"How absurd you are! I said nothing of the kind! It was you who said that the gentleman was a Lutheran atheist, and that he enters the cathedral smoking and with his hat on."
"Well, I didn't invent it; that is what Suspiritos told me yesterday."
"And who is this Suspiritos who says such absurd things about me?"
"Suspiritos is--Suspiritos."
"Girls," said Tafetan, with smiling countenance, "there goes the orange-vender. Call him; I want to invite you to eat oranges."
One of the girls called the orange-vender.
The conversation started by the Troyas displeased Pepe Rey not a little, dispelling the slight feeling of contentment which he had experienced at finding himself in such gay and communicative company.
He could not, however, refrain from smiling when he saw Don Juan Tafetan take down a guitar and begin to play upon it with all the grace and skill of his youthful years.
"I have been told that you sing beautifully," said Rey to the girls.
"Let Don Juan Tafetan sing."
"I don't sing."
"Nor I," said the second of the girls, offering the engineer some pieces of the skin of the orange she had just peeled.
"Maria Juana, don't leave your sewing," said the eldest of the Troyas.
"It is late, and the cassock must be finished to-night."
"There is to be no work to-day. To the devil with the needles!" exclaimed Tafetan.
And he began to sing a song.
"The people are stopping in the street," said the second of the girls, going out on the balcony. "Don Juan Tafetan's shouts can be heard in the Plaza--Juana, Juana!"
"Well?"
"Suspiritos is walking down the street."
"Throw a piece of orange-peel at her."
Pepe Rey looked out also; he saw a lady walking down the street at whom the youngest of the Troyas, taking a skilful aim, threw a large piece of orange-peel, which struck her straight on the back of the head. Then they hastily closed the blinds, and the three girls tried to stifle their laughter so that it might not be heard in the street.
"There is no work to-day," cried one, overturning the sewing-basket with the tip of her shoe.
"That is the same as saying, to-morrow there is to be no eating," said the eldest, gathering up the sewing implements.
Pepe Rey instinctively put his hand into his pocket. He would gladly have given them an alms. The spectacle of these poor orphans, condemned by the world because of their frivolity, saddened him beyond measure.
If the only sin of the Troyas, if the only pleasure which they had to compensate them for solitude, poverty, and neglect, was to throw orange-peels at the passers-by, they might well be excused for doing it. The austere customs of the town in which they lived had perhaps preserved them from vice, but the unfortunate girls lacked decorum and good-breeding, the common and most visible signs of modesty, and it might easily be supposed that they had thrown out of the window something more than orange-peels. Pepe Rey felt profound pity for them.
He noted their shabby dresses, made over, mended, trimmed, and retrimmed, to make them look like new; he noted their broken shoes--and once more he put his hand in his pocket.
"Vice may reign here," he said to himself, "but the faces, the furniture, all show that this is the wreck of a respectable family. If these poor girls were as bad as it is said they are, they would not live in such poverty and they would not work. In Orbajosa there are rich men."
The three girls went back and forward between him and the window, keeping up a gay and sprightly conversation, which indicated, it must be said, a species of innocence in the midst of all their frivolity and unconventionality.
"Senor Don Jose, what an excellent lady Dona Perfecta is!"
"She is the only person in Orbajosa who has no nickname, the only person in Orbajosa who is not spoken ill of."
"Every one respects her."
"Every one adores her."
To these utterances the young man responded by praises of his aunt, but he had no longer any inclination to take money from his pocket and say, "Maria Juana, take this for a pair of boots." "Pepa, take this to buy a dress for yourself." "Florentina, take this to provide yourself with a week's provisions," as he had been on the point of doing. At a moment when the three girls had run out to the balcony to see who was passing, Don Juan Tafetan approached Rey and whispered to him:
"How pretty they are! Are they not? Poor things! It seems impossible that they should be so gay when it may be positively affirmed that they have not dined to-day."
"Don Juan, Don Juan!" cried Pepilla. "Here comes a friend of yours, Nicolasito Hernandez, in other words, Cirio Pascual, with this three-story hat. He is praying to himself, no doubt, for the souls of those whom he has sent to the grave with his extortion."
"I wager that neither of you will dare to call him by his nickname."
"It is a bet."
"Juana, shut the blinds, wait until he passes, and when he is turning the corner, I will call out, 'Cirio, Cirio Pascual!' "
Don Juan Tafetan ran out to the balcony.
"Come here, Don Jose, so that you may know this type," he called.
Pepe Rey, availing himself of the moment in which the three girls and Don Juan were making merry in the balcony, calling Nicolasito Hernandez the nickname which so greatly enraged him, stepped cautiously to one of the sewing baskets in the room and placed in it a half ounce which he had left after his losses at play.
Then he hurried out to the balcony just as the two youngest cried in the midst of wild bursts of laughter, "Cirio, Cirio Pascual!"
