16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
ance as he took to Eduardo. To be sure, he
had always liked the friendly, straightforward,
wholly unaffected young on those few occasions
he had met them, but here these rare
and amiable qualities were combined with a
deep interest in living things, birds, animals,
reptiles, even plants, and a surprising knowledge
of those of his own immense and immensely
varied country. Not that Eduardo was
so very young, either – such a mass of experience
could not be accumulated in a few years
– but he had retained the directness, modesty
and simplicity that so often disappear as time
goes on. Furthermore he spoke a perfectly fluent
but agreeably accented Spanish filled with
pleasant archaisms, which reminded Stephen
of the English in the former northern colonies;
though Eduardo's language lacked the somewhat
metallic overtones of Boston.
They sat in the cloister with their backs to the