Trooper Tales — page 65: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TOREADOR, THE GAME ONE. Only two things in this world did Benito, the poor Porto Rican, love. One was Marie, who lived with her mother in a tiny shack away up in the mountains, and the other was Toreador, a very fancy, very trim and very, very game little red chicken. Now, Sunday is market day in that little tropical island, and the natives bring their wares to the plazas of the vil- lages. Then in loud voices they tell the passers-by just how good and cheap their things are. And every Sun- day morning Marie used to trip down the trail into Cori-. zel, with a basket of sweetmeats upon her head, and then she would cry: “Cocoa de dulce! Cocoa de dulce!” until her apron was heavy, and jingled with big centavos, and all the sweetmeats were gone. Benito would lavish his single centavo for a piece of Marie’s sweets, but mostly he cared for the smile from Marie’s dark, pretty eyes, which she always gave him. When Marie called aloud, “Cocoa de dulce,” Benito thought that it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard, and after Marie’s cute figure was lost in the coffee shrubs which bordered the trail, Benito would sigh and walk Eomichooks (GO)