"Do not be fancying that you can rise to such things at once—you who are as bare as an egg," said the girl. "You must go step by step, learning one thing to-day and another to-morrow. I advise you, before you learn to cure sick folks, to learn to write; and so you ought, if it is only to leave a letter for your mother, asking her to forgive you, and telling her that you are gone away from home to improve yourself, to make your way like Don Teodoro, and become a clever doctor."
"Do not talk nonsense child. Who does not know that writing comes first? Only let me get a pen in my hand, and you will see me flourish away at the letters, and what beautiful fine strokes I will make up and down, like Don Francisco Penáguilas' name at the end of a letter.—Write? do not talk to me—in four days you will see what letters I will write.—Aye, you shall hear them read and see what grand ideas I can hatch out, and set them down too, in such fine words as will make you all look foolish. Bless you child! but you have no notion how clever I can be. I feel it inside my head here, buzzing and humming, burumbum, burumbum, like the water in the boiler of a steam-engine. It will not let me sleep, and I feel as if all the sciences in the world came rushing in and flapped blindly about like bats, wanting me to study them.—All the sciences—I must learn them all; I must not leave out one.—Well, you will see."
"But there must be a great many. Pablo Penáguilas knows them all, and he told me that there are a great, great many, and that a man's whole lifetime is not enough to learn even one."
"Never do you believe him.—Well, you will see what I can do."
"And the best of all is what Don Cárlos learns; why, only think, he picks up a stone and makes brass of it; indeed, they do say he makes silver, and even gold. Learn that science, Celipillo."
"Do not you be mistaken, Nela; there is nothing like knowing how to take a wrist and look at a tongue, and tell in a minute in what corner of a body the mischief lies. They say that Don Teodoro can take a man's eye out and put him in a new one, that he can see with as well as if he had been born with it. Just think what it is to see a man dying, and to make him hale and sound again only by making him swallow half-a-dozen flies, let us say, stewed down on a Monday with hazel twigs gathered by a maid named Juana—I say that is something worth doing.—Yes, you shall see, you shall see what I will do. Doctor Celipin de Socartes. I tell you my fame will reach as far as Havana."
"Good, good!" cried Nela, delighted. "But remember, you must be a good boy, because the reason your parents have taught you nothing, is only because they were not clever enough, and so, as you are clever, you must pray for them to the Holy Virgin, and not forget to send them some of all the money you are going to get."
"I will be sure to send them some. You see, it is not because I owe them any grudge that I am going to run away; and before long, very soon, you will see a porter come up from the station so loaded with big parcels that he can hardly stand, and what will they be? Why, petticoats for mother and the girls, and a tall hat for father—and you—I will send you a pair of ear-rings."
"You are in a hurry with your presents," said Nela, smothering a laugh. "Ear-rings for me!"