the routine of daily toil, or with the
stevedores he used to work with in Valencia, Tonet looked like an
aristocrat to the girls of the Cabanal, with his palish-dark face, his
carefully curled mustache, his hands clean and well manicured, his hair
sleek and neatly brushed with a parting in the middle and--pasted down
on his forehead--two cowlicks just visible under a silk cap!

_Sina_ Tona, for her part, was quite satisfied with her boy. As much of
a scamp as ever, but he had himself more in hand, and it was evident
that the navy discipline had done him good. The same old Tonet, but he
had been taught to dress better and cleaner, and he could drink without
drinking too much. A dandy still, but not sure to be getting into jail
every other minute, and less bent on venting the caprices of a
law-breaking daredevil than on satisfying the selfish cravings of a
rake!

Proof of such progress was that he now took kindly to his mother's
suggestions. Marry Rosario? No objection! Good girl, and a penny or two,
that would be just the thing for a man of ideas, and the brains to carry
them out. Money, after all, was what he needed. You couldn't expect a
fellow fresh from the Royal Navy to go back to lugging bags and boxes on
a wharf! Anything but that! And to _sina_ Tona's unbounded delight,
Tonet took Rosario to wife.

Everything went finely. That was a handsome pair now, wasn't it?--a tiny
little thing, Rosario, timid, obedient, believing in her husband as she
believed in God; and Tonet, proud of his good luck, carrying himself as
stiffly as if, under his flannel shirt, he had a coat-of-mail, made of
his wife's silver dollars, dispensing favors to right and left, living
like a village squire, smoking his pipe all afternoon and evening in the
tavern, and sporting long rubber boots on days when it rained!

Dolores showed no trace of emotion in the presence of her former
sweetheart--only in her domineering eyes one might have seen an intenser
sparkle, a glint of golden fire,--telltale evidence of yearnings
unconfessed. And a happy year went rapidly by. But the money which penny
by penny had been painfully assembled in the wretched store where
Rosario had been born, streamed away between the fingers of the
spendthrift husband; and the cow was running dry, as the mistress of the
tavern-boat observed to her son one day, in a lecture on prodigality.

Along with poverty, discord, tears, and finally the flying fist entered
Tenet's hous