"Here you go!" said he.
She blushed, as she answered. You would have thought her offended by the somewhat hostile opposition of debtor and creditor that the money seemed to have set up between them. She asked:
"What's all this you're giving me?"
"Say! What d'you suppose? Don't I pay every week? Well, then, here's my board. Seven days at five pesetas per, that's just thirty-five pesetas, huh? What's the matter with you?"
He made the coins jump and jingle in his agile hand, well-used to dealing cards. Then he added:
"To-day's Saturday. So then, I'll pay you now. That'll leave me three pesetas for extras—tobacco and car-fare. Oh, it's a fine time I'll have!"
With a lordly gesture, good-natured, protecting, the woman handed back Berlanga's money.
"Next week you can pay up," said she. "I'm fixed all right. By luck, even if I'm not five dollars to the good, I'm not five to the bad."
The silversmith offered the money again. But this time the offer was weak, and was made only in the half-hearted way that seemed necessary to keep him in good standing. Then he got up from the table, rubbed his hands up and down his legs to smooth the ugly bulge out of the knees of his trousers, pulled down his vest and readjusted the knot of his cravat before the mirror. He exclaimed with a kind of boastful swagger: