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was saying in the faintly mechanical manner of a hostess who has an uninteresting guest, “and they prepare everything in the native way.”

Strawbridge said he liked Venezuelan cooking.

“It is monotonous,” criticized the señora. “The chicken is always cooked with rice, and the plantains are always fried.”

Strawbridge started to say that he loved chicken and rice and fried plantains, but even his imperfect sense of rhetoric warned him that he had already overworked those particular phrases. So he checked that sentiment, cast about for a substitute, and finally fished up:

“I saw you going to early mass this morning, señora.”

The girl glanced at him, agreed to this, and continued peeling her orange with a knife and fork, in the Venezuelan fashion. The drummer wanted strongly to follow this opening with something brisk and lively to compel her attention and interest, but his head seemed oddly empty. His embarrassment persisted and made him a little uncomfortable. He wondered why. It was irritating. Why didn't he tell her a joke, one of his parlor jokes? Strawbridge knew scores and scores of obscene jokes, and perhaps half a dozen parlor jokes which he kept for women. Now, to his discomfiture, he could not recall a single one of his parlor jokes. For some reason or other, he told himself, the señora crabbed his style.

She was a smallish woman with a rather slender, melancholy face, and her eyes had that slightly unfocused look which is characteristic of all pure-black eyes. Her eyebrows and lips were engraved in black and red against a colorless face. Her nun's bonnet and the white cloth that passed beneath it across her forehead concealed the least trace of hair. And Strawbridge speculated with a sort of apprehension whether or no