"Well, come along you great greedy creature," said Concha putting the book and whalebone on the chair, and going in a petulant way to the dresser.
They quite understood each other these two. The needlewoman was hard, cruel, and stubborn, but the majordomo knew how to get at the few grains of good humour she had. He teased her unmercifully, he pinched her when she passed by him, and said a thousand coarse, shameless things to her which she knew how to take in the opposite sense. And the dwarfish maid, who was neither kind nor pretty, and whose cruel nature had choked every germ of pleasantness and transformed her into a priestess of misery, a fatal, pitiless Eumenide, was pleasant and obliging to that brute. She admired his bearish manners, his roughness, his greediness, and his insolent, careless way of treating everybody, including the pompous Señor de Quiñones. Manin was a solemn-faced rogue with his shameful rudeness, his deportment of a brave hunter of wild beasts. Sly-faced rogue! for with all his shameless rudeness, his posing as a hunter of wild beasts, and his slovenly dress, he had known how to take life easily in this world without spoiling his hands, nor hurting his back by hard work in his village. The needlewoman fetched a plate of cold meat and put it on the oilcloth of the table without any apology for a serviette; then she cut half a loaf and left him with the indispensable bottle of white wine and a glass by the side of the meat. Concha then re-seated herself, and the child approaching repeated the words that she had just said. In a few moments, zas! a blow with the whalebone and a cry of pain. Immediately afterwards another blow and another cry, and so it went on. The needlewoman was delighted that she stumbled more than usual. Manin devoured his food in silence, only occasionally turning his head with marked indifference towards the sad scene. Soon he began murmuring at every blow like a machine:
"Give it! Go it! That was good! There's a blow!" and other similar exclamations.
The sacred history lesson came to an end, and there was a respite before taking the grammar, when the maid began joking cheerfully with the majordomo. She was in an angelic humour.
"Did you ever see such meat?"
"Fine, truely fine."
"The worst of it is it will spoil your appetite for dinner."
Whereupon the room then vibrated with the fellow's laughter.
"This? Yes! It would be something for me to lose my appetite. You will have to put a hot iron in the water, like you do for the señora."
"I would put it on your body, you great pig."