I asked him whether he never
regretted the quiet of his father's Cornish farm, in view of the
strenuous exertions his duties as rough-rider at Espartillar imposed
on him. The Joven knocked out his pipe, lit another, thought for five
minutes, and then said, "No, it's fun," displaying every tooth in his
head as he did so as a proof that his conversational brevity was due
not to a surly disposition, but to the limitations of his vocabulary.
The pupils at Espartillar were exceedingly well treated. The house was
most comfortably furnished, and contained a full-sized English
billiard-table, two pianos, a plentiful supply of books, and a barrel-
organ, for this was many years before the birth of the gramophone. It
is the singular custom on most estancias to kill beef for six months
of the year, and mutton for the remaining six, which entails a certain
monotony of diet. We had fallen in for the beef-eating half-year, but
the French wife of the English estancia-carpenter officiated as cook,
and she had all the culinary genius of her countrywomen. Above all she
avoided those twin abominations "Ajo" and "Aji," or garlic and green
chilli, which Argentines cram into every dish, thus making them
hideously unpalatable to Northern Europeans.
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