You are just a leetle weary, eh? A leetle. Oh yes! a leetle tired of
crookin' your elbow--eh? Don't care if the school keep!--eh? Don't want
any pie! Want to go 'ome, eh?"

But here Mr. Parks rose with slight difficulty, but unflinching dignity,
and leaned impressively over the table, "May I ashk--may I be
permitted to arsk, madam, to what we may owe the pleasure of thish--of
this--visit?"

Her face and attitude instantly changed. Her arms dropped and caught up
the mantilla with a quick but not ungraceful sweep, and in apparently a
single movement she was draped, wrapped, and muffled from waist to crown
as before. With a slight inclination of her head, she said in quite
another voice: "Si, senor. I have arrive here because in your whole
great town of Booki there is not so much as one"--she held up a small
brown finger--"as much as ONE leetle light or fire like thees; be-cause
in this grand pueblo there is not one peoples who have not already sleep
in his bed but thees! Bueno! I have arrive all the same like a leetle
bird, like the small fly arrive to the light! not to YOU--only to THE
LIGHT! I go not to my casa for she is dark, and tonight she have nothing
to make the fire or bed. I go not to the 'otel--there is not ONE"--the
brown finger again uplifted--"'otel in Booki! I make the 'otel--the
Fonda--in my hoose manana--to-morrow! Tonight I and Sanchicha make the
bed for us 'ere. Sanchicha, she stands herself now over in the street.
We have mooch sorrow we have to make the caballeros mooch tr-rouble to
make disposition of his house. But what will you?"

There was another awkward silence, and then Saunders, who had been
examining the intruder with languid criticism, removed his pipe from his
mouth and said quietly:--