I looked at her closely, and noticed that she was blushing, though she instantly turned her back to get another glass of water.
She was a young woman of nineteen or twenty, of average height, with an oval face of a pale brunette, her nose slightly “tip-tilted,” her teeth white and close, and her eyes, as I have already said, of an intense and velvety black, shaded by long lashes, and bordered by a slight pink circle. Her hair was entirely covered from sight by the hood that bound her forehead. She was dressed in black serge, with a girdle around her waist, from which hung a large bronze crucifix. On her head, beside the hood, she wore a great white papalina, or “coronet,” with stiffly starched flaps. Her shoes were large and coarse, but could not wholly disguise the grace of her dainty Southern foot.
The other Sister was likewise young, perhaps even younger than the first, as well as shorter in stature, and with a lily-white face, showing under the transparent skin an exceedingly lymphatic temperament; her eyes were clear blue, her teeth somewhat faulty. By the purity and correctness of her features, and likewise by her quiet manners, she looked like a Virgin of painted wood. She kept her eyes constantly fixed upon the ground, and did not open her lips during the short moments that we were together there.
“Come, drink, señor, prove the Divine grace,” said the Mother.
I took the glass which the Sister with the white teeth had just laid down, and proceeded to fill it with water, since the attendant had disappeared through a trap-door; but in doing so I had to lean on the rock, and when I bent over to dip the glass into the pool I slipped, and my foot went in above my ankle.
“Be careful!” simultaneously cried my landlord and the Mother, as is always said after one has met with any accident.
I drew out my foot with the water spurting from my shoe, and could not refrain from a rather energetic exclamation.
The Mother was disturbed, and hastened to ask me with a grave face—
“Did it hurt you?”
The little Sister of the transparent skin blushed up to her ears. The other began to laugh so heartily, that I gave her a quick and not very affectionate look. But she paid no heed to it; she continued to laugh, although, in order not to meet my eyes, she turned her face the other way.