“She is turning something over in her mind,” said Juliana to herself, as she went away.
Luiza went to the parlor, seated herself at the piano, played over by ear some fragments of “Lucia,” of “Somnambula,” of the “Fado;” then, letting her fingers rest on the keys, she began to think of Bazilio’s visit on the morrow. Should she wear her new dress of brown foulard? Her eyes began to close with sleep. She went to her bedroom. Juliana brought the lamp. She came in shuffling her feet along the floor, a shawl thrown around her shoulders, her countenance drawn and lugubrious. The sight of her face, with its air of chronic suffering, irritated Luiza.
“I declare, you remind me of a death’s-head!” she said to her.
Juliana did not answer; she set down the light, and counted out on the bureau, coin by coin, without once raising her eyes, the change from the marketing.
“Does the senhora want anything else?” she asked.
“Nothing; you may go.”
Juliana procured her kerosene lamp and went to her bedroom; she slept in a room under the roof, adjoining that of the cook.
“I remind you of a death’s-head, do I?” she muttered to herself, furious, as she went.
The room was low and small, with a wooden ceiling and slanting walls; the sun, falling all day on the tiles overhead, heated it like an oven. Juliana slept in an iron cot, on a straw mattress. On the rails at the head of the bed hung several scapularies and the braids of false hair she wore during the day. At the foot of the bed stood a large wooden chest painted blue, with a stout lock. On the pine table stood the little looking-glass belonging to her scanty toilet appurtenances, a hair-brush almost without hairs, a bone comb, and several little bottles of medicine. The only adornment of the dirty walls, disfigured by the traces of the numerous matches that had been lighted upon them, was a lithograph of Our Lady of Sorrows, and a daguerreotype, in which could be faintly discerned, amidst the changing lights of the plate, the badge, and the mustache stiff with pomade, of a sergeant.
“Is the senhora in bed?” asked the cook from the next room.