no longer. Four years after her marriage, Dolores was at last able to
announce the coming of an heir to the Rector's fortune; and the Rector,
with a silly smile on his moon-face, advertised the auspicious event on
every hand--and all his acquaintances were delighted, though they smiled
with a sly wink he did not notice. No one really knew, to be sure. But
funny, wasn't it! That rather deliberate decision of Dolores
corresponded strangely with the time Tonet had become a less frequent
visitor to the cafe and had begun to spend more of his time in his
brother's house.

The two women now spoke their minds with the savage frankness of their
station. The breach between them became permanent. Tonet kept going to
the Rector's place, but alone; and that made Rosario very angry, and the
quarrels in her home now ended always in ferocious cudgelings. And the
time came when Rosario began to say openly that the baby looked like
Tonet. Her husband meanwhile stuck closer than ever to the Rector, who
had revived his old fondness for his younger brother, letting himself be
sponged on in spite of his tight-fistedness. The pretty daughter of
_tio_ Paella poked biting fun at that wreck she had for a sister-in-law,
that old hen, quite _passee_, poor as a rat, a mere day laborer of the
meanest kind, who couldn't hang on to the man she had married! Tonet, in
fact, as in earlier days, was again following Dolores around like an
obedient dog, sitting up when he was told to sit up, and charging when
he was told to charge.

A withering blast of relentless hatred, of flaying jest and stinging
insolence, swept from the old home of _tio_ Paella, now repainted and
with a new ell, toward the wretched tumble-down shack where Rosario had
finally taken refuge in her penury. And well-meaning busybodies, with
the holiest good-will toward both, kept telling what Rosario had said
about Dolores and what Dolores had said about Rosario, taking care that
every apostrophe should reach its destination and receive its fit reply.

When Rosario, flaming with anger and weeping from sheer despair, would
simply have to tell some one of her troubles, she would go off to the
tavern-boat, which, like its mistress, was also aging rapidly with the
years. There she would be listened to in silence, with an expression of
sorrow, or a shake of the head from _sina_ Tona and Roseta, who were
living on in sullen antipathy toward one another in spite of their
relationship, agreein