een saying,
Manuela. Have you?"

"Si, senhor, some," was the reply, as she dropped her eyes with an
embarrassed look and blushed so as to make her pretty brown face look
alarmingly red.

Endeavouring to convey the same ideas through the medium of Spanish,
Lawrence made such a bungle of it that Manuela, instead of expressing
sympathy, began to struggle so obviously with her feelings that the poor
Englishman gave up the attempt, and good-naturedly joined his companion
in a little burst of laughter. They were in the midst of this when the
door opened and Quashy entered.

"You 'pears to be jolly," observed the genial negro, with every wrinkle
of his black visage ready to join in sympathetically, "was de jok a
desprit good un?"

"Not very desperate, Quashy," said Lawrence, "it was only my bad Spanish
which made Manuela laugh. If you had been here to interpret we might
have got on better with our philosophical discourse."

"O massa!" returned the black--solemn remonstrance, both in manner and
tone, putting to sudden flight the beaming look of sympathy--"don't
speak of me 'terpretin' Spinich. Nebber could take kindly to dat stuff.
Ob course I kin talk wid de peons an' de gauchos, whose conv'sation am
mostly 'bout grub, an' hosses, an' cattle, an' dollars, an' murder, but
when I tries to go in for flosuffy, an' sitch like, I breaks down
altogidder."

At this point the Indian girl's tendency to laugh increased, but whether
because of fresh views of the absurdity of what had passed, or because
of some faint perception of the negro's meaning, Lawrence had no power
to decide.

"I should have thought, Quashy," he said, with a return of his wonted
gravity, "that a man of a thoughtful and contemplative turn of mind like
you would have acquired the power of expressing almost any idea in
Spanish by this time."

"T'ank you for de compl'ment, massa," replied Quashy, "but I not so
clebber as you t'ink. Der am some tings in flosuffy dat beats me. When
I tries to putt 'em afore oder peepil in Spinich, I somehow gits de
brain-pan into sitch a conglomeration ob fumbustication dat I not able
to see quite clar what I mean myself--dough, ob course, I knows dat I'm
right."

"Indeed!"

"Yis; but de great consolation I has is dat de peepil I'm talkin' to
don't onderstand me a mossel better nor myself; an', ob course, as
noting in de wurl could show dem dey was wrong, it don't much matter."

"That is good philosophy, at all even