elancholy jest, I may call the reception-room, or the studio, by a rope stretched across, from which were suspended a blanket, a travelling shawl, and a voluminous, and evidently costly, Spanish cloak. Protruding beyond the edge of this extemporaneous screen, I could see the footposts of an iron bedstead, and the end of a large _poncho_, which served for a counterpane.
"Will you amuse yourself with this sketch-book, please," said the pretty lad, "till my father comes?"
"With pleasure, my boy,--if you are sure your father will not object."
"Oh, no, indeed, Sir! My father has told me I must always entertain any gentlemen who may call when he is out,--that is, if he is to return soon; and any one may look at this book;--it is only his portfolio, in which he sketches whatever new or pretty things we see on our travels; but there are some very nice pictures in it,--landscapes, and houses, and people."
"Have you travelled much, then?"
"Oh, yes! we have been travelling ever since I can remember; we have been far, and seen a great many strange sights, and some such queer people!--There! that is our shepherd in Australia; isn't he funny? his name was Dirk. I tied that blue ribbon round his straw hat, that seems big enough for an umbrella. He looks as if he were laughing, doesn't he? That's because I was there when my father sketched him; and he made such droll faces, with his brown skin and his great grizzly moustaches, when father told him he must make up a pleasant expression, that it set me laughing,--for my father said he looked like a Cape lion making love; and then Dirk would laugh too, and spoil his pleasant expression; and father would scold; and it was so funny! I loved Dirk very much, he was so good to me; he gave me a tame kangaroo, and a black swan, and taught me to throw the boomerang; and once, when he went to Sydney, he spent ever so much money to buy me a silver bell for Lipse, my yellow lamb. I wonder if Dirk is living yet? Do you think he is dead, Sir? I should be very much grieved, if he were; for I promised I would come back to see him when I am a man."
--"_That_ is Dolores,--dear old Dolores! Isn't she fat?"
"Yes, and good, too, I should think, from the kind face she has. Who was Dolores?"
"Ah! you never saw Dolores, did you? And you never heard her sing. She was my Chilena nurse in Valparaiso; and she had a mother--oh, so very old!--who lived in Santiago. We went once to see her; the other Santiago--that was Dolores's son--drove us there in the _veloche_. Wasn't it curious, his name should be the same as the city's? But he was a bad boy, Santiago,--so mischievous! such a scamp! Father had to whip him many times; and once the _vigilantes_ took him up, and would have put him in the chain-gang, for cutting an American sailor with a knife, in the Calle de San Francisco, if father had not paid five ounces, and become security for his good behavior. But he ran away, after all, and went as a common sailor in a nasty guano ship. Dolores cried very much, and it was long before she would sing for me again. Oh, she did know such delightful songs!--_Mi Niña_, and _Yo tengo Ojos Negros_, and
"'No quiero, no quiero casarme;
Es mejor, es mejor soltera!'"
And the delightful little fellow merrily piped the whole of that "song of pleasant glee," one of the most melodious and sauciest bits of lyric coquetry to be found in Spanish.
"Ah," said he, "but I cannot sing it half so well as Dolores. She had a beautiful guitar, with a blue ribbon, that her sweetheart gave her before I was born, when she was young and very pretty;--he brought it all the way from Acapulco."
--"And _that_ pretty girl is Juanita; she sold pine-apples and grapes in the Almendral, and every night she would go with her guitar--it was a very nice one, but did not cost near so
