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Updated: May 31, 2025
This Benjamin's affairs went along only so-so, because not all the people of the village could afford to wear shoes, and those who could afford them did not feel any great need of wearing fine or new ones. Rafaela washed and mended his clothes, and ironed a shirt for him, every saint's-day. He paid her little, but regularly, for these services; and gradually friendship grew up between them.
My spying, and I imagine yours also, is but amateurish, and will probably be of little value to our respective forces. Our real spies are now gathered round your fort, and will bring to us all the information we need. Thus, I can recline at your feet, Donna Rafaela, with an easy conscience, well aware that my failure as a spy will in no way retard our expedition."
Rafaela was just over eighteen, a buxom brunette with big, roguish, black eyes. Her breath was sweet, her lips vivid, her mobile hips full and inviting, like her breasts; and she had a free-and-easy, energetic, enterprising way of walking. Her hands were small and well cared for. She liked fine shoes and starched petticoats that frou-froued as she walked. Her mind resembled her body.
"Our deliverers," murmured Donna Ana, who had never entirely ceased trembling, and she cast a spiteful glance at Jack. To the duenna, young men, and especially one so unceremonious, were terrible creatures. "Silence," hissed the girl, and the old duenna in evident fear of her imperious young mistress, trembled the more. "Quick," whispered Rafaela to Jack, "get under here."
"I'm in a hurry. We'll see each other to-morrow!" He saluted, and walked away. Amadeo Zureda, with Rafaela at his right and Manolo at his left, quitted the station. "Is the town very far away?" asked he. "Hardly two kilometers," she answered. "All right then, let's walk." Slowly they made their way down the road that stretched, winding, between two vast reaches of brown, plowed land.
Rafaela wrote to Berlanga next day, at her husband's request, telling him to come and see them. Promptly on the dot the silversmith arrived. He looked about twenty-eight, wore tightly-belted velveteen trousers gaitered under the shoe, and a dark overcoat with astrakhan collar and cuffs. He was of middle height, lean, pale-faced, with a restless manner, a fluent, witty way of talking.
"I'm not afraid of work, you know," went on Zureda, "but engines are made of iron, and even so they wear out at last and get tired of running. Men are just the same. And when it happens to me, as it's got to, some day, what'll become of us, then?" Calmly Rafaela shook her head. She by no means shared her husband's fears. No doubt Amadeo's sickness had made him timorous and pessimistic.
The poor man suspected nothing. He remained quite blind. Even if he had not loved Rafaela, his adoration of the boy would have been enough to fill his eyes with dust. Truth, however, is mighty and will prevail. After a while Zureda began to observe that something odd was going on about him.
He had already guessed what Zureda was going to ask him, and the idea of being catechized revolted his pride. "It looks to me," he swaggered, "like you and I were going to have a few words." And immediately he added, as if he could read the thought of Zureda: "They've been telling you I'm thick with Rafaela, and you're after the facts." "Yes, that's it," answered the engineer.
"You're crazy to talk that way, Benjamin," she would answer. "Why?" "Oh, because." "Come now, explain that! Why am I crazy?" Rafaela did not want to annoy the man, because she would thus lose a customer, and so she gave him an evasive answer: "Why, I'm already old." "Not for me!" "I'm ugly!" "That's a matter of taste. You suit me to a T." "Thanks. But, what would people say?
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