Too well-bred to suggest, even in complimentary raillery, a possible sentimental situation, his politeness went further.

It was so kind in them to guide an awkward stranger by their voices to the places where he could not stupidly intrude! "You are just in time to interrupt or to hear a story that I have been threatening to tell," she said, composedly; "an old Spanish legend of this house.

You are in the majority now, you two, and can stop me if you choose.

Thank you.

I warn you it is stupid; it isn't new; but it has the excuse of being suggested by this very spot." She cast a quick look of subtle meaning at Carroll, and throughout her recital appealed more directly to him, in a manner delicately yet sufficiently marked to partly soothe his troubled spirit.
"Far back, in the very old times, Caballeros," said Maruja, standing by the table in mock solemnity, and rapping upon it with her fan, "this place was the home of the coyote.