She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter,
a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of
the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English
Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his
dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with
two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not
only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did
not admire these enough, again I cannot forgive myself, but she seemed
satisfied with what I did, and she talked on about him, not too
loquaciously, but lovingly and lovably as a mother should, and proudly
as the mother of such a boy should, though without vainglory; I have
forgotten to say that she had a certain distinction of face, and was
appropriately dressed in black. 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.
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