“Ah! You think because we are poor——”
Ibarra interrupted him.
“Don’t try my patience too far,” he said, moving on. José looked after him with a smile full of hatred.
“It is easy to see he is a grandson of the man who exposed my father to the sun,” he murmured between his teeth. “The same blood!” Then in a changed tone he added: “But if you pay well—friends!”
XXXV.
Husband and Wife.
The fête was over, and the inhabitants of the pueblo now perceived, as they did every year, that their purses were empty, that in the sweat of their faces they had earned scant pleasure, and paid dear for noise and headaches. But what of that? The next year they would begin again; the next century it would still be the same, for it had been so up to this time, and there is nothing which can make people renounce a custom.
The house of Captain Tiago is sad. All the windows are closed; one scarcely dares make a sound; and nowhere but in the kitchen do they speak aloud. Maria Clara, the soul of the house, is sick in bed. The state of her health could be read on all faces, as our actions betray the griefs of our hearts.
“What do you think, Isabel, ought I to make a gift to the cross at Tunasan, or that at Matahong?” asks the unhappy father. “The cross at Tunasan grows, but that at Matahong perspires. Which do you call the more miraculous?”