erate booby, governor--and a good one
besides--and who had deigned to ask her, humble woman that she was,
for a couple of dozen or so of acorns.

"Ah, what a good, plain, lowly lady!" she exclaimed. "May I be buried
with ladies of that sort, and not with the gentlewomen we have in this
town, that fancy, because they are gentlewomen, the wind must not
touch them, and go to church with as much airs as if they were queens,
no less, and who seem to think they are disgraced if they look at a
farmer's wife! And see here how this good lady, for all she is a
Duchess, calls me her friend, and treats me as if I were her equal!"

Then she told her Sanchica to make ready a meal, with plenty of eggs
and bacon, for the lad who had brought them such good news, while she
herself ran out and told the neighbors of their great luck. Soon
Samson Carrasco and the curate came to the house, having heard the
news, and wanted to know what madness had taken possession of Sancho's
wife. But when they had read the letters and had seen the presents,
they themselves were perplexed, and did not know what to make of it;
and when they had met the page and he had confirmed everything that
was said in the letters, they were convinced, although they were at a
loss to understand how it all had come to happen.

The Duchess' asking for a few acorns, they could not quite comprehend,
but even this was soon explained, for the page assured them that his
lady, the Duchess, was so plain and unassuming that she had even been
known to have borrowed a comb from a peasant-woman neighbor on one
occasion; and he added that the ladies of Aragon were not nearly as
stiff and arrogant as those of Castile.

Sanchica's greatest concern centered around her father's legs. She was
anxious to learn how he covered them, now that he had become governor.
She was hoping that he would wear trunk-hose, for she had always had a
secret longing, she said, to see her father in tights; "What a sight
he must be in them!" she added.

The page replied that he had not observed her father's legs or how
they were dressed; but the joking way in which he gave his answer
furnished the curate and the bachelor with a fresh doubt as to the
reality of the governorship and Sancho's position. Yet they could not
forget the coral beads and the fine hunting-suit that the page had
brought, and which pointed to some truth in the matter.

Sanchica was anxious to make the trip to her father's island at onc