A Traveller in Little Things | Page 6

It is only when
the bony and cartilaginous framework, with the muscular covering of
the face, becomes modified, and the wrinkled brown visage of the
ancient pigmy grows white and smooth, that it can be recognised as
Lady Clara's own offspring. The infant is ugly, and where the infantile
features survive in the adult the man is and must be ugly too, _unless
the expression is good_. Thus, we may know numbers of persons who
would certainly be ugly but for the redeeming expression; and this
good expression, which is "feature in the making," is, like good
features, an "outward sign of inward perfections."
To continue with the description of my young gentleman of blue blood
and plebeian countenance, his expression not only saved him from
ugliness but made him singularly attractive, it revealed a good nature,
friendliness, love of his fellows, sincerity, and other pleasing qualities.
After meeting and conversing with him I was not surprised to hear that
he was universally liked, but regarding him critically I could not say
that his manner was perfect. He was too self-conscious, too anxious to
shine, too vain of his personal appearance, of his wit, his rich dress, his
position as a de la Rosa and a landowner. There was even a vulgarity in
him, such as one looks for in a person risen from the lower orders but
does not expect in the descendant of an ancient and once lustrous
family, however much decayed and impoverished, or submerged.

Shortly afterwards a gossipy old native estanciero, who lived close by,
while sitting in our kitchen sipping maté, began talking freely about his
neighbour's lives and characters, and I told him I had felt interested in
the brothers de la Rosa; partly on account of the great affection these
two had for one another, which was like an ideal friendship; and in part
too on account of the ancient history of the family they came from. I
had met one of them, I told him,--Cyril--a very fine fellow, but in some
respects he was not exactly like my preconceived idea of a de la Rosa.
"No, and he isn't one!" shouted the old fellow, with a great laugh; and
more than delighted at having a subject presented to him and at his
capture of a fresh listener, he proceeded to give me an intimate history
of the brothers.
The father, who was a fine and a lovable man, married early, and his
young wife died in giving birth to their only child--Ambrose. He did
not marry again: he was exceedingly fond of his child and was both
father and mother to it and kept it with him until the boy was about
nine years old, and then determined to send him to Buenos Ayres to
give him a year's schooling. He himself had been taught to read as a
small boy, also to write a letter, but he did not think himself equal to
teach the boy, and so for a time they would have to be separated.
Meanwhile the boy had picked up with Cyril, a little waif in rags, the
bastard child of a woman who had gone away and left him in infancy to
the mercy of others. He had been reared in the hovel of a poor gaucho
on the de la Rosa land, but the poor orphan, although the dirtiest,
raggedest, most mischievous little beggar in the land, was an attractive
child, intelligent, full of fun, and of an adventurous spirit. Half his days
were spent miles from home, wading through the vast reedy and rushy
marshes in the neighbourhood, hunting for birds' nests. Little Ambrose,
with no child companion at home, where his life had been made too
soft for him, was exceedingly happy with his wild companion, and they
were often absent together in the marshes for a whole day, to the great
anxiety of the father. But he could not separate them, because he could
not endure to see the misery of his boy when they were forcibly kept
apart. Nor could he forbid his child from heaping gifts in food and

clothes and toys or whatever he had, on his little playmate. Nor did the
trouble cease when the time came now for the boy to be sent from
home to learn his letters: his grief at the prospect of being separated
from his companion was too much for the father, and he eventually sent
them together to the city, where they spent a year or two and came back
as devoted to one another as when they went away. From that time
Cyril lived with them, and eventually de la Rosa adopted him, and to
make his son happy he left all he possessed to be equally divided at his
death between them. He