Aunt Maria’s Olympian head nodded, and her cheerful face, glowing with tea and the camp fires, confessed “Certainly!”

“What nonsense, Coronado!” said Clara.  “I was horribly frightened, and you know it.”

Aunt Maria frowned with surprise and denial.  “Absurd, child!  You were not frightened at all.  Of course you were not.  Why, even if you had been slightly timorous, you had your cousin to protect you.”

“Ah, Mrs. Stanley, I am a poor knight-errant,” said Coronado.  “We Mexicans are no longer formidable.  One man of your Anglo-Saxon blood is supposed to be a better defence than a dozen of us.  We have been subdued; we must submit to depreciation.  I must confess, in fact, that I had my fears.  I was greatly relieved on my cousin’s account when I heard the voice of our military chieftain here.”

Then came more flattery for Ralph, with proper rations for the two privates.  Those faithful soldiers—­he must show his gratitude to them; he had forgotten them in the basest manner.  “Here, Pedronillo, take these cigaritos to privates Kelly and Shubert, with my compliments.  Begging your permission, Lieutenant. Thank you.”

“Pooty tonguey man, that Seenor,” observed Captain Phineas Glover to Mrs. Stanley, when the Mexican went off to his blankets.

“Yes; a very agreeable and eloquent gentleman,” replied the lady, wishing to correct the skipper’s statement while seeming to assent to it.

“Jess so,” admitted Glover.  “Ruther airy.  Big talkin’ man.  Don’t raise no sech our way.”

Captain Glover was not fully aware that he himself had the fame of possessing an imagination which was almost too much for the facts of this world.

“S’pose it’s in the breed,” he continued.  “Or likely the climate has suthin’ to do with it:  kinder thaws out the words ‘n’ sets the idees a-bilin’.  Niggers is pooty much the same.  Most niggers kin talk like a line runnin’ out, ‘n’ tell lies ’s fast ’s our Fair Haven gals open oysters—­a quart a minute.”

“Captain Glover, what do you mean?” frowned Aunt Maria.  “Mr. Coronado is a friend of mine.”

“Oh, I was speakin’ of niggers,” returned the skipper promptly.  “Forgot we begun about the Seenor.  Sho! niggers was what I was talkin’ of.  B’ th’ way, that puts me in mind ’f one I had for cook once.  Jiminy! how that man would cook!  He’d cook a slice of halibut so you wouldn’t know it from beefsteak.”

“Dear me! how did he do it?” asked Aunt Maria, who had a fancy for kitchen mysteries.

“Never could find out,” said Glover, stepping adroitly out of his difficulty.  “Don’t s’pose that nigger would a let on how he did it for ten dollars.”

“I should think the receipt would be worth ten dollars,” observed Aunt Maria thoughtfully.

“Not ’xactly here,” returned the captain, with one of his dried smiles, which had the air of having been used a great many times before.  “Halibut too skurce.  Wal, I was goin’ to tell ye ’bout this nigger.  He come to be the cook he was because he was a big eater.  We was wrecked once, ‘n’ had to live three days on old shoes ‘n’ that sort ’f truck.  Wal, this nigger was so darned ravenous he ate up a pair o’ long boots in the time it took me to git down one ’f the straps.”