ance together which I have found and
was practicing."

"He would have been delighted, I know. It's a great pity he didn't come
with me," I said quickly; "but," I could not help adding, with emphasis
on her words, "he is such an 'extraordinary creature,' you know."

"I see nothing extraordinary in his devotion to an aged relative,"
returned Miss Mannersley quietly as she turned away, "except that it
justifies my respect for his character."

I do not know why I did not relate this to him. Possibly I had given up
trying to understand them; perhaps I was beginning to have an idea that
he could take care of himself. But I was somewhat surprised a few days
later when, after asking me to go with him to a rodeo at his uncle's he
added composedly, "You will meet Mees Boston."

I stared, and but for his manner would have thought it part of his
extravagance. For the rodeo--a yearly chase of wild cattle for the
purpose of lassoing and branding them--was a rather brutal affair,
and purely a man's function; it was also a family affair--a property
stock-taking of the great Spanish cattle-owners--and strangers,
particularly Americans, found it difficult to gain access to its
mysteries and the fiesta that followed.

"But how did she get an invitation?" I asked. "You did not dare to
ask--" I began.

"My friend," said Enriquez, with a singular deliberation, "the great and
respectable Boston herself, and her serene, venerable oncle, and other
Boston magnificos, have of a truth done me the inexpressible honor to
solicit of my degraded, papistical oncle that she shall come--that she
shall of her own superior eye behold the barbaric customs of our race."

His tone and manner were so peculiar that I stepped quickly before him,
laid my hands on his shoulders, and looked down into his face. But the
actual devil which I now for the first time saw in his eyes went out
of them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected languishment in his
chair. "I shall be there, friend Pancho," he said, with a preposterous
gasp. "I shall nerve my arm to lasso the bull, and tumble him before her
at her feet. I shall throw the 'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred
spot. I shall pluck for her the buried chicken at full speed from the
ground, and present it to her. You shall see it, friend Pancho. I shall
be there."

He was as good as his word. When Don Pedro Amador, his uncle, installed
Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised platform in the l