The diabolical dream still upset her. She felt differently, with different thoughts, as though the preceding night were a wall which divided her existence into two parts.
She sang gaily like a bird while she took her clothes out of the chest, and arranged them upon the bed, which, still warm, held the impress of her body.
She liked these Sundays with her freedom to arise late, with her hours of leisure, and her little trip to Alboraya to hear mass; but this Sunday was better than the others; the sun shone more brightly, the birds were singing with more passion, through the little window the air entered gloriously balsamic; how should one express it! in short, this morning had something new and extraordinary about it.
She reproached herself now for having up to that time paid no attention to her personal appearance. It is time, at sixteen, to think about fixing oneself up. How stupid she had been, always laughing at her mother who called her a dowdy! And as though it were new attire which she looked on for the first time, she drew over her head as carefully as if it were thin lace, the calico petticoat which she wore every Sunday; and laced her corset tightly, as though that armour of high whalebones, a real farmer-girl's corset, which crushed the budding breasts cruelly, were not already tight enough. For in the huerta it is considered immodest for unmarried girls not to hide the alluring charms of nature, so that no one might sinfully behold in the virgin the symbols of her future maternity.
For the first time in her life, the mill-girl passed more than a quarter of an hour before the four inches of looking-glass, in its frame of varnished pine, which her father had presented to her, a mirror in which she had to look at her face by sections.
She was not beautiful, and she knew it; but uglier ones she had met by the dozen in the huerta. And without knowing why, she took pleasure in contemplating her eyes, of a clear green; the cheeks spotted with delicate freckles which the sun had raised upon the tanned skin; the whitish blond hair, which had the wan delicacy of silk; the little nose with its palpitating nostrils, projecting over the mouth; the mouth itself, shadowed by soft down, tender as that on a ripe peach, her strong and even teeth, of the flashing whiteness of milk, and a gleam which seemed to light up the whole face: the teeth of a poor girl!
The mother had to wait; the poor woman was in a hurry, moving about the house impatiently as though spurred on by the bell which sounded from a distance. They were going to miss mass: and meanwhile Roseta was calmly combing her hair, constantly undoing her work, which did not satisfy her; she went on arranging the mantle with tugs of vexation, never finding it to her liking.
In the plaza of Alboraya, upon entering and leaving the church, Roseta, hardly raising her eyes, scanned the door of the meat-market, where the people were crowding in, coming from mass.
There he was, assisting his master, giving him the flayed pieces of meat, and driving away the swarms of flies which were covering it.
How the big simpleton flushed on seeing her.