186 



EAMBLES AFTER 8P0RT. 



women. She is perfectly colossal in her ignorance^ and 

 doesn^t care to know better. She is utterly devoid of 

 system^ has no stated times for meals or household regu- 

 lations, and prowls about half the day enveloped in her 

 mantOj a convenient garment, which serves for bonnet, 

 shawl, and dress ; goes most religiously to mass, yet why 

 she cannot tell. She is eternally plotting, always has 

 some mystery on hand which she is bound to ferret out 

 somehow ; though she is never left alone for one single 

 instant, yet she is the most arrant flirt in the world, 

 and her room is an odd mixture of old ribbons, faded 

 bouquets, photographs, and odds and ends of work. In 

 the evening she plasters herself over with a mixture of 

 chalk, bismuth, and white of eggs, touches up her cheeks 

 with rouge, and sublimely trusts in Providence for drop- 

 ping in for a cueca, which she will keep up till three in 

 the morning. At about twenty-five years old she begins 

 to get haggard and shrewish ; at fifty she is decidedly 

 disagreeable ; and at seventy she is — ah, well ! if any 

 one has never seen a Chilena old woman of seventy, I 

 should say, don^t ; she's fearful. 



