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Every now and then I am marooned on my hill, if the motor is "hors de combat," and then I get my neighbour to let me join her in her morning marketing trip, sometimes with disastrous results. One day the boys and I sat down to dinner with fine sea-air appetites, to be confronted by a small, crushed-looking fish. I sent out to ask the cook for more.
You could tell a Brewster cover at sight, without the fan. That leaves the black net dress and sun-parlour valance. Now don't gather from this that Mrs. Brewster was an ample, pie-baking, ginghamed old soul who wore black silk and a crushed-looking hat with a palsied rose atop it. Nor that Hosea C. Brewster was spectacled and slippered. Not at all.
There had even been a Christmas tree, hung with stodgy German angels and Pfeffernuesse and pink-frosted cakes. I found myself the bewildered recipient of gifts from everyone from the Knapfs, and the aborigines and even from one of the crushed-looking wives.
Tramps do not demand very much, and these were completely contented when they had made a small fire, damped down with a turf to prevent it smoking, had boiled a little water, stewed some tea, and eaten what they had. Even this was not luxurious. The Major produced the heel of a cheese and two crushed-looking bananas, and Frank a half-eaten tin of sardines and a small, stale loaf.
And I knew that I would miss the easy German atmosphere of the place; the kindness they had shown me; the chattering, admiring Minna; the taffy-colored dachshund; the aborigines with their ill-smelling pipes and flappy slippers; the Wienerschnitzel; the crushed-looking wives and the masterful German husbands; the very darns in the table-cloths and the very nicks in the china.
The afternoon wore drowsily along, and the great heat made everybody inclined to sleep. Pierre had demanded by signs to be shown his bedroom, and having been conducted thereto by a crushed-looking waiter, who drifted aimlessly before him, threw himself on the bed and went fast asleep.
He was up and dressed, sitting, in his grave little way, on the miner's knee, weakly holding his crushed-looking doll, but his cold had increased, his sweet baby face was paler, the sad, dumb look in his eyes was deeper in its questioning, the breakfast that the fond old Jim had prepared was quite untasted.
Crushed-looking women in limp bonnets, scanty shawls, and much-patched dresses crept quietly in. With them, though not in their company, came men of all ages, and of a general level of ragged destitution a gaunt, haggard, hungry, and hopeless congregation as ever went to church on a Sunday morning.
Well, something happened to her at the crisis of that fever, which was sharp, and took her on her return from Yucatan, at a horrible port called Frontera, where there were palm trees and zopilotes a kind of vile American vulture which sat silently on the verandah outside her door in the dreadful little hotel built upon piles in the mud of the great river, and mosquitoes by the ten million, and sleepy-eyed, crushed-looking Indians, and horrible halfbreeds, and everything else which suggests an earthly hell, except the glorious sunshine.
'Oh, I don't mind, said Martha, preparing to leave the bar, but first ringing the bell so that the crushed-looking waiter might come and attend to possible customers; 'he's on the ground floor, and there ain't no stairs to climb now what are you looking at, sir? with another gratified giggle, as she caught Vandeloup staring at her.
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