y as we came along, but they've gone out of my head. Do
you think she ever read Shakespeare?"

"Not a chance of it," said Owen.

Here the Senorita laughingly appealed to Frank to know what my
grandfather was saying about her.

"Ah," quoth my grandfather, quoting his friend Shakespeare--

"'I understand thy _looks_--the pretty Spanish
Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens
I am _not_ perfect in----'

"She's an extremely agreeable woman, Frank, I'll be sworn, if one only
understood her," quoth my grandfather, casting on her a glance full of
gallantry.

The Ensign was not so entirely occupied in prosecuting his own
love affair as to be insensible to the facilities afforded him for
amusing himself at the Major's expense. Accordingly, he made a
speech in Spanish to Carlota, purporting to be a faithful translation
of my grandfather's, but teeming, in fact, with the most romantic
expressions of chivalrous admiration, as was apparent from the
frequent recurrence of the words "ojos" (eyes), "corazon" (heart),
and the like amatory currency.

"There, Major," said the interpreter, as he finished; "I've told her
what you said of her."

The Major endorsed the compliments by laying his hand upon his heart,
and bowing with a tender air. Whereupon Carlota, laughing, and
blushing a deeper red, made her acknowledgments.

"She says," quoth Frank, "that she knew the English before to be a
gallant nation; but that if all the caballeros (that's gentlemen) of
that favoured race are equal to the present specimen, her own
countrymen must be thrown entirely into the shade."

"Delightful!" cried my grandfather; but it is doubtful whether this
expression of pleasure was called forth by the sentiments attributed
to the Senorita, or by the crisp succulent tenderness of a mouthful of
sucking-pig which was at that moment spreading itself over his palate.

Following up his idea, the mischievous Ensign continued to diversify
the graver pursuit of prosecuting his own suit with Juana, by
impressing Carlota and the Major with the idea that each was
disposed to think favourably of the other. In this he was tolerably
successful--the speeches he made to Carlota, supposed to originate
with my grandfather, had a very genuine warmth about them, being, in
fact, very often identical with those he had just been making, under
immediate inspiration, to his own divinity; while as for the Major, it
would have been an insult to