"Come, you are just like my daughter and her husband," said Señora de Frias.
"Not so bad, not so bad, Pepa!" Ramirez put in, with affected horror.
"What a shameless fellow you are!" exclaimed the lady, trying to control her laughter, which ill-matched her affectation of wrath. "They are just like you two, for they are always squabbling and making it up again."
And then she went on to describe in racy terms her daughter's married life. She and her husband alike were a couple of children, dear children, but quite insupportable. If he did not hand her a dish as quickly as she expected, or had not poured her out a glass of water; if his shirt-buttons were off, or his clothes not brushed; or if there was too much oil in the salad, there were frightful rows. They were both equally susceptible and touchy. Sometimes they did not exchange a word for a week at a time, and to carry on the affairs of life they would write little notes to each other in the most distant terms: "Asuncion has asked me to go with her to the play at eight o'clock. Is there any objection to my going?" she would write, and leave the note on his study-table.
"You may go wherever you choose," he would reply in the same way.
"What will you have for dinner, to-morrow; do you like pickled tongue?"
"You ought to know by this time that I never eat tongue. Do me the favour to order the cook to get some fish; but not fresh anchovies, as we had them the other day; and desire her not to burn the fritters."
Neither of them chose to give way to the other, so that this nonsense would go on indefinitely, till she, Pepa, took them both by the ears, gave them a piece of her mind and obliged them to make it up. Then they went to the other extreme in their reconciliation.
"Do you know, Pepa, that I should not care to be there at the moment of reconciliation?" said Cobo, with another outburst of malignant vulgarity.
"Nor I, my friend," she replied with a sigh of resignation, that was very laughable. "But, what can I do? I am a mother-in-law, which is the lowest function one can fill in this world, and I must endure that penance and many more of which you know nothing."