Pepita clapped her hands for joy. She sprang up and danced a few steps in her childish delight.
“That will be happiness,” she said. “What happiness! Perhaps the king and queen will be there!”
“You will see Sebastiano,” said José, seriously.
“I do not care for Sebastiano,” cried Pepita, petulantly.
“You do not care,” said José, in blank amaze, “for Sebastiano? You do not care?”
Pepita shrugged her shoulders.
“They talk too much of him,” she answered, “and he is too vain. He thinks all women are in love with him, and that if a girl comes from the country she knows nothing, and will die of love if she only sees him.”
“I did not know that,” said José, staring. “I never heard them say so. They call him a fine fellow.”
“I never heard them say so,” Pepita answered scornfully; “but I know it. I am sure he is a fool,” which remark caused José much bewilderment, and led him to reflect long and deeply, but did not, however, lead him to any conclusion but that Pepita was ruled by one of her caprices. He was rather afraid to admit that he himself had enjoyed the magnificent honor of seeing this great hero out of the ring; that through a quite miraculous favor he had even been allowed to speak to him and to hear him speak as he stood, the centre of a circle of admirers in a wine-shop. He had been saving this to tell Pepita, but now he thought it well to save it a little longer.
But when the day of the bull-fight arrived it was not possible to conceal it.