“You haven’t time now, sir?” asked Lucas bitterly, placing himself in front of the young man. “You haven’t time to consider the dead?”
“Come this afternoon, my good man,” replied Ibarra, restraining himself. “I’m on my way now to visit a sick person.”
“Ah, for the sick you forget the dead? Do you think that because we are poor—”
Ibarra looked at him and interrupted, “Don’t try my patience!” then went on his way.
Lucas stood looking after him with a smile full of hate. “It’s easy to see that you’re the grandson of the man who tied my father out in the sun,” he muttered between his teeth. “You still have the same blood.”
Then with a change of tone he added, “But, if you pay well—friends!”
Chapter XLII
The Espadañas
The fiesta is over. The people of the town have again found, as in every other year, that their treasury is poorer, that they have worked, sweated, and stayed awake much without really amusing themselves, without gaining any new friends, and, in a word, that they have dearly bought their dissipation and their headaches. But this matters nothing, for the same will be done next year, the same the coming century, since it has always been the custom.