But his desperation reached its height when his mother announced to him that they were now going for a moment to the house of the Señoritas Pascuala and Mercedes de Romera.
“Mother mine, if it be possible, spare me this sacrifice!” he cried. “Carapuche, as our friend of the ear-trumpet says, don’t you know that I shall be obliged to pinch myself to keep from falling asleep at that house?”
“So nice as you look and you don’t want to make a good impression on the pretty girls? Come, come, give the direction—Calle del Barquillo.”
The house of the old maids had a surprise in store for the student, in the person of the sprightly girl who came out to receive the visitors and show them into the parlor, saying that her aunts would come immediately. In saying this she practiced a thousand witcheries with her features and her eyes, which were black, small, sparkling, and very expressive. The niece of the de Romeras wore a rather short dress, a token that she had not yet reached the dignity of the mantilla, and an apron with a bib, with a bright-colored embroidered border. A blue ribbon, tied in a bow, fastened the end of her short braid, and her shoes, worn at the toes, gave evidence of the restlessness of the small feet with their arched insteps within. Pascuala, the elder of the old maids, soon came into the parlor, sniffling and coughing, declaring that her sister was unable to leave her room, as she was suffering from a cold still worse than her own, which made it necessary for her to avoid a change of temperature. “And to keep my sister in-doors is like giving her a stab,” she added. Presently she presented her niece as she might have presented a frisky little dog who disturbed the drowsy quietude of that peaceful abode. “This is my god-daughter, Inocencia, the second eldest girl of my brother Sebastian, who resides in Loja. He has left the poor thing with us because she requires to have her teeth attended to; she has a tooth growing over another, and it will have to be extracted. She is very lively and can’t remain still for a moment; there is no kind of shoe that is strong enough for her; that is why you see her so badly shod.” These explanations being made, it was in order to speak of Esclavita; and in view of the fact that the matter could not be discussed before a child, and as Mercedes, besides, wished to enjoy the society of Doña Aurora, the two ladies went into the dressing-room, leaving Rogelio and Inocencia alone. “Go show him the albums and the views of Granada, child,” was the order the girl received from her aunt as the latter left the parlor.
Inocencia obeyed—playing off all her coquettish arts as she walked over to the table—and cried precipitately and with an affected lisp:
“Come here, come here, and look at the pictures Aunt Pascua told me to show you! They are lovely!”
Although the idea of looking at pictures was little to the taste of the gentleman with frock-coat and silk hat, ashamed to refuse, he went and seated himself beside the girl who, as she opened the album, darted at him, with all the boldness of fourteen, an incendiary glance—a glance impossible to be misunderstood. When he found himself alone with the girl, it occurred to the student that there could not be a more propitious occasion to provide himself with a sweetheart than the present one. His vanity was a little piqued, it is true, at the thought that she was so young; a sweetheart of eighteen or twenty would have done him some credit, while this would look like playing at lovers; but when he was beside her, and looked at her more closely, with her well-formed little figure, developed with Southern precocity, and her full upper lip, slightly raised by the projecting tooth, she seemed to him a woman in miniature, and he thought to himself:
“I will declare myself now!”
He declared himself accordingly, without further preamble or preface, with high-sounding phrases culled from farces and comedies, magazines and college jests. The girl, without manifesting the slightest surprise, listened with a serious air, rolling between her thumb and finger an end of the ribbon tying her braid, which she had brought forward to show off the beauty of her hair, putting in practice at the same time all the airs and graces of a finished coquette. The student raising his voice a little, the girl whispered:
“Hshh! They are in the dressing-room there!”