erence to his learning, she answered in kind,
floundering about in an absurd and unintelligible Castillian which made
people in the village laugh.

"See, _sinor Martines_, that jacknape of mine is driving me mad with all
his carrying on. I say to him, I say: 'Anything wrong in this house,
jail-bird? Well, then, why go tearing around with that gang of
good-for-nothings, who will die at the end of a rope, every one of
them!' now _oste sinor Martines_, you know how to talk in good grammar.
You just tell him what is what. You tell him they'll put him in the
lock-up at Valencia if he isn't a good boy."

And _sinor Martines_ promised to take the little rogue in hand, and he
did, in fact, give him a lecture, which reduced Tonet, for a moment at
least, to cowering in terror in the presence of that uniform and that
heavy gun, which the soldier would never let go of for an instant. These
slight favors gradually brought Martinez into the family, making his
relations with _sina_ Tona more and more intimate. He got his meals now
at the tavern, and spent most of his time there; and the mistress
finally had the pleasure of darning his stockings and sewing the buttons
on his underwear. Poor _sinor Martines_! What would happen to a fine
young man like him without a woman around? He would get to be as shabby
and disreputable as a stray cat. And, frankly, no decent lady could
allow that to happen!

Summer afternoons when the sun was beating full upon the deserted beach,
turning the baked sand into a fiery furnace, one scene would always be
enacted in the shade of the thatched roof of the tavern shelter.
Martinez would be seated on a reed stool with one elbow on the counter,
reading Perez Escrich, his favorite author, in bulging grimy volumes
with the corners worn down from having passed from patrol to patrol
along the coast. _Sina_ Tona was convinced at last. That was where he
got all those big words and that moral philosophy which stirred the
bottom of her soul; and she looked at the books with the superstitious
awe of an illiterate. Across the counter, mechanically sewing, without
thinking of what she was doing, she would sit looking at Martinez
fixedly, studying his thin blond mustache for half an hour at a time,
then the elegant lines of his nose for just as long, and finally the
exquisite skill with which he parted his hair, making two absolutely
even plasters of golden locks on either side.

Sometimes, on looking up at the botto