“Gents, I’ll go into the next room to finish my work of sticking on these angels so as to leave the table free; make yourselves at home.”
They brought the wine and biscuits, and got some cracked, dirty glasses from the depths of the kitchen, and the scene became quite animated. Belén took down her guitar, and sang something or other in that low, hoarse voice, which reminds one of the cooing of a dove, displaying all the grace of her southern beauty, and showing her pretty, arched foot, which rested on the round of the chair.
Cinta brought out a tambourine, and put it on her head like a hat, laughing merrily all the while, and amusing herself by throwing orange-peels at us. Then she got a little old India crape shawl out of a drawer, and put it on, while she made all sorts of contortions, saying that she wanted to have a regular spree.
Then ensued bravos, sky-larking, pushing, racing round the room, chairs upset, and pieces of silk flying through the air. Afterward they made us strum on the guitar, and sing, while the girls danced. The wine flowed freely; my uncle breaking the bottle against the edge of the marble table, for we had no corkscrew. As we soon dispatched the contents of that bottle, he told Cinta to bring up another one.
“I have spent all the cash,” answered the girl. My uncle scowled a little, and said:
“But I gave you four dollars.”
Belén came to her rescue, exclaiming, “Come now, old fellow, you must not be mean. We need a lot of things and they will not trust us at the grocery for our pretty faces. Keep quiet skin-flint, you stingy thing you!”
What with scolding and joking, they got two dollars more out of the Hebrew, so we had something “to wet our whistles.”
My uncle’s face was flaming red, and it seemed as though the blood would burst from his veins; if his tongue was thick, his eyes, on the other hand, gleamed more than ordinarily, and a beatific expression of material enjoyment was clearly marked upon his face.
I also felt the effects of the wine, for as it was adulterated, it kept rising to my nose; and this, together with the natural excitement of youth in the society of two girls—one a proud, and the other a saucy beauty;—but either capable of turning the head of an anchorite, and much more so of a student,—made me beside myself.