Then he ploughed up the earth with a goad, and planted chick-peas, kidney-beans and potatoes indiscriminately, without troubling to find out whether it was the proper time for sowing. Then he spent hour after hour drawing water from an exceedingly deep well that was situated in the middle of the garden; and as the rope scraped his skin, and, moreover, the soil would be dry within a half hour of watering, he contrived a sort of winch with the aid of which it took him half an hour to draw a bucket of water.
After they had been there a fortnight, the baroness engaged a servant, and when the house was thoroughly cleaned, she went off to Madrid, took Kate from school, and brought her to Cogolludo.
Kate, being of a practical turn of mind, filled several flower-pots with earth and planted various flowers in them.
“Why do you do that?” asked Manuel, “since the whole place will be covered with blossoms in a short time?”
“I want to have my own,” answered the girl.
A month passed, and despite Manuel’s exertions, not a seed sown by him showed any signs of sprouting. Only a few geraniums and some garlic planted by the servant grew admirably, despite the dryness.
Kate’s pots likewise prospered; during the height of the day’s heat she would take them indoors and water them. Manuel, beholding the ignominious failure of his horticultural efforts, devoted himself energetically to the extermination of the wasps, who took shelter in large honeycombs of cells symmetrically arranged, hidden in the interstices of the tiles.
He waged a war to the death against the wasps, but could not conquer them; it seemed that they had conceived a hatred for him; they launched such furious attacks against him that most of the time he had to beat a retreat, and was exposed to the danger of falling from the roof riddled with stings.
Kate’s diversions were of a less strenuous, more pacific nature. She had arranged her room in perfect order. She knew how to beautify everything. With the bed covered by a white quilt and hidden by curtains, the flower-pots on the window ledge already showing signs of sprouting, her wardrobe, and the chromographs on the blue walls, her bedchamber assumed an aspect of charming grace.
Then she was an affable, even-tempered lass.