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His resolution was unbreakable. In his empty and inflexible brain, when an idea sprouted it became so firmly imbedded that no hurricane nor cataclysm could uproot it. Pepet should be a priest, and should travel over the world. Margalida he was keeping for some farmer who should add to the lands of Can Mallorquí when he inherited them.
Margalida, after contemplating Jaime with loving eyes, which still held something of timidity, went into the house to prepare the morning meal. The two men remained long in silence. Valls had taken out his pipe, filling it with English tobacco, and expelling fragrant mouthfuls.
There he had sat lost in thought one stormy night, the same on which he had presented himself as suitor at the house of Margalida. The afternoon was calm. The sea had an extraordinary and deep transparency. The sandy bottoms were reflected like milky spots; the submarine reefs and their dark vegetation seemed to tremble with the movement of mysterious life.
"Flower of the Almond? A pretty name." Encouraged by the señor's approbation, the youth continued talking. The "Flower of the Almond" was Margalida, the daughter of señor Pèp of Can Mallorquí.
The girls of the district would laugh at Margalida, rejoicing over this strange suitor who broke the order of customs; the malicious would perhaps lie about Can Mallorquí, which had as honorable a past as the best family on the island; even his own friends, when he should go to mass at San José, and all gathered in the cloister of the church, would imagine him an ambitious man who desired to convert his daughter into a fine señorita.
The girls, with the solidarity of sex, surrounded Margalida with vehement gesticulations, pushing her, and urging her to sing a reply to what the troubadour had said about the perfidy of women. "No! No!" replied Almond Blossom, struggling to rid herself of her companions. So sincere was she in her resistance that at last the old women intervened, defending her. Let her alone!
"Maybe Margalida will like him, and then Ferrer will give me one of his pistols. What do you think, Don Jaime?" He plead the vèrro's cause as if he were already a relative. The poor fellow lived so wretchedly, alone in his shop with no other companion than an old woman always dressed in the black garb of long-past mourning; one of her eyes was watery, the other was shut.
Margalida took down her gala skirt hanging from the ceiling in her room, and after donning it with the red and green kerchief crossed over her breast and a smaller one on her head, a long bow of ribbon at the end of her braid, she put on the gold chain her mother had turned over to her, and took her seat on the folded abragais on a kitchen chair.
Pèp's wife and his son passed on unconsciously, and as the two were left alone in the path, they at last stopped, without realizing what they were doing. "Margalida! Almond Blossom!" To the devil with shyness! Febrer felt arrogant and masterful as in his better days. Why this fear? A peasant girl! A child!
The master of Can Mallorquí had planned the future of his children high-handedly, with the energy of a rustic who gives no thought to obstacles when he believes he is doing right. Margalida should marry a peasant-farmer, and the house and land should be his. Pepet should be a priest, which would represent social ascension for the family, honor and fortune for them all.
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