in
_senorita_ style, their skirts of bright batiste gathered up to hold
their purchases and showing fine stockings and tight-fitting shoes
underneath. Tanned faces and rough hands were the only signs to betray
the rustic origin of the girls; because those were prosperous days for
the orange growers of the District.

Along the walls hens were clucking, ranged in piles and tied together by
the feet. Here and there were pyramids of eggs, vegetables, fruit. In
"shops" that were set up in the morning and taken down at night,
drygoods dealers were selling colored sashes, strips of cotton cloth and
calico, and black woolsey, the eternal garb of every native of the
Jucar valley. Beyond the Prado, in _El Alborchi_, was the hog market;
and then came the _Hostal Gran_ where horses were tried out. On
Wednesdays all the business of the neighborhood was transacted--money
borrowed or paid back, poultry stocks replenished, hogs bought to fatten
on the farms, whole families anxiously following their progress; and new
cart-horses, especially, the matter of greatest concern to the farmers,
secured on mortgage, usually, or with cash saved up by desperate
hoarding.

Though the sun had barely risen, the crowd, smelling of sweat and soil,
already filled the market place with busy going and coming. The
orchard-women embraced as they met, and with their heavy baskets propped
on their hips, went into the chocolate shops to celebrate the encounter.
The men gathered in groups; and from time to time, to "buck up" a
little, would go off in parties to swallow a glass of sweet brandy. In
and out among the rustics walked the city people: "petty bourgeois" of
set manners, with old capes, and huge hempen baskets, where they would
place the provisions they had bought after tenacious hagglings;
_senoritas_, who found in these Wednesday markets a welcome relief from
the monotony of their secluded life at home; idlers who spent hour after
hour at the stall of some vendor friend, prying into what each marketer
carried in his basket, grumbling at the stinginess of some and praising
the generosity of others.

Rafael gazed at his friend in sheer astonishment. What a beauty she was!
Who could ever have taken her, in that costume, for a world-famous prima
donna!

Leonora looked the living picture of an orchard girl: a plain cotton
dress, in anticipation of spring; a red kerchief around her neck; her
blond hair uncovered, combed back with artful carelessness a