"Perhaps after all it will be better to take you right to my house for to-night. One always feels freer in one's father's house. My aunt might be holding some social affair, or be sick or--But we will surely call at her mansion to-morrow, and--"
"Como usted quiera?" I answered, swallowing my disappointment. At least his father's house should be something above the ordinary.
But to my astonishment we stopped a bit farther on in the suburbs before one of the most miserable mud hovels it had been my misfortune to run across in Honduras, swarming with pigs, yellow curs, and all the multitudinous filth and disarray indigenous to the country. The coldest of welcomes greeted us, the frowsy, white-bearded father in the noisome doorway replying to the son's query of why there was no light with a crabbed:
"If you want light why don't you come in the daytime?"
My companion told a boy of the family to go buy a candle, and his scrawny, unkempt mother bounded out of the hut with the snarl of a miser:
The boy refused to go and Suaza tied his horse to a bush and went in quest of one himself. I mentioned supper, hinting at my willingness to pay for anything that could be furnished, but to each article I suggested came the monotonous, indifferent Honduranean answer, "No hay." After much growling and an extended quarrel with her son, the woman set on a corner of a wabbly-legged table, littered with all manner of unsavory junk, two raw eggs, punctured and warmed, a bowl of hot water and a stale slab of _pan dulce_, a cross between poor bread and worse cake. I wandered on into the town in the hope of finding some imitation of a hotel. But though the place had a population of several thousand, it was made up exclusively of mud huts only two or three of which were faintly lighted by pine-splinters. The central plaza was a barren, unlighted pasture, a hut on the corner of which was reputed to be a shop, but when I had beaten my way into it I found nothing for sale except bottles of an imitation wine at monopoly prices. In my disgust I pounded my way into every hovel that was said to be a tienda. Not an edible thing was to be found. One woman claimed to have fruit for sale, and after collecting a high price for them she went out into the patio and picked a half-dozen perfectly green oranges.