The girl whirled about like a snake, eyed Vidal from top to bottom and then, in a rasping voice, snapped:
“As for you, you’re of the sort that takes a front seat and lets your friends go hang.”
The hearers greeted this circumlocution with applause, for it revealed La Rabanitos’s imaginative qualities. Thus calmed, she drew from her apron pocket her wrinkled, grimy certificate, and passed it around.
La Engracia came upon them while they were busied with the task of deciphering the certificate.
“What do you say? You treat,” suggested Vidal to her. “Have you got any money?”
“Money! Yes! The housekeepers ask more and more. I don’t know where they’ll stop at.”
“Come on. If only for a little nip.”
“Very well. Come along.”
The five of them trooped into a bun shop.
“This gentleman I was with,” said La Engracia, “is a painter, and he told me that he’d give me five pesetas per hour for posing as a model in the nude.”