Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
him say, as he bent over his wife's hand, "Certainly. Of course, my dear Mrs. Gould, for a protégé of yours! Not the slightest difficulty. Consider it done."
Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don José Avellanos was very silent. Even in the Gould carriage he did not open his lips for a long time. The mules trotted slowly away from the wharf between the extended hands of the beggars, who for that day seemed to have abandoned in a body the portals of churches. Charles Gould sat on the back seat and looked away upon the plain. A multitude of booths made of green boughs, of rushes, of odd pieces of plank eked out with bits of canvas had been erected all over it for the sale of cana, of dulces, of fruit, of cigars. Over little heaps of glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting on mats, cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water for the maté gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing voices to the country people. A race-course had been staked out for the vaqueros; and away to the left, from where the crowd was massed thickly about a huge temporary erection, like a circus-tent of wood with a conical grass roof, came the resonant twanging of harp-strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the grave drumming throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily through the shrill choruses of the dancers.
Charles Gould said, presently:
"All this piece of land belongs now to the railway company. There will be no more popular feasts held here."
Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took this opportunity to mention how she had just obtained
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