The chula, during this exchange of compliments, was becoming softened. Enrique, after respectfully asking permission, was allowed to enter the shop, and sit down to drink a tumbler of milk.
And in good fellowship and sociability, the lieutenant began to flirt with her in fine style, and the girl to answer him curtly, though she could not help feeling that it was rather good fun to be courted by a military gentleman.[30]
Enrique made himself liked by his frank and optimistic disposition. Manolita, finding him just as ugly as before, began to be attracted toward him.
"Why not tell the truth?" she said; "you are homely, but you have a something ... come now!... peculiar."
"Yes, I know that," responded the lieutenant, gravely; "I am homely, but graceful."
"No, you aren't graceful either!" exclaimed the chula, laughing.
"Well, I am beginning to get into your good graces, if I am not graceful."
"That's so."
After they had got deeply interested in conversation, suddenly heavy and clattering steps were heard in the back shop, and a man, or, more accurately speaking, a one-eyed giant, appeared at the rear door in his shirt-sleeves, in gray woollen trousers, a red belt, and a flat Biscayan cap; his face was as ugly and frightful as that of his ancestors, the Cyclops.
After casting a grim look around the room, without seeing Enrique, or apparently not seeing him, he uttered several grunts, staggered toward the counter, and fixing his vitreous, angry eye on the polished silk hat which the lieutenant had laid on it, he picked it up gingerly in his monstrous hands, examined it curiously, like a naturalist who has just stumbled upon some new zoöphyte, while something that tried to be a smile, but succeeded in being only a horrible grimace, vexed his thick, livid lips.