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On the farthest projection of the jetty, where the storm surf was dashing highest against the outer rocks, stood Dolores, bareheaded, her face pale, clinging to siñá Tona, who was wild with anguish for her boy, her Pascualet, who was still out there!
For mere looks, Rosario could not, of course, compare with the daughter of tio Paella; but her goodness the strong point of insignificant human beings was something Tona could not praise highly enough, though she never mentioned the most important thing of all, that Rosario was an orphan. Her parents had kept a store in the Cabañal, and from them Tona had bought her stock.
And when inventories were complete they would have still to go back to the office to get clearance papers from all those stuck-up fellows in white collars who could hardly speak to a workingman decently! When the Rector went home for dinner at noontime, he found siñá Tona in the kitchen talking to Dolores, weeping her eyes out, and patting a bundle she held across her knees.
Tona would run her legs off finding him jobs which he would proceed to lose. For about a week he was apprentice to a cobbler. Then he went for a couple of months as "cat" on tio Borrasca's boat; and not even that stern disciplinarian was able to kick any obedience into him.
The Rector and his party elbowed their way through the crowd pressing around the boat. At the stern were the two sponsors siñá Tona, godmother, in a new shawl and skirt; and "Señor" Mariano, god-father, in his tall hat and with his cane, in the very get-up that he wore at his talks with the Governor in town! The whole family offered a spectacle of gay and showy magnificence.
Martinez had been writing for papers all right, but to Madrid, asking to be transferred to another district at the opposite end of Spain, since the climate at Valencia was not good for him. And he had won his point. He had been assigned to the department of La Coruña. That was a bad moment for siñá Tona. The thief! The bandit! You just trust these smooth talkers!
Tona, indeed, had lost not her husband only. Dire poverty was upon her, not the poverty that is hard but tolerable, but the poverty that is terrifying even to the poor, the want of the homeless and the bread-less, the want that holds out a mendicant hand from the street corner to beg a penny and give thanks for a crust of mildewed bread.
One more cross for poor Tona to drag through this vale of tears! Taciturn and fond of her own company, Roseta would lie out full length on the wet sand, playing with shells or making piles of seaweed.
But then they would go to sleep again, with the carefree innocence of children, with no suspicions, and without alarm. Siñá Tona had an unjust weakness for her younger son.
Tona eventually lost all interest in the child, though Roseta was her last resource in that miserable hovel which, in the long nights of winter, was as lonely as a tomb. Tonet and the teamster's daughter were her one concern. That wench was bent on carrying off everything Tona had in the world! First it had been Tonet; but now Dolores had stolen the Rector also.