Into the village so thickly embowered in trees, they entered to find the streets paved as roughly as the roads. The quiet of late afternoon was upon the place and the bells of the church were ringing the Angelus.
"It is to our cousin Prudencia that we go," Rodrigo told Anita as they turned up a narrow lane, and finally came upon a gate set in one of the high walls between which they had been walking. Inside the gate was a typical homestead of northern Spain; a garden of flowers, apple trees neighboring orange and lemon boughs, chestnuts elbowing figs, geraniums as high as your head, roses, heliotrope making the air sweet, carnations swinging from balconies, an orio for corn, a cow stable, hen house and pigeon cote annexed to the house whose red tiled roof rose but a story higher. A brick-paved lower floor showed dining room and kitchen, in the latter an altar-like structure where a charcoal fire served for cooking all meals. Upstairs the sala and bedrooms with balconies before them and windows looking out upon the garden and beyond through the close clustering trees to the sea.
At the door they were met by Doña Prudencia, dignified, calm, stately. "These are our cousins, Catalina and Anita." Doña Benilda presented them.
Doña Prudencia kissed them on either cheek and ushered them into the house. "The wife and daughter of José Maria, my childhood's friend and companion," she said thoughtfully. "Ai, Ai, poor José Maria!" She crossed herself solemnly and sat gazing abstractedly out of the window. It was rather an awkward moment, for Mrs. Beltrán was well aware that no good report of her had reached her husband's relatives in those early days of their first separation, and she was not at all sure what prejudices they might still hold.
The interview was interrupted by the entrance of a dark-skinned, blue-eyed girl about Anita's age. "My daughter, Amparo," said Doña Prudencia.
After the usual cousinly greeting the two girls smiled at each other and Anita felt that she should like this cousin.
"You must be ready for a merienda," said Amparo, leading the way to a room where cakes and chocolate were ready to be served. "We have been expecting you all afternoon, Benilda, and you, Rodrigo. Why were you so late?"
"We stopped to look at the old church," Rodrigo explained, "and our cousins are not used to these rough roads."
Then the talk was of generalities and the main object of the visit was obliged to wait a later hour.