Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
Mrs. Gould, raising her eyes to her husband's thin, red-and-tan face, could not detect the slightest quiver of a feature at what he must have heard said of his patriotism. Perhaps he had just dismounted on his return from the mine; he was English enough to disregard the hottest hours of the day. Basilio, in a livery of white linen and a red sash, had squatted for a moment behind his heels to unstrap the heavy, blunt spurs in the patio; and then the Señor Administrador would go up the staircase into the gallery. Rows of plants in pots, ranged on the balustrade between the pilasters of the arches, screened the corrédor with their leaves and flowers from the quadrangle below, whose paved space is the true hearth-stone of a South American house, where the quiet hours of domestic life are marked by the shifting of light and shadow on the flag-stones.
Señor Avellanos was in the habit of crossing the patio at five o'clock almost every day. Don José chose to come over at tea-time because the English rite at Doña Emilia's house reminded him of the time when he lived in London as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James. He did not like tea; and, usually, rocking his American chair, his neat little shiny boots crossed on the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a sort of complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, while he held the cup in his hands for a long time. His close-cropped head was perfectly white; his eyes coal-black.
On seeing Charles Gould step into the sala he would provisionally and go on to the end of the oratorial period. Only then he would say:
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