* See “The Devotion of Enriquez,” in Selected Stories by
     Bret Harte Gutenberg #1312.

A single glance at its contents showed me that Mrs. Saltillo’s correct Bostonian speech had not yet subdued Enriquez’s peculiar Spanish-American slang:—­

“Here we are again,—­right side up with care,—­at 1110 Dupont Street, Telegraph Hill.  Second floor from top.  ‘Ring and push.’  ’No book agents need apply.’  How’s your royal nibs?  I kiss your hand!  Come at six,—­the band shall play at seven,—­and regard your friend ‘Mees Boston,’ who will tell you about the little old nigger boys, and your old Uncle ’Ennery.”

Two things struck me:  Enriquez had not changed; Mrs. Saltillo had certainly yielded up some of her peculiar prejudices.  For the address given, far from being a fashionable district, was known as the “Spanish quarter,” which, while it still held some old Spanish families, was chiefly given over to half-castes and obscurer foreigners.  Even poverty could not have driven Mrs. Saltillo to such a refuge against her will; nevertheless, a good deal of concern for Enriquez’s fortune mingled with my curiosity, as I impatiently waited for six o’clock to satisfy it.

It was a breezy climb to 1110 Dupont Street; and although the street had been graded, the houses retained their airy elevation, and were accessible only by successive flights of wooden steps to the front door, which still gave perilously upon the street, sixty feet below.  I now painfully appreciated Enriquez’s adaptation of the time-honored joke about the second floor.  An invincible smell of garlic almost took my remaining breath away as the door was opened to me by a swarthy Mexican woman, whose loose camisa seemed to be slipping from her unstable bust, and was held on only by the mantua-like shawl which supplemented it, gripped by one brown hand.  Dizzy from my ascent to that narrow perch, which looked upon nothing but the distant bay and shores of Contra Costa, I felt as apologetic as if I had landed from a balloon; but the woman greeted me with a languid Spanish smile and a lazy display of white teeth, as if my arrival was quite natural.  Don Enriquez, “of a fact,” was not himself in the casa, but was expected “on the instant.”  “Donna Urania” was at home.

“Donna Urania”?  For an instant I had forgotten that Mrs. Saltillo’s first name was Urania, so pleasantly and spontaneously did it fall from the Spanish lips.  Nor was I displeased at this chance of learning something of Don Enriquez’s fortunes and the Saltillo menage before confronting my old friend.  The servant preceded me to the next floor, and, opening a door, ushered me into the lady’s presence.