed on the staff "of a big thing like that—don't you know." It would give him the pull over a lot of chaps all through life, he asserted. "Therefore—down with Montero, Mrs. Gould." His artless grin disappeared slowly before the unanimous gravity of the faces turned upon him from the carriage; only that "old chap," Don José, presenting a motionless, waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not know the Avellanos very well. They did not give balls, and Antonia never appeared at a ground-floor window, as some other young ladies used to do, attended by elder women, to chat with the caballeros on horseback in the Calle. The stares of these Creoles did not matter much; but what on earth had come to Mrs. Gould? She said. "Go on, Ignacio," and gave him a slow inclination of the head. He heard a short laugh from that round-faced, Frenchi-
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