But if that were so, her companion asked, why did she not make up her mind to go see the mulher de virtude, as she had advised her? There was not a doubt but she could cure her. She lived near the Poço dos Negros; she had prayers and ointments for every kind of sickness, and she sold them for a trifling sum.
“What is wrong with you is the humors—yes, it is the humors,” she ended.
Juliana had advanced a couple of steps into the room. When the question was one of sickness or of medicines, she grew more familiar.
“Yes, I have thought it might be well to go see that woman,” she answered; “but it would cost me half a pound, which is the sum I have set aside for a pair of boots.”
Boots were her vice; they kept her always poor. She had cloth boots with varnished toes, leather boots with laces, kid boots stitched in colors. She kept them locked up in her trunk, carefully wrapped in tissue-paper, and wore them only on Sundays.
“Ah,” Joanna would say to her in tones of disapproval, “I would rather take care of my stomach than be thinking of adornments.”
Joanna, too, now began to utter complaints. She had asked a month’s wages in advance from her mistress, she said. She had only two gowns left, and those were in ribbons.
“But what could I do?” she ended; “my sweetheart needed money.”
“You allow yourself to be eaten up by that man,” said Juliana, in accents of mingled disdain and reproach.
Joanna looked at her, and bringing down her hand with violence on the straw mattress, exclaimed,—