irl!
That girl! What a keen one! She had caught everything at a glance! And
the skipper, to get out of his hole, fell back on violence. "Good God!
Have you got ears on your head? Give me a glass, I said." And a glass,
for that matter, he really needed, to dispel the mortal lethargy that
had settled on his whole body. A sober man he was! But he would drink,
and drink and drink till he was drunk, and drown his torpor in alcohol!

And he downed a glass. And then another, and still a third, one gulp to
each. His sister passed the drinks across the counter, but her eyes were
still fixed upon him, as though she could read everything that had
happened written out on his features in black and white. But he was
feeling better, so much better! Nothing like _aguardiente_, to brace a
fellow up! The damp chill of morning seemed to be burning off, all of a
sudden, and a pleasant tingling began to run up and down just under his
skin. The humor of the situation caught him now. How funny he must have
looked beating it down the street as though the devil were after him,
puffing like a porpoise! And then the world took on a rosy hue. He must
be a good fellow, love everybody, and beginning with that girl there,
his sister, who, for her part, had not taken her eyes off him once.

"Yes, why not tell the truth! You're the real credit to our family,
Roseta girl! The rest of us? Hogs, hogs, beginning with me! Me! No,
Roseta, you're all there--something nice, delicate-like, about you. You
see through things, with the cleverest of them. But you say things--oh,
I don't know--you say things, diplomatic-like, so's they don't come down
on a fellow like a thousand of brick! Oh, I remember, I do! On the way
home through the Grao, that day! Other people, they just rub it in, till
you're ready to damn your soul. But it's what you've got up here, up
here! Brains you've got, brains! You were right all these years. Scamps
and puddingheads, puddingheads and scamps! And you're going at it right,
I say. You keep the men away. You don't slobber all over them, and then
lie to them, and make donkeys of them, and ruin them. No, you're a real
girl, Roseta, better than the best of them."

With that liquid fire on his empty stomach, the Rector grew more and
more emphatic as he talked on. His arms began to gesticulate, and his
voice rose and rose, till his words were audible yards away.

"Is that you, Pascualo?" The call came from behind the curtains in
_Sina_ Tona