"Ah, me!" exclaimed our landlady, "is it not
terrible? Excepting the Senora D. and myself, there is not a married
woman in La Union!" "One wouldn't think so," soliloquized the
_Teniente_, as he gazed reflectively into the street, where a dozen
naked children, squatting in the sand, disputed the freedom of the
highway with a score of lean dogs and bow-backed pigs of voracious
appetites.
To me there was nothing specially new in La Union. The three years
which had elapsed since my previous visit had not been marked by any
great architectural achievement, and although the same effective
chain-gang of two convicts seemed still to be occupied with the mole,
the advance in that great public work was not perceptible to the eye.
My old host and hostess were also the same,--a shade older in
appearance, perhaps, but with hearts as warm and hospitalities as
lavish as before. Only "La Gringita" had changed from the doe-eyed
child of easy confidences into a quiet and somewhat distant girl, full
in figure, and with a glance which sometimes betrayed the glow of
latent, but as yet unconscious passion. In these sunny climes the bud
blossoms and the young fruit ripens in a single day.
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