“What an odd child you are!”

“Am I?” regarding him gravely. “I’m sure I don’t want to be that. I want to be just–perfect.”

Mr. Hale sighed as he dropped upon the bench to which Jess had guided him. “We are none of us that–ever.”

13“I suppose that’s because ‘none of us’ ever try quite hard enough. But I will be, if trying will fetch it.”

13

Then she whisked inside the hut and presently there came to the gentleman’s nostrils the aroma of freshly steaming coffee. He had not realized that he was hungry, but now could scarcely wait until the little maid came out to him again with a tin cup of the liquid in one hand and a can of condensed milk in the other.

“My mother always lets her guests ‘trim’ their drink for themselves, but I’ll drop in the cream if you’ll say how much. Enough? Now sugar. One? How queer. And it’s sugar of our own making, too; beet sugar, you know.”

The tin cup was decidedly rusty, the cheap spoon dingy, and “canned” milk the aversion of Mr. Hale’s dyspeptic stomach; yet despite these facts he had never tasted a more delicious draught than this, nor one served with a gentler grace. For Jessica was quite unconscious that there was anything amiss with Pedro’s dishes, and now offered the stranger a tin of time-hardened biscuits, with the air of one proffering the rarest of dainties.

“You would better eat one of these; they’re quite fine, with the coffee.”

“I’ll–I’ll try, thank you, if you’ll fetch your own cup and sit beside me.”

“All right. Only I’ll have to wait till Pedro’s finished. There’s only this and the egg, you know. He’s rather stubborn, dear fellow. My mother has offered him more dishes, but he says ‘more care’ and won’t take them. Excuse me.”

With a dip and swirl of her short skirts, the little hostess ran into the hut, to reappear, a moment later, bearing in both hands a drinking-cup which made the guest exclaim in delight:

14“What an exquisite thing!”

14

“Isn’t it? But just wait until you see those which Pedro made for mother! This is fine, but 

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