“Eh!” exclaimed Don Gil, “I must be a great historian if even Sister Patrocinio listens to my tale. Allow me to wet my throat. Now for it, ladies and gentlemen, now for it!”
CHAPTER X
DON GIL FINISHES HIS STORY
SEÑORA PATROCINIO seated herself at the table. She was a thin, lean old woman, with a yellow complexion, a hooked nose which was on friendly terms with her chin, grey hair, and a wrinkled skin.
Don Gil took a drink, and continued as follows:
The store was located in a large, antique house, painted blue. On the ground floor were four grated windows, a door, and two little shops. One of these was a mat store, and the other was the one El Pende had rented.
It was a tiny apartment, scarcely three metres square, with a few living-rooms beyond a dark back room.
El Pende put neither signs nor decorations on his shop; he placed a counter painted with red ochre in the middle of the floor, set up a few pine shelves, and commenced business.
All kinds of things to eat and to drink and to burn were sold at the store; a heterogeneous assortment was heaped upon the shelves; there were soaps, silks, taffy of all kinds, and dyes from the most distinguished factory in the whole world, which is that of the Calle de Mucho Trigo; there were hemp-seeds roasted in honey, candied pine-nuts, almond paste, and those thin little wafers that you must have seen, that look like priests’ hats.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .