Her Peach Preserves, Which Lasted Us The Year Round, Were
Celebrated In Our Neighbourhood.
Peach preserves were in most English
houses, but our house was alone in making pickled peaches:
I think
this was an invention of her own; I do not know if it has taken on,
but we always had pickled peaches on the table and preferred them to
all other kinds, and so did every person who tasted them.
I here recall an amusing incident with regard to our pickled peaches,
and will relate it just because it serves to bring in yet another of
our old native neighbours. I never thought of him when describing the
others, as he was not so near us and we saw little of him and his
people. His name was Bentura Gutierres, and he called himself an
estanciero - a landowner and head of a cattle establishment; but there
was very little land left and practically no cattle - only a few cows,
a few sheep, a few horses. His estate had been long crumbling away and
there was hardly anything left; but he was a brave spirit and had a
genial, breezy manner, and dressed well in the European mode, with
trousers and coat and waistcoat - this last garment being of satin and
a very bright blue. And he talked incessantly of his possessions: his
house, his trees, his animals, his wife and daughters. And he was
immensely popular in the neighbourhood, no doubt because he was the
father of four rather good-looking, marriageable girls; and as he kept
open house his kitchen was always full of visitors, mostly young men,
who sipped mate by the hour, and made themselves agreeable to the
girls.
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