After passing in front of the furnaces, where the heat made them hurry on, the doctor perceived a house which was no less dingy and smoky than the others, and at the same instant he heard a piano being played with a vigor bordering on frenzy.
"We have music here. I recognize my sister-in-law's touch and execution."
"It is Señorita Sofía who is playing," said María.
The lights of a busy household shone in the windows, and the balcony on the ground-floor was wide open. A small spark was visible, the spark of a cigar. Before the doctor could reach the spot, the spark flew off, describing a parabola of fire, and breaking into a thousand twinkling specks—the smoker had shaken the end off.
"There is that everlasting smoker!" cried the doctor, in a tone of affectionate delight. "Cárlos, Cárlos!"
"Teodoro!" exclaimed a voice from the balcony. The piano ceased like a singing-bird scared by a noise. Steps sounded through the house. The doctor gave his guide a silver coin, and ran up to the door.
[CHAPTER IV.]
STONY HEARTS.
Retracing her steps and jumping over the obstacles in her path, Nela made her way to a house on the left of the machine-sheds, and close to the stables where the sixty mules belonging to the establishment stood in grave meditation. The residence of the overseer, though of modern construction, was neither elegant nor even commodious. The roof was low, and it was too small by far to give adequate shelter to the parent couple of the Centenos—to their four children—to their cat—and to Nela into the bargain; but it figured, nevertheless, on the parchment plans of the settlement under the ostentatious name of "overseer's residence."
Inside, the house seemed to afford a practical illustration of the saying which we have already heard so emphatically stated by Marianela; namely, that she, Marianela, was of no good to anyone, only in the way. Somehow, in there, room was found for everything—for the father and mother, for their sons and their sons' tools, for a heap of rubbish, of the use of which no irrefragable proof has been found, for the cat, for the dish off which the cat was fed, for Tanasio's guitar, for the materials of which Tanasio made his garrotes—a kind of lidless hamper—for half a dozen old mule-halters, for the blackbird's cage, for two useless old boilers, for an altar—at which Dame Centeno worshipped the Divinity with offerings of artificial flowers and some patriarchal tapers, a perennial settlement for flies—in short, for everything and everybody excepting little María Canela. Constantly some one was heard to say: "You cannot take a step without falling over that confounded child, Nela!" or else:
"Get into your corner, do.—What a plague the creature is; she does nothing, and lets no one else do anything."