"Confess, Major," said Garry, speaking with his mouth full of sausage, "that a man may lose some of the pleasures of existence by leading the life of a hermit. Don't you feel grateful to me for dragging you out of your cobweb to such a pleasant place as this?" "'Tis an excellent breakfast," said my grandfather, who had just assisted the Senorita Carlota to a slice of turkey's breast, and himself to an entire leg and thigh--dividing with her, at the same time, a crisp white loaf, having a handle like a teapot or smoothing-iron--"and my appetite is really very good. I should be perfectly easy if I could only understand the remarks of this very agreeable lady, and make suitable replies." "Let me interpret your sentiments," said Garry; "and though I may not succeed in conveying them in their original force and poetry, yet they shall lose as little as possible in transmission. Just try me--what would you wish to say?" "Why, really," said my grandfather, pondering, "I had a great many things to say as we came along, but they've gone out of my head. Do you think she ever read Shakespeare?" "Not a chance of it," said Owen. Here the Senorita laughingly appealed to Frank to know what my grandfather was saying about her. "Ah," quoth my grandfather, quoting his friend Shakespeare-- "'I understand thy _looks_--the pretty Spanish Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens I am _not_ perfect in----' "She's an extremely agreeable woman, Frank, I'll be sworn, if one only understood her," quoth my grandfather, casting on her a glance full of gallantry. The Ensign was not so entirely occupied in prosecuting his own love affair as to be insensible to the facilities afforded him for amusing himself at the Major's expense. Accordingly, he made a speech in Spanish to Carlota, purporting to be a faithful translation of my grandfather's, but teeming, in fact, with the most romantic expressions of chivalrous admiration, as was apparent from the frequent recurrence of the words "ojos" (eyes), "corazon" (heart), and the like amatory currency. "There, Major," said the interpreter, as he finished; "I've told her what you said of her." The Major endorsed the compliments by laying his hand upon his heart, and bowing with a tender air. Whereupon Carlota, laughing, and blushing a deeper red, made her acknowledgments. "She says," quoth Frank, "that she knew the English before to be a gallant nation; but that if all the caballeros (that's gentlemen) of that favoured race are equal to the present specimen, her own countrymen must be thrown entirely into the shade." "Delightful!" cried my grandfather; but it is doubtful whether this expression of pleasure was called forth by the sentiments attributed to the Senorita, or by the crisp succulent tenderness of a mouthful of sucking-pig which was at that moment spreading itself over his palate.