"The very same.... Why didn't you like it that the villain was here? eh, you rogue!" she added, giving him a tender hug.
"And what brought the curé?" asked Miguel, in his turn parrying his wife's question.
"To put us down in his book.... I could not help laughing a little.... I opened the door for him, and he said to me: 'Holá, child! go and tell your mamma the rector of Chamberí is here.'—'I haven't any mamma,' said I.—'Then tell the lady of the house.'—'I am she,' I told him, half dead with mortification. He began to cross himself, saying, 'Ave María! Ave María! what a little, young thing!' He was still more surprised to know that we had been married two years and three months."
"That's natural enough,—with that smooth, round, baby cheek of yours, you would deceive any one."
"It is absurd; I am not a child any longer: I shall be eighteen next month."
Before going to bed, they put out the lights and opened the balcony window to enjoy for a little while the spectacle of the starry sky.
It was a clear, mild night toward the last of April. As they were on the third floor, and the section of the city where they lived was less built up, they could see more than half of the heavenly vault. As they stood together, Maximina leaning her arm on her husband's shoulder, they silently contemplated for a long time that sight which will forever be the most sublime of all.
"How large and beautiful that star is, Miguel. What a pure, bright light it gives!" said Maximina, pointing to the sky.
"That is Sirius. In the books of antiquity it is said that it used to shine with a red light. However, it is not any greater or more beautiful than the others, except that it is not so far away: it is one of three nearest to us."
"Though Sister San Onofre kept telling us that the earth was a star like those, only still smaller, I can never seem to believe it."