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
gave it at so low a price that we perceived he must have tacitly abated
something from the visual demand, and when we did not try to beat him
down, his wife went again into that inner room and came out with an
iron-holder of scarlet flannel backed with canvas, and fringed with
magenta, and richly inwrought with a Moorish design, in white, yellow,
green, and purple. I say Moorish, because one must say something, but if
it was a pattern of her own invention the gift was the more precious
when she bestowed it on the sister of one of the architects of the
Escuela Mann. That led to more conversation about the Escuela Mann, and
about the graduate of it who was now a professor in Puerto Rico, and we
all grew such friends, and so proud of one another, and of the country
so wide open to the talents without cost to them, that when I asked her
if she would not sometime be going to America, her husband answered
almost fiercely in his determination, "I am going when I have learned
English!" and to prove that this was no idle boast, he pronounced some
words of our language at random, but very well. We parted in a glow of
reciprocal esteem and I still think of that quarter-hour as one of my
happiest; and whatever others may say, I say that to have done such a
favor to one Spanish family as the Escuela Mann had been the means of
our nation doing this one was a greater thing than to have taken Cuba
from Spain and bought the Philippines when we had seized them already
and had led the Filipinos to believe that we meant to give their islands
to them.
IV
Suddenly, on the way home to our very English hotel, the air of Ronda
seemed charged with English. We were already used to the English of our
young guide, which so far as it went, went firmly and courageously after
forethought and reflection for each sentence, but we were not quite
prepared for the English of two polite youths who lifted their hats as
they passed us and said, "Good afternoon." The general English lasted
quite overnight and far into the next day when we found several natives
prepared to try it on us in the pretty Alameda, and learned from one,
who proved to be the teacher of it in the public school, that there were
some twenty boys studying it there: heaven knows why, but the English
hotel and its success may have suggested it to them as a means of
prosperity. The students seem each prepared to guide strangers through
Ronda, but sometimes they fail of strangers. That was the case with the
pathetic young hunchback whom we met in Alameda, and who owned that he
had guided none that day. In view of this and as a prophylactic against
a course of bad luck, I made so bold as to ask if I might venture to
repair the loss of the peseta which he would otherwise have earned. He
smiled wanly, and then with the countenance of the teacher, he submitted
and thanked me in English which I can cordially recommend to strangers
knowing no Spanish.
All this was at the end of another morning when we had set out with the
purpose of seeing the rest of Ronda for ourselves. We chose a back
street parallel to the great thoroughfare leading to the new bridge, and
of a squalor which we might have imagined but had not. The dwellers in
the decent-looking houses did not seem to mind the sights and scents of
their street, but these revolted us, and we made haste out of it into
the avenue where the greater world of Ronda was strolling or standing
about, but preferably standing about. In the midst of it, at the
entrance of the new bridge we heard ourselves civilly saluted and
recognized with some hesitation the donkey's harness-maker who, in his
Sunday dress and with his hat on, was not just the work-day presence we
knew. He held by the hand a pretty boy of eleven years, whom he
introduced as his second son, self-destined to follow the elder brother
to America, and duly take up the profession of teaching in Puerto Rico
after experiencing the advantages of the Escuela Mann. His father said
that he already knew some English, and he proposed that the boy should
go about with us and practise it, and after polite demur and insistence
the child came with us, to our great pleasure. He bore himself with fit
gravity, in his cap and long linen pinafore as he went before us, and we
were personally proud of his fine, long face and his serious eyes, dark
and darkened yet more by their long lashes. He knew the way to just such
a book store as we wanted, where the lady behind the desk knew him and
willingly promised to get me some books in the Andalusian dialect, and
send them to our hotel by him at half past twelve. Naturally she did not
do so, but he came to report her failure to get them. We had offered to
pay him for his trouble, but he forbade us, and when we had overcome his
scruple he brought the money back, and we had our trouble over again to
make him keep it. To this hour I do not know how we ever brought
ourselves to part with him; perhaps it was his promise of coming to
America next year that prevailed with us; his brother was returning on a
visit and then they were going back together.
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