And so it was done; and Fuensanta, for the girl was Fuensanta, the daughter of El Mojoso, entered the house of the silversmith as a servant, and became, as she had promised, circumspect, submissive, silent and industrious.
Little by little the silversmith grew fond of her; Don Andrés’ sister had been a basilisk, a violent and ill-tempered old maid for whose fits of bad temper he had always suffered. Fuensanta paid the old man delicate attentions to which he was unaccustomed, and he looked forward to an old age in an atmosphere of affection and respect.
“See here,” Don Andrés once said to her, “you must not be separated from your son. Bring the boy here.”
Fuensanta went to Obejo, and returned the following day with the boy. He was three years old, and a regular savage. Fuensanta, who realized that such a wild creature would not please such an orderly and meticulous person as the silversmith, always kept him segregated on the roof, where the little lad passed the long hours in play.
After she had been in Don Andrés Salvador’s house for three years, Fuensanta got married.
Among the agents and pedlars who were supplied in the shop, there was a young man, Rafael by name, whom they nicknamed El Pende.
This Rafael was at that time a gracious, pleasant chap of some twenty-odd years; he had the reputation of being lazy—firstly because he came from the Santa Marina district, and secondly because he was the son of Matapalos, one of the biggest loafers in Cordova.
Matapalos, a distinguished member of the Pende dynasty, was a carpenter, and such a poor one, so they said, that the only things he could make were wedges, and even these never came out straight.
El Pende junior, in spite of his reputation as a loafer, used to work. He took up the business of peddling from town to town; selling necklaces and rosaries throughout the entire highlands, and buying old gold and lace wherever he went.
He was a gaudy and elegant lad, who spent nearly everything he earned on jewels and good clothes.