“Now then, Facunda, make haste, Señor Don Leon will be in soon from his ride and he will be put out if his room is not done. Though, Lord knows, he is never put out! A better man never was born. ‘Good day, Facunda; have you fed your poultry? And Señor Trompeta, how is he?’—‘Pretty well, thank you Señor Don Leon!’—And that is all we have to say to each other. Well, well ... and only yesterday Trompeta was saying there must be two hundred books here; more like two thousand! Señor Don Leon Roch—it is a queer common sort of name—as common as ours.—Every time he goes to Madrid, he brings back a whole carriage full of books and then he makes these pictures. Señor Don Leon, I wish you would tell me what is the use of them? They are pretty too. Red and green lines, and spots, and splashes of every colour. Now if I could only read I might know all about it, for here, at the edge, there are letters and words scribbled....
“But come, woman! What are you about Facunda, gaping and dawdling like a booby? Make haste and sweep and clear up before the master comes. Then you can go down to the kitchen and eat the slice of ham that is frizzling in the pan; and then take a turn in the sun!”
The speaker was Dame Facunda Trompeta, whose habit it was to talk to herself whenever she was alone, addressing herself by name and praising or scolding herself in turns. Even when she did not actually express herself in words she did by gesture and grimace. She was the happy wife of José Trompeta, a worthy coal merchant of Madrid, who, having made a humble fortune by his trade, had retired to Carabanchel to spend the rest of his days in peace. No life could in fact be more peaceful and quiet than that of these two childless old folks. They were both easy-tempered creatures and took affectionate care of each other in their old age, with a kindly and respectful tenderness that defied the chill of advancing years. They had bought the little house of which they occupied the ground floor, letting the upper part at a fair profit to some of the swarming families of the city who fled from the whooping-cough or the measles.
In the beginning of April these rooms had been taken by a gentleman, who had previously been very often to the great house of Suertebella and who seemed to be a man of distinguished education, though he hardly ever laughed and spoke as rarely as possible. The room Leon had taken was spacious but bare; it might have been a prior’s cell, lofty, airy and old-fashioned. From the windows to the east the trees of Vista Alegre were visible in the distance, and in the foreground the park of Suertebella; between this and the Trompeta’s little court-yard, there was a gate in the wall, which almost always stood open. To the west lay the picturesque road through Upper Carabanchel with the park of La Montija, and the blue undulations and green levels of a country which, from March till the beginning of June, is not without a charm of its own. Out of this large room, which served as drawing-room, dining-room and study, opened a bed-room and two other tiny rooms, in one of which his servant slept. A few articles of furniture brought from Madrid, with books, geological specimens, prints, maps, an easel with paints and portfolios, a microscope, some geological hammers, a simple chemical apparatus for analysis by evaporation and the blow-pipe, filled the large room.
“There, now your room is ready and you can come in as soon as you like,” said Facunda dropping into the student’s arm-chair; “you cannot complain of my having turned your things topsy-turvy.” For the worthy woman not only talked to herself, but addressed remarks to the absent. “And tell me, Señor Don Leon, if you please, is it true that formerly you used to go to dine frequently at Suertebella? Though you now go there very seldom it strikes me that you admire the Señorita Marquesa more than enough. She is so rich that her not being handsome does not matter. You keep away from the great house at present because she is in mourning. I know, I know what you fine folks are!...” And Facunda paused, for she not only addressed her invisible interlocutors but imagined their answers. It was not a harangue but a discussion.
“What do you say? I am talking nonsense? Is it not a fact that you are sweet upon the lady? All that courting of the child, what does that mean; you may talk—San Blas! but if you were not a married man.... However, you fine gentlemen are not so very particular. Don’t talk to me; I was in service for twenty years with a countess, and I could tell you things!... But come, come, Facunda, what are you doing idling here? Stir about, woman, trot round. You have not got the puchero on yet.... Hark! what is that? What a noise, who can it be?”
On the stairs there was a clatter of baby laughter and the busy patter of little feet. Monina, Tachana and Guru, after playing in the grounds, had wandered into the cow-yard and through the gate into the Trompetas’ little plot, and finding themselves there they had set their hearts on a regular exploration of the house, Monina’s nurse following in their wake.
We have already made acquaintance with Monina, but Tachana and Guru are strangers. Tachana, a young person of three, was the daughter of the bailiff at Suertebella, Catalina by name, with a sweet little face and a shy, quiet manner; she was Ramona’s companion in all her games, and though they quarrelled on an average three times an hour—not unfrequently fighting like infant furies—they were the best friends in the world, and either of them would cry bitterly if the other were threatened with punishment. It is easy to understand how, by the process of transformation that words undergo in baby mouths, Catalina or Catana had become Tachana, what is less intelligible is how a boy christened Lorenzo, came to be called Guru; but so it was, and even stranger travesties of names have been known. Guru, who was Tachana’s brother, was nearly six, he was as grave and demure as his sister, an unusually thoughtful but a fine, handsome boy, and the pride of his father—with a sweetheart, and a watch, and a little great coat, and a stick—and he always spoke of the two younger children as ‘the girls.’
“Facunda,” said the voice of the nurse from below, “the locusts are upon you. Mind, they do no mischief.”