Page:Maud Howe--Roma Beata.djvu/22

Rh "Excellency, yes, if it makes cold; but to-day it makes an immense heat. Diamine! this saloon is a furnace."

The thermometer could not have stood above forty-two degrees, but she was not to be bullied or cajoled. Then J. went out and bought wood "unbeknownst" to her and lighted a fire in the parlor grate. All the smoke poured into the room. The padrona charged with fixed bayonets.

"Gentry, we are ruined! Not is possible to make fire here."

"Why did you not say so before?"

"Who could figure to himself that gentry so instructed would do a thing so strange?" These people are so polite that this was an insult, meant as such, taken as such. In the end J. prevailed. A small fireplace was unearthed from behind the wardrobe in our bedroom. He worked like a stoker, but the badly constructed chimney swallowed all the heat. For three days I was never warm, save when in bed. Monday we forfeited three months' rent, paid in advance, and went, tame and crestfallen, to a pension, a sadder and a wiser pair.