ter
native custom, being flush with the gutter. In this narrow space my
servants had started a game of ball. They had the diamond all marked
out, and one player on each base. There was Ceferiana, the cook,
a maid of seventeen, with her hair twisted into a Sappho knot at the
back with one wisp hanging out like a horse's tail. Her petticoat was
wrapped tightly around her slim body and its back fulness tucked in at
the waist. She was barefooted, and her toes, wide apart as they always
are when shoes have never been worn, worked with excitement. There was
Manuel, who skated the floors, an anaemic youth of fifteen or sixteen,
dressed in a pair of dirty white underdrawers with the ankle strings
dragging, and in an orange and black knit undershirt. There was
Rosario, the little maid who waited on me and went to school. She was
third base and umpire. A neighbor's boy, about eight years old, was
first base. Manuel was second base and pitcher combined. Ceferiana
was at the bat, while behind her her youngest brother--he whose
engaging smile occupied so much of my attention at the funeral of
the lavandero aforementioned--was spread out in the attitude of a
professional catcher. His plump, rounded little legs were stretched
so far apart that he could with difficulty retain his balance. He
scowled, smacked his lips, and at intervals thumped the back of his
pudgy, clenched fist into the hollowed palm of the other hand with
the gesture of a man who wears the catcher's mitt. Had a professional
baseball team from the States ever caught sight of that baby, they
would have secured him as a mascot at any price.

The ball was one of those huge green oranges which the English call
pomeloes, about twice the size of an American grape-fruit. Being green,
and having a skin an inch thick; it withstood the resounding thwacks
of the bat quite remarkably. It was fortunate that the diamond was so
small, for it would have taken more strength than any of the players
possessed to send that plaything any distance. Catching it was only the
art of embracing. It had to be guided and hugged to the breast, for it
was too big to hold in the hands. The valorous catcher, in spite of his
fiercely professional air, invariably dodged it and then pursued it.

The bat was a board about eight inches wide, wrenched from the
lid of a Batoum oil case and roughly cut down at one end for a
handle. With the size of the ball, and the width of the bat, missing
was an impossi