“I’ve been told it’s the land of new opportunities.”

The Englishman grunted without looking up.  “I didn’t see many.”

“May I ask if you saw any?”

“None fit for a white man.”

“My husband means none fit for a—­gentleman.  I liked the place.”

From the woman’s steely smile and bitter-sweet tones Ford got hints of masculine inefficiency and feminine contempt which he had no wish to follow up.  He knew from fragments of talk overheard in the smoking-room that they had tried Mexico, California, and Saskatchewan in addition to South America.  From the impatience with which she shook the foot just visible beneath the steamer-rug, while all the rest of her bearing feigned repose, he guessed her humiliation at returning empty to the land she had left with an Anglo-Saxon’s pioneering hope, beside a husband who could do nothing but curse luck.  To get over the awkward minute he spoke hurriedly.

“I’ve heard of a very good house out there—­Stephens and Jarrott.  Do you happen to know anything about them?”

“Wool,” the Englishman grunted again.  “Wool and wheat.  Beastly brutes.”

“They were horribly impertinent to my husband,” the woman spoke up, with a kind of feverish eagerness to have her say.  “They actually asked him if there was anything he could do.  Fancy!”

“Oh, I know people of that sort put a lot of superfluous questions to you,” Ford said.  But the lady hurried on.

“As to questions, there are probably fewer asked you in Argentine than anywhere else in the world.  It’s one of the standing jokes of the place, both in Buenos Aires and out in the Camp.  Of course, the old Spanish families are all right; but when it comes to foreigners a social catechism wouldn’t do.  That’s one of the reasons the place didn’t agree with us.  We wanted people to know who we’d been before we got there; but that branch of knowledge isn’t cultivated.”

“More beastly Johnnies in the Argentine passin’ under names not their own,” said the man, moved to speak, at last, “than in all the rest of the world put together.  Heard a story at the Jockey Club—­lot of beastly native bounders in the Jockey Club—­heard a story at the Jockey Club of a little Irish Johnny who’d been cheatin’ at cards.  Three other asses kicked him out.  Beggar turned at the door and got in his lick of revenge.  ’Say boys, d’yez know why they call me Mickey Flanagan out here?  Because it’s me na-ame.’  Beggar ’d got ’em all there.”

Ford nerved himself to laugh, but made an excuse for rising.

“Oh, there’s lots of cleverness among them,” the lady observed, before he had time to get away.  “In fact, it’s one of the troubles with the country—­for people like us.  There’s too much competition in brains.  My husband hit the right nail on the head when he said there was no chance for any beastly Johnny out there, unless he could use his bloomin’ mind—­and for us that was out of the question.”