ancy and girlhood--a frowning
antipathy toward people generally; a menacing submissiveness to her
mother's whippings; hatred for Tonet who had never paid the slightest
attention to her; a smile at times for the Rector, who, on his brief
visits home, would playfully twitch one of her yellow curls; and scorn
for the ragamuffins of the beach whom she refused to play with and held
off with the haughty reserve of a queen forty inches long.

Tona eventually lost all interest in the child, though Roseta was her
last resource in that miserable hovel which, in the long nights of
winter, was as lonely as a tomb. Tonet and the teamster's daughter were
her one concern. That wench was bent on carrying off everything Tona had
in the world! First it had been Tonet; but now Dolores had stolen the
Rector also. For when Pascualet came ashore of late he would barely look
in at the tavern-boat and then be off to the truckman's house where,
evidently, he was a far from troublesome witness to what the lovers were
doing. But it wasn't so much that, in itself, as the influence Dolores
was coming to have with the boys, and thus spoiling a plan that Tona had
had for a long time, of marrying Tonet to the daughter of an old friend
of hers.

For mere looks, Rosario could not, of course, compare with the daughter
of _tio_ Paella; but her goodness--the strong point of insignificant
human beings--was something Tona could not praise highly enough, though
she never mentioned the most important thing of all, that Rosario was an
orphan. Her parents had kept a store in the Cabanal, and from them Tona
had bought her stock. Now that they were dead, the girl was left with a
fortune almost, three or four thousand _duros_, to put it low. And how
the poor thing loved Tonet! Whenever she met him on the streets of the
Cabanal, she always had one of her placid wistful smiles for him; and
she spent her afternoons with _sina_ Tona on the beach, just because the
old lady was the mother of that bantam who was forever turning the
village upside down.

But nothing good would ever come of that rogue! Not even Dolores, with
all the control she had over him, could keep him in hand when one of his
fits of deviltry came on. He would disappear for weeks at a time, when
everything was as nice as you please, and then you would learn, not from
him but from what people said, that he had been in Valencia, sleeping
daytimes in some house in the Fishmarket district, getting drunk e