“How mean to talk so about that sweet girl.”
“It was to correct you from expressing yourself in that style of yours, mixing up things and ideas so incongruously. You ought to take care not to confuse things so absurdly,” Doña Josefa said.
“Why don't you talk like Gabriel? He always uses good language—in Spanish or in English,” Carlota added.
“Bother Gabriel, and Gabriel, and Gabriel! Everybody throws him at my teeth,” said Victoriano, beginning to eat with very good appetite.
“The operation don't hurt your teeth, though,” said Rosario, “to judge by the very effective manner in which you use them.”
“Of course, I do, because I am an amiable good fellow, who bears nobody ill-will, even towards his harassing sisters, and much praised elder brother, who is hoisted up to the skies a million times a day for my special edification and good example. It is a good thing, I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, a very fortunate thing, that I am so amiable, and Gabriel so good a fellow, or else I would have punched his head into calf's head-jelly, twice a day, many times.”
“There is your confusion of ideas again. You are thinking that yours might have been the calf's head made into jelly,” said Rosario.
“No, miss. I meant what I said.”
“Gabriel is very strong and a good boxer,” Don Mariano said.
“There it is again! Sweet Alice says he is the handsomest man she ever saw; Lote says he uses beautiful language, and now father implies that the fellow could whip me! Give me some more of that chicken pipian to console myself with. Say, mother, why is this delicious chicken stew called ‘pipian?’ Because it makes a fellow ‘pio’ ‘pio’ for more? or because the chicken themselves would cry ‘pio,’ ‘pio’, if they were to see their persons cooked in this way?” Without waiting for an answer to his question, he added: “I say, mother, arn't you and the girls going to call on the Darrells?”