many people suspect him of anticipating legal ceremonies. But
his mother took no stock in such reports. She did not insist on a
princess for her Tonet, but how could any one think he would ever marry
that girl of _tio_ Paella the truckman! Dolores, shameless hussy, was
pretty enough, to be sure, but bound to make the woman who got her for a
daughter-in-law lead a song--and a dance! What could you expect of a
girl brought up without a mother by that _tio_ Paella, a tippler who
could never walk straight as he went out to hitch up at daylight, and
who was getting thinner and thinner from alcohol, except for his nose
that was growing so big it almost covered his puffy cheeks.

A tough customer was _tio_ Paella, and no one said a good word for him.
His trade was all in town, in the Fishmarket section of Valencia. When
an English boat came in, he openly offered his services to take sailors
to places only he knew about; and on summer nights he would load his
wagon up with girls in white wrappers, with painted cheeks and flowers
in their hair, and drive parties of men off with them to various resorts
along the shore, where they would have one grand carousal till sunrise,
while he sat off in a corner, his whip in one hand and a wine mug in the
other, paternally chaperoning what, sacrilegiously, he called his
"flock."

And he talked right out regardless of his girl's presence. The language
he used to her was the language he used to the women he knew in town.
When he was drunk he would tell everything to the last detail; and
little Dolores, crouching at a safe distance from her father's boots,
would listen to the whole story with her eyes wide open in amazement
and, written on her face, an eager unhealthy curiosity in all the filthy
things _tio_ Paella would be talking about in his brutal soliloquy,
gloating over the infamous revelries he had been witnessing.

That was good training for a girl, wasn't it! What she didn't know was
probably not worth knowing. And Tona was to be mother-in-law of a piece
like that! Pretty as she was, all that had kept her off the streets so
far was the good advice some of the women of the neighborhood gave her.

Even so, her conduct with Tonet was getting to be the talk of the
village. The boy went in and out in her house as though he were quite at
home; and he took his meals there, knowing very well that the truckman
would not be back till late at night. Dolores did his washing and even
rifled _t