By way of returning the compliment, Donna Perpetua invited Antonio to propound one or two of the riddles he had heard in England. Unguardedly he gave consent: and only when he began racking his memory did he perceive his mistake. He had heard a feeble riddle in a country house about a door being a jar; but the pun could not be made in Portuguese. Again, he knew by heart a rhymed enigma, said to be Byron's, on the letter H; but this was worse still. Apart from the Portuguese having no aspirate, how could he render the line "'Twas whispered in heaven, 'twas muttered in hell" into a language which spelled heaven with a "c" and hell with an "i"? At last he cut short a very uncomfortable silence by saying that the only English conundrums he knew could not be translated. At this remark the girls hung their heads modestly and the matrons gave silent thanks that they had not been born in an apostate country where the very riddles brimmed with blasphemies and lewdnesses. "England is no good," grunted Emilio, who had been playing a tune on his jack-boots with the handle of his whip. "The English have plenty of money; but they live dogs' lives. In England there are no fruits, no flowers. They have no wine save what we send them from Portugal. When the rain stops, there is a fog. No Englishman ever sees the sun." "Things are hardly so bad as that," said Antonio, smiling. "In July and August I have known the sun in England shine as fiercely as any sun in Portugal. It is true there are no grapes or oranges, except those that grow in glass hot-houses; but the English have apples and pears, cherries and strawberries, plums and damsons, as fine as ours. Their flowers are wonderful; and I wish everybody in Portugal could see an English village." Emilio, whose father had suffered wrongs under Marshal Beresford during the Regency, thwacked his boot again with the whip-stock and mumbled. Antonio was concerned. He and José had already gone far towards wrecking the serão, and he saw the necessity of avoiding a quarrel. So he added what he conscientiously believed, saying, in a conciliatory tone: "The English are not the equals of the Portuguese. But they are a fine people and a great nation." "I have heard," put in Senhor Jorge, "that the English are not happy." "They were merry once," Antonio answered, "and they will be merry once more when they regain the Faith." "Yes," said Donna Perpetua devoutly. "Only those who are going to be happy in the next life can be truly happy in this." "Yet the English ought to be happy," objected Senhor Jorge, growing restive at all this piety. "They have the best government in the world."