United States or Equatorial Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
Roseta, with her air of a maiden who knows all there is to know, kept looking from Dolores to Tonet and from Tonet to Dolores.
Roseta had the brains for you! Let's have dinner on that, ladies and gentlemen! And we'll have a real toast afterward ... to Flor de mayo! The frying-pan was lifted from the stove and carried into the house, and the whole family rose to follow significant happenings that did not escape the watchful eyes of little Pascualet. He deserted his orphéon of tiny choristers.
And Roseta, with her big bright sea-green eyes the eyes of a virgin who knows all about the world and is quite sure of herself would murmur for once approvingly: "And those who are not scamps like Tonet are like the Rector puddingheads!"
The boat should be called "Mayflower!" Recristo! The Rector rubbed his hands in glee. Of course, just the thing, just the thing! Think a moment! "Flor de mayo" the famous brand of Gibraltar! Well, the boat was built of tobacco, you might say. Most of the money in her had come from smuggling those very rolls that showed the gay dancer in the bright colors! Roseta was right! Flor de mayo!
But Roseta, instead of obeying him, stood there looking at him with bright though expressionless eyes that seemed to penetrate to the innermost of his spirit. The Rector winced. That girl! That girl! What a keen one! She had caught everything at a glance! And the skipper, to get out of his hole, fell back on violence. "Good God! Have you got ears on your head? Give me a glass, I said."
Nothing but what Roseta had said, and hundreds of others, but just to worry him! The men on the beach always had jokes like that on each other, to make things lively. But it was just fun! Whereas that Rosario was trying to make trouble, she was! Spiteful as a mad cat! "Bosh, lies, lies! I stand by Dolores, through thick and thin! And that boy of ours! Pascualet, the little major!
And a glance of hers stamped the second label upon her brother, as he, in fact, divined. "So I'm the puddinghead, am I! Hah-hah!... Now see here, Roseta ... out with it! All you know! And no mincing of words, either, or you'll be sorry!" They were half-way home now, near the roadside Cross. And they stopped a moment in front of it.
But the best tackle makers along shore were at work on them, and by the fifteenth, the whole trousseau would be ready, and, pretty as a bride on the way to church, would she take the water! All this and more, the Rector was saying one evening to the circle of neighbors who, as usual, were sitting around his door. He had invited his mother and his sister Roseta to supper that night.
Thus they reached the Grao and were through it before either of them spoke. "And anyhow, Roseta," said the Rector at last, from sheer necessity of giving some expression to the anguished meditations that were writhing within him, "and anyhow, it's just as well that it is mere talk. For if I should find some day, that it's more than that ... recristo, nobody really knows who I am!
Word Of The Day