A WASP-LIKE buzzing, the murmur of a bee-hive, was what the dwellers in the huerta heard as they passed before the Cadena mill by the road leading to the sea.
A thick curtain of poplar-trees closed in the little square formed by the road as it widened before the heap of old tiled roofs, cracked walls and small black windows of the mill, the latter an old and tumble-down structure erected over the canal and based on thick buttresses, between which poured the water's foaming cascade.
The slow, monotonous noise that seemed to issue from between the trees came from Don Joaquín's school, situated in a farm-house hidden by the row of poplar-trees.
Never was knowledge worse-lodged, though wisdom does not often, to be sure, dwell in palaces.
An old farm-house, with no other light than from the door and that which filtered in through the cracks of the roofs: the walls of doubtful whiteness, for the master's wife, a stout lady who lived in her rush-chair, passed the day listening to her husband and admiring him; a few benches, three grimy alphabets, torn at the ends, fastened to the wall with bits of chewed bread, and in the room adjoining the school some few old pieces of furniture which seemed to have knocked about half of Spain.
In the whole barraca there was one new object: the long cane which the master kept behind the door and which he renewed every couple of days from the nearby cane-brake; it was very fortunate that the material was so cheap, for it was rapidly used up on the hard, close-clipped heads of those small savages.
Only three books could be seen in the school; the same primer served for all. Why should there be more? There reigned the Moorish method; sing-song and repetition, till with continual pounding you got things into their hard heads.
Hence from morning to night the old farm-house sent from its door a wearisome sing-song which all the birds of the neighbourhood made fun of.
"Our ... fa ... ther, who ... art ... in heaven."
"Holy ... Mary ..."