.

Whenever Pascualet went out now, it was on shares with the skipper of
his boat; and he had his secrets with _tio_ Mariano, the important
individual whom Tona fell back on in all her plights. The boy was making
money, I'll bet you, and _sina_ Tona was hurt to the quick that he never
brought a cent home any longer, and, indeed, now called at the
tavern-boat, and sat a moment or two under the shelter outside, more for
appearance's sake than anything else. He was saving his earnings, then!
Well, who was keeping the money for him! Dolores! Dolores, of course,
that witch who had given love-philters to both her boys--otherwise, why
were they always following round after her as if they didn't dare say
their soul was their own?

The Rector stuck to the teamster's house as if the poor fool thought he
had some business there! Didn't he know, idiot, that Dolores was for the
other one? Hadn't he seen Tonet's letters and the answers she got a
neighbor who had been to school to write for her? But three times donkey
that he was, without paying the least attention to his mother's gibes,
the Rector kept on going there and taking the favored place his brother
had enjoyed, and apparently without appreciating the progress he was
making. Dolores was now attending to him as she had to Tonet. She kept
his clothes mended, and,--something she had never been troubled with in
the case of that roistering loafer--she also was taking care of his
savings.

One day _tio_ Paella was brought home dead. He had got drunk and fallen
from the seat of his cart, both wheels passing over him. But he died
true to his reputation and just as he had lived, his whip clutched in
one hand, sweating brandy from every pore, and the wagon full of the
girls he spoke of, sacrilegiously, as his "flock." Dolores had no one
else to lean on in her trouble than her _tia_ Picores, the fish-woman, a
chaperone not in every sense desirable, for she tempered kindness with
fisticuffs.

Then it was, some two years after Tonet had gone away, that the big
surprise occurred. Dolores, _gran dios!_ and the Rector, were getting
married. The Cabanal sat up nights discussing the overwhelming piece of
news. And she did the proposing, I'll have you know! And people added
other spicy bits of information that kept the laughing going. Tona
talked more picturesquely than she had ever talked before. So Her Royal
Highness of the Horseshoe, that wench of a teamster's daughter, was
getting into