"It will be so refreshing just before supper," said Mrs.
Maynadier, who was more conservative.
So the Indian, who had put on his dark blue waist-band (or sash),
made from flannel, revelled out and twisted into strands of yarn,
and which showed the supple muscles of his clean-cut thighs, and
who had done up an extra high pompadour in white clay, and
burnished his knife, which gleamed at his waist, ushered these
Washington women into a small apartment adjoining the bath-room,
and turned on the inky stream into the sarcophagus.
The Staff beauty looked at the black pool, and shuddered. "Do you
use it?" said she.
"Occasionally," I equivocated.
"Does it hurt the complexion?" she ventured.
"Jack thinks it excellent for that," I replied.
And then I left them, directing Charley to wait, and prepare the
bath for the second victim.
By and by the beauty came out. "Where is your mirror ?" cried she
(for our appointments were primitive, and mirrors did not grow on
bushes at Ehrenberg); "I fancy I look queer," she added, and, in
truth, she did; for our water of the Styx did not seem to
affiliate with the chemical properties of the numerous cosmetics
used by her, more or less, all her life, but especially on the
voyage, and her face had taken on a queer color, with peculiar
spots here and there.
Fortunately my mirrors were neither large nor true, and she never
really saw how she looked, but when she came back into the
living-room, she laughed and said to Jack: "What kind of water
did you say that was? I never saw any just like it."
"Oh! you have probably never been much to the sulphur springs,"
said he, with his most superior and crushing manner.
"Perhaps not," she replied, "but I thought I knew something about
it; why, my entire body turned such a queer color."
"Oh! it always does that," said this optimistic soldier man, "and
that shows it is doing good."
The Paymaster's wife joined us later. I think she had profited by
the beauty's experience, for she said but little.
The Quartermaster was happy; and what if his wife did not believe
in that uncanny stream which flowed somewhere from out the
infernal regions, underlying that wretched hamlet, he had
succeeded in being a benefactor to two travellers at least!
We had a merry supper: cold ham, chicken, and fresh biscuit, a
plenty of good Cocomonga wine, sweet milk, which to be sure
turned to curds as it stood on the table, some sort of preserves
from a tin, and good coffee. I gave them the best to be had in
the desert - and at all events it was a change from the Chinaman's
salt beef and peach pies, and they saw fresh table linen and
shining silver, and accepted our simple hospitality in the spirit
in which we gave it.
