It was about the middle of the afternoon of the day following Alton’s affray with the workman when the cook came limping into the verandah of the Somasco ranch, where Deringham leaned, cigar in hand, against a pillar talking to his daughter.  She lay in a hide chair Alton had found for her, listening more to the drowsy roar of the river than to her father, but she lifted her head when the man appeared.  He carried a tray whereon were displayed a badly dinted metal teapot of considerable size, two large, flat cakes of bread, a can of condensed milk, and a saucer swimming with partially melted butter, which had resolved itself into little lumps of whitish grease and a thin golden fluid under the afternoon sun.  He laid them on the table, and after deftly picking out one or two dead flies from the butter turned to the girl with a grin in which pride was evident, though it was apparently meant to be deprecatory.

“I guess this is the kind of thing you were used to in the old country, Miss,” he said.  “You have only got to tell me if you would fancy a piece of cold pork or other fixings.”

Alice Deringham dared not glance at her father, who seemed to be gazing fixedly down the valley, but her lips quivered a little as she turned towards the man.

“I do not think we shall want anything else,” she said with a serenity that cost her an effort, though it was excellently assumed.

The man limped away with the tray, though he stopped again at the foot of the stairway.  “If you take a notion of that pork after all, hammer on the iron roofing sheet there, and I’ll bring it right away,” he said.

Alice Deringham waited until he was out of sight, and then lay back in her chair and laughed when her father glanced at her with a little grim smile.

“Savages, my dear!” he said.  “Still, their intentions are evidently kindly, which is unfortunate because it involves us in a difficulty.”

“A difficulty?”

Deringham nodded.  “I have a suspicion that our estimable kinsman, who seems to consider that what is good enough for Somasco should content anybody, might be offended if we slighted his hospitality, and that teapot apparently contains at least three pints of strong green tea,” he said.  “I do not know whether you feel equal to consuming half of it, but if it is the same as I had at breakfast I must be excused.  One could also fancy from their solidity that those cups had been intended for breaking stones with.”

“I can at least pour the tea over the balustrade,” said the girl.  “It is the bread that presents the difficulty.  It would crumble in your pocket, and you will presumably have to eat a little to save appearances.”

Deringham made a gesture of resignation.  “On condition that you do as much.  I am not going to be the only victim, though I fancy you could not crumble that bread in a stamp battery.  This meal, and what we have otherwise seen at Somasco, confirms my theory that the folks who make money in the Colonies could save as much, or more, in England if they lived in a similar fashion.”