sed. And, while the little,
laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when
they are in a troupe, assume ordinarily to interpellate boys,
these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic
sound.--Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from
Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little
King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account,
they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this
debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in
different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current. They
were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of
copper. They made all this fall like rain on the antique granite of the
benches, at the feet of the amused girls, asking them to keep and count
it for them; then, after wiping their foreheads and puffing a little,
they began to play and to jump, being light now and lighter than
ordinarily, their overload being disposed of.

Except three or four children of the school who ran like young cats
after the lost pelotas, there were only the girls, seated in a group on
the lowest one of these deserted steps, the old, reddish stones of
which bore at this moment their herbs and their flowers of April. Calico
gowns, clear white or pink waists, they were all the gaiety of this
solemnly sad place. Beside Gracieuse was Pantchika Dargaignaratz,
another fifteen year old blonde, who was engaged to Arrochkoa and would
soon marry him, for he, being the son of a widow, had not to serve in
the army. And, criticizing the players, placing in lines on the granite
rows of piled-up copper cents, they laughed, they whispered, in their
chanted accent, with ends of syllables in "rra" or in "rrik," making the
"r's" roll so sharply that one would have thought every instant sparrows
were beating their wings in their mouths.

They also, the boys, were laughing, and they came frequently, under
the pretext of resting, to sit among the girls. These troubled and
intimidated them three times more than the public, because they mocked
so!

Ramuntcho learned from his little betrothed something which he would not
have dared to hope for: she had obtained her mother's permission to
go to that festival of Erribiague, see the ball-game and visit that
country, which she did not know. It was agreed that she should go in a
carriage, with Pantchika and Madame