In fact, he did not return ... until the next day; but he went dressed de corto, that is to say, in short jacket, tight pantaloons, and sombrero.
"See here, señorito, are you going to the slaughterhouse to skin something?" asked Manolita, as soon as she saw him in that rig.
And then began their skirmish of love-making; he making use of all the honied words at his command, she replying to each loving phrase with a proud, tierce parry.
Enrique was not foiled by that, and he was right. By the example of her young girl friends and companions, and by her rude training, the chula was armed with a tough bark full of thorns; but God knew well, and Enrique likewise knew, that at heart she was a poor girl, good, industrious, long-suffering, ignorant as a fish, and more innocent in certain respects than might have been supposed from her speech and behavior.
She had lost her mother about two years before; her sister had married a farmer, and lived out toward Las Vistillas. She herself lived with her father, who was a Vizcaïno,[31] who had been established in Madrid for many years in a little house with two rooms facing the corral where the cows were kept.
She was a genuine Madrileña to the extent of never having even set foot on a railway train, or having in her walks gone farther than Carabanchel.
The Vizcaïno, since the death of his wife, who had exercised a restraining influence upon him, had been taking more and more desperately to drinking habits, and treated his daughter very brutally. But even in her mother's lifetime she had become so accustomed to cruel treatment that it had never once occurred to her that she was living a very unhappy life; and when one day Enrique spoke of it in that way, after one of those barbarous deeds which the dairyman frequently committed, she looked at him in surprise and said, 'yes, that he was right, that she was very miserable'; but her tone seemed to say, "Man alive! don't you know that it isn't my fault?"
As day after day went by, Enrique, constantly visiting at the "dairy," enduring the freshnesses, the pushing, and occasionally even the slaps of this gentlest of chulas, when he went beyond the bounds of reason, spent his time very pleasantly in the toils of his love.
At first he had a few unpleasant encounters with the brute of a father; but afterwards they became great friends as soon as the dairyman discovered that the señorito knew a thing or two about bulls, that he had himself taken part in bull-fights, and was a great friend of the most famous espadas, to whom the plebeians of Madrid offer fervid worship.
When he came into the shop drunk, Enrique would take his hat and go, and the other was not in the least offended at him for it; in this way he avoided any collision with him. He spent not less than two hours every afternoon talking with Manolita; in the evening, after the shop was closed, he escorted her to the cafés to collect for the milk that they had used during the day; he would wait for her at the door while she settled her accounts with the proprietor.