Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/57

CH. III.] of a widow, with two handsome daughters, about eighteen and nineteen years of age. They furnished us with chocolate, broiled fowl, stewed frixoles, or beans, and some dainty slices from a pig which they had just killed. Don Mateo, who was in the habit of travelling this country, seemed to be admitted to all the little indulgences and familiarities with these young damsels which a traveller to Birmingham from St. Mary Axe has indisputable claim to from all the spruce bar-maids on the road. He chucked one under the chin, began waltzing with the other, cracked his jokes with both, and, as he sat upon the table, kicking his legs and smoking his puro (cigar), he seemed, at every whiff, to forget the golden ounces of which he had been plundered, and to be no bad picture of that reasonable kind of being who is disposed to take the world as he finds it.

After travelling six leagues through a picturesque country, and the greater part of the road being over a fine turf, we