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Updated: May 6, 2025
Little Roseta, a favor left behind in the tavern-boat by the considerate patrolman, gave her mother hardly a moment's peace. She was growing up like an untameable wildcat. Every evening Tona had to go and hunt for her before she could shut her up in the boat after a hard spanking; and from morning till night she would never be seen unless she happened to be hungry. Thy will be done!
There she would be listened to in silence, with an expression of sorrow, or a shake of the head from siñá Tona and Roseta, who were living on in sullen antipathy toward one another in spite of their relationship, agreeing only on one thing, that men were beneath contempt.
And the Rector passed a calloused hand over his sister's cold cheek. "Good-by, girl! But remember what I say, you're the only decent woman in the Cabañal. It's your brother talking, Roseta. The only decent woman in the Cabañal, yes! And if a man asks you to marry him, say 'no, say 'no." Pascualo was whistling unconcernedly as he sauntered up to the Mayflower.
They'd better let me alone, and not go monkeying with my happiness, nor with what I've got together with my own hard work...." There was a drawn expression on his face as he looked at Roseta after this tirade, a veritable oration for the phlegmatic Rector; and the poor girl felt as if she were being accused of the attempted theft of Dolores.
Scamps and puddingheads, puddingheads and scamps! And you're going at it right, I say. You keep the men away. You don't slobber all over them, and then lie to them, and make donkeys of them, and ruin them. No, you're a real girl, Roseta, better than the best of them." With that liquid fire on his empty stomach, the Rector grew more and more emphatic as he talked on.
Just when he's settling down a bit, from the good influence Dolores has over him! And they're all jealous of her, that's what. Just plain jealous!" And the gesture with which he underlined the spiteful words seemed to include Roseta among the envious. "Well, it's my affair, and so long as I don't worry, they needn't. Let them talk their tongues off. That boy is what amounts to a son to me.
He must be a good fellow, love everybody, and beginning with that girl there, his sister, who, for her part, had not taken her eyes off him once. "Yes, why not tell the truth! You're the real credit to our family, Roseta girl! The rest of us? Hogs, hogs, beginning with me! Me! No, Roseta, you're all there something nice, delicate-like, about you. You see through things, with the cleverest of them.
"I wouldn't call her much of a woman, I wouldn't!" and the virtuous Roseta pouted the pout of a virgin who knows all there is to know. "What a disgrace! And she had four children four!" The Rector smiled a ferocious smile. "So she got out of it with a broken arm, did she! I'd have broken her neck, I would!
Though a wicked devil was lurking somewhere inside him; for every time that he said "lie," and the objects of the night said "lie," the word echoed within him as "Llanut, bruto, steer, bull, ox with horns!" "And, by God, if it is true ..." What he had said to Roseta that afternoon on the way home through the Grao, came into his mind.
No half-way business with these women that don't know what belongs to their husband and what belongs to the other fellow! Imagine living with a thing like that! Thank God, I didn't draw one of that kind. I've got a good wife and a happy home!" "Yes, you can thank God, all right," Roseta assented with one of her smiles of compassionate contempt. But the Rector was not spry of wit.
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