" a two hours' tramp through
the Castellana and the Retiro, without stopping a moment to sit down,
taking a peripatetic lesson in English on the way. For the first time
Renovates turned around to speak to "Miss," a stout woman with a red,
wrinkled face who, when she smiled, showed a set of teeth that shone
like yellow dominoes. In the studio Renovales and his friends often
laughed at "Miss's" appearance and eccentricities, at her red wig that
was placed on her head as carelessly as a hat, at her terrible false
teeth, at her bonnets that she made herself out of chance bits of ribbon
and discarded ornaments, of her chronic lack of appetite, that forced
her to live on beer, which kept her in a continual state of confusion,
which was revealed in her exaggerated curtsies. Soft and heavy from
drink, she was alarmed at the approach of the hour of the walk, a daily
torment for her, as she tried painfully to keep up with Milita's long
strides. Seeing the painter looking at her, she turned even redder and
made three profound curtsies.

"Oh, Mr. Renovales, oh, sir!"

And she did not call him "Lord," because the master greeting her with a
nod, forgot her presence and began to talk again with his daughter.

Milita was eager to hear about her father's luncheon with Tekli. And so
he had had some Chianti? Selfish man! When he knew how much she liked
it! He ought to have let them know sooner that he would not be home.
Fortunately Cotoner was at the house and mamma had made him stay, so
that they would not have to lunch alone. Their old friend had gone to
the kitchen and prepared one of those dishes he had learned to make in
the days when he was a landscape-painter. Milita observed that all
landscape-painters knew something about cooking. Their outdoor life, the
necessities of their wandering existence among country inns and huts,
defying poverty, gave them a liking for this art.

They had had a very pleasant luncheon; mamma had laughed at Cotoner's
jokes, who was always in good humor, but during the dessert, when
Soldevilla, Renovales' favorite pupil, came, she had felt indisposed and
had disappeared to hide her eyes swimming with tears and her breast that
heaved with sobs.

"She's probably upstairs," said the girl with a sort of indifference,
accustomed to these outbreaks. "Good-by, papa, dear, a kiss. Cotoner and
Soldevilla are waiting for you in the studio. Another kiss. Let me bite
you."

And after fixing her little teeth gen