, a gilded native youth, to present him.

The young men had named Pasa "_La Santita Naranjadita_."
_Naranjadita_ is a Spanish word for a certain colour that you must go
to more trouble to describe in English. By saying "The little saint,
tinted the most beautiful-delicate-slightly-orange-golden," you will
approximate the description of Madama Ortiz's daughter.

La Madama Ortiz sold rum in addition to other liquors. Now, you must
know that the rum expiates whatever opprobrium attends upon the other
commodities. For rum-making, mind you, is a government monopoly;
and to keep a government dispensary assures respectability if not
preeminence. Moreover, the saddest of precisians could find no fault
with the conduct of the shop. Customers drank there in the lowest of
spirits and fearsomely, as in the shadow of the dead; for Madama's
ancient and vaunted lineage counteracted even the rum's behest to be
merry. For, was she not of the Iglesias, who landed with Pizarro? And
had not her deceased husband been _comisionado de caminos y puentes_
for the district?

In the evenings Pasa sat by the window in the room next to the one
where they drank, and strummed dreamily upon her guitar. And then,
by twos and threes, would come visiting young caballeros and occupy
the prim line of chairs set against the wall of this room. They were
there to besiege the heart of "_La Santita_." Their method (which is
not proof against intelligent competition) consisted of expanding the
chest, looking valorous, and consuming a gross or two of cigarettes.
Even saints delicately oranged prefer to be wooed differently.

Dona Pasa would tide over the vast chasms of nicotinized silence
with music from her guitar, while she wondered if the romances she
had read about gallant and more--more contiguous cavaliers were all
lies. At somewhat regular intervals Madama would glide in from the
dispensary with a sort of drought-suggesting gleam in her eye, and
there would be a rustling of stiffly-starched white trousers as one
of the caballeros would propose an adjournment to the bar.

That Dicky Maloney would, sooner or later, explore this field was a
thing to be foreseen. There were few doors in Coralio into which his
red head had not been poked.

In an incredibly short space of time after his first sight of her
he was there, seated close beside her rocking chair. There were no
back-against-the-wall poses in Dicky's theory of wooing. His plan of
subjection was a