pretty little idyllic flirtation, conducted in very novel circumstances.
Love cometh up as a flower, and men and charming women naturally flirt
when brought together. Yet it was hard to imagine how I could have
started a flirtation and carried it on to its culminatory point in
that great public room, with all those eyes on me; dogs, babes, and
cats tumbling about my feet; ostriches staring covetously at my buttons
with great vacant eyes; and that intolerable paroquet perpetually
reciting "How the waters came down at Lodore," in its own shrieky,
beaky, birdy, hurdy-gurdy, parrot language. Tender glances, soft
whispered words, hand-touchings, and a thousand little personal
attentions, showing which way the emotions tend, would scarcely have
been practicable in such a place and in such conditions, and new signs
and symbols would have to be invented to express the feelings of the
heart. And doubtless these Orientals, living all together in one great
room, with their children and pets, like our very ancient ancestors,
the pastoral Aryans, do possess such a language. And this pretty
language I should have learnt from the most willing of teachers, if
those venomous _vinchucas_ had not dulled my brain with their
persecutions and made me blind to a matter which had not escaped the
observation of even unconcerned lookers-on. Riding away from the
_estancia_, the feeling I experienced at having finally escaped
from these execrable "little things that go about" was not one of
unmixed satisfaction.




CHAPTER IV