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A sound behind the drummer caused him to turn, and he saw the Señora Fombombo, in her religious black, evidently just returned from early mass. The sight of her gave Strawbridge a certain faint satisfaction, but at the same time it brought back the vague embarrassment he had felt on the previous evening. He returned her salutation of "Buenos dias," and was pondering something else to say, when she expressed a fear that the sight of a Venezuelan cocina (kitchen) would be disagreeable to him. She had heard how spotless were American kitchens.

The salesman began a hasty assurance that the kitchen was very interesting, but the señora called to a servant to close the shutter. The same griffe girl whom Strawbridge had seen that morning answered the call, and before she retired she gave the señora and the salesman a certain understanding look, which linked up in Strawbridge's mind with what the girl had seen an hour or two earlier.

The señora herself was proceeding with her table talk.

"We can get only native servants here in Canalejos," she was saying in the faintly mechanical manner of a hostess who has an uninteresting guest, "and they prepare everything in the native way."