k with us.

The harness-maker lifted his head alertly. "Where, in America?" and we
answered for ourselves, "From New York."

Then the harness-maker rose and went to an inner doorway and called
through it something that brought out a comely, motherly woman as alert
as himself. She verified our statement for herself, and having paved
the way firmly for her next question she asked, "Do you know the Escuela
Mann?"

As well as our surprise would let us, we said that we knew the Mann
School, both where and what it was.

She waited with a sort of rapturous patience before saying, "My son, our
eldest son, was educated at the Escuela Mann, to be a teacher, and now
he is a professor in the Commercial College in Puerto Rico."

If our joint interest in this did not satisfy her expectation I for my
part can never forgive myself; certainly I tried to put as much passion
into my interest as I could, when she added that his education at the
Escuela Mann was without cost to him. By this time, in fact, I was so
proud of the Escuela Mann that I could not forbear proclaiming that a
member of my own family, no less than the father of the grandson for
whose potential donkey I was buying that headstall, was one of the
architects of the Escuela Mann building.

She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter,
a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of
the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English
Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his
dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with
two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not
only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did
not admire these enough, again I cannot forgive myself, but she
seemed satisfied with what I did, and she talked on about him, not too
loquaciously, but lovingly and lovably as a mother should, and proudly
as the mother of such a boy should, though without vainglory; I have
forgotten to say that she had a certain distinction of face, and was
appropriately dressed in black. By this time we felt that a head-stall
for such a donkey as I was going to buy was not enough to get of such
people, and I added a piece of embroidered leather such as goes in Spain
on the front of a donkey's saddle; if we could not use it so, in final
defect of the donkey, we could put it on a veranda chair. The saddler
gav