In November one of Justa's shopmates got married, in La Bombilla,
Señor Custodio and his wife found it impossible to attend, so that
Manuel accompanied Justa.
The bride lived in the Ronda de Toledo, and her house was the meeting-place for all the guests.
At the door a large omnibus was waiting; it could hold any number of persons.
All the guests piled in; Justa and Manuel found a place on the top and waited a while. The bride and bridegroom appeared amidst a throng of gamins who were shouting at the top of their lungs; the groom looked like a dry goods clerk; she, emaciated and ugly, looked like a monkey; the best man and the bridesmaids followed after, and in this group a fat old lady, flat-nosed, cross-eyed, white-haired, with a red rose in her hair and a guitar in her hand, advanced with a flamenco air.
"Hurrah for the bride and groom! Hurrah for the best man and the maid-of-honour!" shouted the cross-eyed fright; there was a chorus of unenthusiastic responses and the coach departed amidst a hubbub and a shouting. On the way everybody shrieked and sang.
Manuel did not dare to rejoice at his failure to see El Carnicerín in the crowd; he felt positive that the fellow would show up at Los Viveros.
It was a beautiful, humid morning; the trees, copper-hued, were losing their yellow leaves in the gentle gusts; white clouds furrowed the pale sky, the road glittered with the moisture; afar in the fields burned heaps of dead leaves and thick curls of smoke rolled along close to the soil.
The coach halted before one of the inns of Los Viveros; everybody rolled out of the omnibus and the shouts and clamouring were heard anew. El Carnicerín was not there, but he soon appeared and sat down at table right beside Justa.
The day seemed hateful to Manuel; there were moments in which he felt like crying. He spent the whole afternoon despairing in a corner, watching Justa dance with her sweetheart in time to the tunes of a barrel-organ.
At night Manuel went over to Justa and with comic gravity, said to her abruptly: