At last her father’s tedious cure was completed, and she was admitted to see him. Some one had, unperceived by her, followed her respectfully all the way, ready to protect her at all hazards. In the zaguan (sort of vestibule) of the Jew’s house this faithful follower confronted her, and she recognized the gallant barber at once. Gently pushing back her hood he substituted another covering for her head. Juanita put up her hand, and, to her surprise, found it tangled in the masses of her own rich hair! She stroked it with both hands, and found it all there, just as if by enchantment. Finding her dumb with astonishment, the barber hastened to explain that the wife of the Corregidor having sent the hair to him to make up, he had resolved no one should wear it but herself, and for the Corregidora he had put together the best match he could from the store he kept by him for such purposes. They were now interrupted by a summons from the Jew, who was ready to remove Juan’s bandages. They no sooner reached the room where he was, than he ran and clasped Juanita in his arms, exclaiming, “God be praised that I can see you, my child—a few years’ blindness are well repaid when it is reserved to one to see such a daughter as you!” Then, perceiving the barber, he embraced him too, and said, “God be praised for my sight! since I can now work for my living again, and repay you, my benefactor, for well I know, though I would never tell Juanita to increase her burden, that it is you who have paid the rent of our lodging all this time! My son, my dear son, what can I do for you?”
“There is one thing, father, you can do for me—one only thing, but it is too great to ask!”
“Nothing is too great to-day—ask away, boy, never fear!” The barber looked towards Juanita to gain courage, and, seeing her approving smile, fell on his knees and begged Juan to let him marry her. “With all my heart, if the wench so will,” replied the old man; “I cannot see her wedded to an honester fellow!” Juan was not slow to read in her eyes what her sentiments were, and so, without more ado, he took the hand of each to place them in one another. But both drew back. The barber, with all his charity and delicacy and taste, was very ugly, and he could not believe in his good fortune; and Juanita had one condition to lay down first. “How now! what’s this?” said the father. “Come, friend barber, explain yourself.”
“Well, sir, I think it is but fair to give Juanita time to consider it all. I know I’m not so good-looking as her husband ought to be. Long ago should I have told her how I loved her but for this—but I dared not! I longed to offer the 500 maravedis over and over again, but I dared not speak to her; and now the joy is all so strange I feel I must not hurry her.”
“Well spoken, young man! but, Juanita, what do you hang back for?”
“I—I have one little condition to make;” and she turned to the barber. “I have been thinking that we have not acted quite honestly with the Corregidora. She has a superstition against wearing dead people’s hair, and she has paid honourably for that of a living person—so what she has bought must be taken back to her. Moreover, I recognize that all my life this hair has been a snare to me, and whenever I have been led from the path of duty it has been by its means—so I am resolved never to wear it again, and to be known in future by no other name but that of Juanita the Bald! What say you, are you content to marry me now?” The honest barber—perhaps on the whole not very sorry for a stipulation which put them somewhat nearer on a condition of equality in regard to personal appearance—only answered by clasping her in his embrace.
“What! what is all this,” fell in the old man, “about hair and the Corregidora, and Juanita the—the Bald!—eh?” Then the barber was obliged to explain to him the sacrifice Juanita had made, first to obtain his cure, and again to her sense of honour, and her delicacy of conscience. The old man was quite unnerved by the recital. At first he was determined to resist her resolution; but his own mind was too well regulated not to acknowledge on reflection that she had chosen the good part.
Then, after blessing solemnly, both her and her betrothed, he exclaimed, “Did I not choose rightly from among the three gifts?” (in his humility he would not say rewards). “If I had chosen riches, they would have burst the bag and run away. And if I had chosen power, my retainers would have mocked my want of knowledge, and forsaken me. But a daughter’s love—what can compare with it?”