"Not with a noise like a cow fallin' into a cucumber-frame," she answered sharply. "Do me the favour----" Then she seemed overwhelmed with a sense of the general hopelessness of Johnnie's character. She began to wag her head. "Oh, but you are the boy for gettin' yourself into the tiger's cage without even so much as the thought of a pocket-knife in your thick head. You would be a genius of the first water if you only had a little sense. And now you're here, what are you going to do?" He grinned at her. "I'm goin' to hold an inspection of the land and sea defences of the city of Havana." Martha's spectacles dropped low on her nose and, looking over the rims of them in grave meditation, she said: "If you can't put up with codfish salad you had better make short work of your inspection of the land and sea defences of the city of Havana. You are likely to starve in the meantime. A man who is particular about his food has come to the wrong town if he is in Havana now." "No, but----" asked Johnnie seriously. "Haven't you any bread?" "_Bread!_" "Well, coffee then? Coffee alone will do." "_Coffee!_" Johnnie arose deliberately and took his hat. Martha eyed him. "And where do you think you are goin'?" she asked cuttingly. Still deliberate, Johnnie moved in the direction of the street-door. "I'm goin' where I can get something to eat." Martha sank into a chair with a moan which was a finished opinion--almost a definition--of Johnnie's behaviour in life. "And where will you go?" she asked faintly. "Oh, I don't know," he rejoined. "Some café. Guess I'll go to the Café Aguacate. They feed you well there. I remember----" "_You_ remember? _They_ remember! They know you as well as if you were the sign over the door." "Oh, they won't give me away," said Johnnie with stalwart confidence. "Gi-give you away? Give you a-way?" stammered Martha. The spy made no answer but went to the door, unbarred it and passed into the street. Martha caught her breath and ran after him and came face to face with him as he turned to shut the door. "Johnnie, if ye come back, bring a loaf of bread. I'm dyin' for one good honest bite in a slice of bread." She heard his peculiar derisive laugh as she bolted the door. She returned to her chair in the patio. "Well, there," she said with affection, admiration and contempt. "There he goes! The most hard-headed little ignoramus in twenty nations! What does he care? Nothin'! And why is it? Pure bred-in-the-bone ignorance. Just because he can't stand codfish salad he goes out to a café! A café where they know him as if they had made him!... Well.... I won't see him again, probably.... But if he comes back, I hope he brings some bread. I'm near dead for it." II