-hose since he has been governor?"

"I have not noticed," said the page; "but no doubt he wears them."

"Ah! my God!" said Sanchica, "what a sight it must be to see my father in
tights! Isn't it odd that ever since I was born I have had a longing to
see my father in trunk-hose?"

"As things go you will see that if you live," said the page; "by God he
is in the way to take the road with a sunshade if the government only
lasts him two months more."

The curate and the bachelor could see plainly enough that the page spoke
in a waggish vein; but the fineness of the coral beads, and the hunting
suit that Sancho sent (for Teresa had already shown it to them) did away
with the impression; and they could not help laughing at Sanchica's wish,
and still more when Teresa said, "Senor curate, look about if there's
anybody here going to Madrid or Toledo, to buy me a hooped petticoat, a
proper fashionable one of the best quality; for indeed and indeed I must
do honour to my husband's government as well as I can; nay, if I am put
to it and have to, I'll go to Court and set a coach like all the world;
for she who has a governor for her husband may very well have one and
keep one."

"And why not, mother!" said Sanchica; "would to God it were to-day
instead of to-morrow, even though they were to say when they saw me
seated in the coach with my mother, 'See that rubbish, that
garlic-stuffed fellow's daughter, how she goes stretched at her ease in a
coach as if she was a she-pope!' But let them tramp through the mud, and
let me go in my coach with my feet off the ground. Bad luck to backbiters
all over the world; 'let me go warm and the people may laugh.' Do I say
right, mother?"

"To be sure you do, my child," said Teresa; "and all this good luck, and
even more, my good Sancho foretold me; and thou wilt see, my daughter, he
won't stop till he has made me a countess; for to make a beginning is
everything in luck; and as I have heard thy good father say many a time
(for besides being thy father he's the father of proverbs too), 'When
they offer thee a heifer, run with a halter; when they offer thee a
government, take it; when they would give thee a county, seize it; when
they say, "Here, here!" to thee with something good, swallow it.' Oh no!
go to sleep, and don't answer the strokes of good fortune and the lucky
chances that are knocking at the door of your house!"

"And what do I care," added Sanchica, "whether anybody says when he