Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

AL oy —— i & oe » Pigg oe wis baat Rata Swi ote coe ey wee . ms cine ae < SIX LEGS ARE WELCOME —> “SER c Can you imagine such simplicity? He would find her a hus- — im band, just like that. Well, after the war I gave up the sea—and _ mm me with my Chief’s ticket and a good job—because a Brazilian _____ told me that he only needed a young partner, with lots of energy ye and a knowledge of machinery, to develop his diamond mine. __ __ ~What’s the difference? 8g Or perhaps he didn’t-mind. Argentines never quite understand — the Paraguayans, who are nearly all of mixed blood, whatever class 4 they belong to. He may have been looking at the girl the wrong way up. Dies & Put it this way: he had picked up a destitute Indian girl with _ alittle white blood; if he placed her well, it would be considered _ —hby his friends and customers—a lot kinder than letting her __ starve in the forest. | Be, x But call her an ordinary Paraguayan girl, decently educated by poor parents who chose to live at the back of beyond, and the thing was an outrage on humanity. a . I did not know what to say to her. I could not tell tee onsoO ___ short an acquaintance to jump on a horse and come to me if the going got really rough. She was far too lost to understand whom - she could trust. ie And, anyway, it was a delicate subject to approach. I felt she Was sO ‘blooming innocent that she might not know what she was in for. Of course she knew. Any woman would. But I was __ dripping with sentiment. a What I was really afraid of was her submissiveness. She was _ so used to doing what her parents told her and then what thenuns _ told her that she went and did what Don Luis told her. She had i not grown up atall. If she stayed at the Estrella de la Banda for long, Indian resignation was going to overcome Spanish pride, ah That, no doubt, was what Luis reckoned. pe” Don Luis cannot have expected that she would tell me so much. - “Do you want to go back to the convent? ”’ I asked her. | Mi. ‘““ Not much,” she said, giving me her first smile. a a ‘“‘ What can you do to earn a living?” ae a ** Cook,” she answered, ‘“‘ and sew and look after a house.” a Well, that was that. Like so many old-fashioned girls, she could spend the rest of her life as somebody’s servant if she - hadn’t any money, or as somebody’s wife if she had. ceo —_ ‘“‘ Where are you living?” : “In a little house that Don Luis has lent me. There is a a woman to look after me.” i. A real professional he was. The only mistake he made wasto exhibit her in the Estrella. If he hadn’t, she would never have a seen that there was anything wrong at all. I doubted if I could ee ' commichooks.com)