Now it was that Antonio opened his heavy travelling-bag. One by one he took out the presents he had brought. Joanna and Malfada quickly put aside their work.
First there was a silver watch for the father,—who had never before in all his life owned a watch.
Next came three silver-link hand-bags, the largest for the mother, the middle sized one for Joanna, the smallest for Malfada.
When Malfada hung the bag from her round wrist and held it forth to look at it, Antonio burst into a hearty laugh and said: "That is just the way I imagined that Malfada would dangle the little bag from her wrist."
Antonio put the present for sleeping Tareja into his mother's hands. It was a wonderful American doll with yellow hair and with eyes which would shut and open, and it was dressed all in white, just as Joanna had sometimes, on rare visits to Guimarães, seen foreign children dressed.
Then how gleefully they all laughed at the next present which Antonio brought out! It was for the house,—a china salt-cellar, red and round like a tomato.
"We must put it in the cabinet. It is too fine to use except on holidays and feast-days," said the mother.
Jose's present was the last to appear. Now it was the little boy's turn to receive a paper-covered package, tied with pink string.
Jose's short fingers trembled in impatience as he untied the string,—careful, even in his haste, not to break it, for a piece of string was very precious to the boy.
Off came the paper and out came a square white box. Off came the box-cover and out came an engine and four gaily painted cars,—such a wonderful toy as Jose had never seen before.