Looking back at this distance of time it strikes me when I come to
think of it, that it was a most extraordinary _menage_, a collection
of the most incongruous beings it would be possible to bring together
--a sort of Happy Family in the zoological sense. It did not seem so
at the time, when in any house on the wide pampas one would meet with
people whose lives and characters would be regarded in civilized
countries as exceedingly odd and almost incredible.
It was a red-letter day to us children when, about once a month, we
were packed into a trap and driven with our parents to spend a day at
Casa Antigua. The dinner at noon was the most gorgeous affair of the
kind we knew. One of Mr. Royd's enthusiasms was cookery--the making of
rare and delicate dishes--and the servants had been taught so well
that we used to be amazed at the richness and profusion of the repast.
These dinners were to us like the "collations" and feasts so minutely
and lovingly described in the _Arabian Nights_, especially that dinner
of many courses given by the Barmecide to his hungry guest which
followed the first tantalizing imaginary one. The wonder was that any
man in the position of a sheep-farmer in a semi-barbarous land, far
from any town, could provide such dinners for his visitors.
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