“Yes, Senhora Joanna, she is in bed,” returned Juliana. “She is in a bad humor to-day,” she continued with a bitter laugh; “she misses her husband.”
Joanna, turning over in her bed, made the worm-eaten boards creak under her weight.
“It is impossible to sleep,” she exclaimed; “it is suffocating.”
“Ah, how comfortable one is here!” cried Juliana, ironically. She opened the skylight in the roof, cast off her cloth slippers, and went out to Joanna’s room; but she remained standing in the doorway without entering: she was the parlor-maid, and avoided familiarities with the cook. With her long neck, and her head tightly bound with a yellow and black handkerchief, her face appeared more wrinkled than ever, and her ears stood out with greater prominence from her head. Her unhealthy leanness gave her a skeleton-like appearance. She folded her arms and began to scratch her elbows softly.
“Tell me, Senhora Joanna,” she said in discreet tones, “did you notice if that individual stayed long to-day?”
“He went away just as you returned,” replied Joanna.
At the foot of the bed a kerosene lamp, placed on a wooden chair, exhaled its suffocating odor.
“Oh, this is a hell!” exclaimed Juliana, in a tone of exasperation. “I shall not fall asleep till daylight. Ah, you have a Saint Peter at the head of your bed,” she added abruptly; “is that for devotion?”
“It is the patron saint of my sweetheart,” said the other, turning her large black eyes towards the picture. Then she sat up in bed. She could not endure the heat, she said, and all the evening she had been suffering frightfully from thirst. She got out of bed, and with footsteps that made the floor tremble, went over to a jug of water, and putting it to her lips took a long draught.
“I have been to see the doctor,” said Juliana. “Ah,” she continued with a sigh, “God alone knows what is the matter with me!”