ge is certainly coming, and coming fast. So I tell you again
we've got to save something.

"If we do, when I can no longer run an engine I'll open a little
machine-shop; and if I should die suddenly, leaving you fifteen or
twenty thousand _pesetas_,[A] you could easily start a good laundry in
some central location, for that's the kind of work you understand."

[A] Three or four thousand dollars.

To all this Zureda added a number of other arguments, discreet and
weighty, so that his wife declared herself convinced. The engineer
already had a plan laid out, that made him talk this way. Among the
people who had come to see him, while he had been sick, was one Manolo
Berlanga, whose friendship with him had been brotherly indeed. This
Berlanga had a job at a silversmith's shop in the Paseo de San Vincente.
He had no relatives, and made rather decent wages. A good many times he
had told Zureda how much he wanted to find some respectable house where
he could live in a decent, private way, paying perhaps four or five
pesetas a day for board and room.

"Suppose, now," went on Amadeo, "that Manolo should pay five pesetas a
day; that's thirty _duros_ a month--thirty good dollars--and the house
costs us eight dollars. Well, that leaves us twenty-two dollars a month,
and with that, and a few dollars that I'll put in, we can all live
high."

To this Rafaela consented, rather stirred by the new ideas awakened by
the innovation. The silversmith was a free-and-easy, agreeable young
fellow, who chattered all the time and played the guitar in no mean
fashion.

"Yes, but how about a place for him?" asked she. "Is there any? What
room could we give him?"

"Why, the little alcove off the dining-room, of course."

"Yes, I was thinking of that, too. But it's mighty small, and there's no
light in it."

The engineer shrugged his shoulders.

"It's good enough just to sleep in!" he exclaimed. "If we were dealing
with a woman, that would be different. But we men get along any old way,
all right."

Rafaela wrote to Berlanga next day, at her husband's request, telling
him to come and see them. Promptly on the dot the silversmith arrived.
He looked about twenty-eight, wore tightly-belted velveteen trousers
gaitered under the shoe, and a dark overcoat with astrakhan collar and
cuffs. He was of middle height, lean, pale-faced, with a restless
manner, a fluent, witty way of talking. On some pretext or other the
wife went out, leaving the