“What is your name?” he asked when he had drunk.
“Placida.”
“And what do you do with yourself?”
“I am the daughter of a merchant who died ruined and persecuted for his political opinions. After his death, my mother and I retired to a hamlet, where we get on very badly with a pension of three reales [fifteen cents a day] for all our living. My mother is ill, and everything comes on me.”
“And why haven’t you married?”
“I don’t know; in the village they say that I am good for nothing about work, that I am very delicate, very much the señorita.”
The girl, with a courteous good-bye, moved away.
While she was still in sight, Andrés watched her retreating form in silence; when she was lost to view, he said with the satisfaction of one who solves a problem:
“This is the woman for me.”
He mounted his horse and, followed by his dog, took his way to the village. He promptly made the acquaintance of the mother and, almost as soon, utterly lost his heart to the daughter. When at the end of a few months she was left an orphan, he married her, a man in love with his wife, which is one of the greatest blessings life affords.