"And that, too, though I have heard Maria speak of them—but vaguely.... Her information wasn't definite. The best way in these matters, if one wants to know about a thing, is to see for himself.... Look here, lassie,[17] supposing one were to quarrel with you, I wouldn't answer for the consequences!... And the beauty of it is, that their strength doesn't injure their elegance; they are muscular but well-shaped; ... they taper gracefully down to the wrist, which is slender and dainty. The truth is, that all things considered, a girl only fourteen has no right to have such arms as those!"
Marta suspended her work and burst into a merry peal of laughter.
"What a plague you are, child! there's no resisting you!"
Then her face once more resumed the placid, grave expression which characterized it, and she resumed her work, plunging again and again her firm, rosy fists into the pliant dough. The paste kept taking different forms under the steady pressure of the girl's small but strong hands. Sometimes it made a thick, short roll or cylinder, which, little by little, as it was worked over the table, kept growing longer and slenderer; again, it assumed the fashion of a great ball, the roundness of which Marta brought carefully to greater and greater perfection, until she suddenly fell upon it with both hands and flattened it out; at other times it presented the appearance of a thin sheet taking up half of the surface of the table, and which kept spreading more and more, until she began to double it over with repeated folds as one does with a garment; again, she built it up like a pyramid on the slopes of which the graceful little baker bestowed soft pats, as though she were caressing it, but not hesitating fiercely to tear it in pieces in order to give it immediately some new and capricious figure. When it seemed to her that the paste was sufficiently kneaded, she cut it into a number of lumps with a knife, and taking a wooden rolling-pin, she began to shape them with great care. Ricardo asked timidly,—
"Will you let me help you, Martita?"
"You don't know how."
"You can tell me what to do, and under your direction it will go first-rate."
"Now, you flatter me! All right, I'm willing; but you must wash your hands first."
Nothing was left for Ricardo but to go and wash his hands.
"That's good. Now take this rolling-pin and flatten out this lump of dough till you make it into a thin, round piece."