alone--"And he is entirely with us, you know!"

"Oh! that," replied the little girl, without losing the sadly pensive
air which she had that morning, "oh, that!--my brother Arrochkoa, I
suspected it, it was sure! A pelota player like you, you should know,
was made to please him, in his mind there is nothing superior to that--"

"But your mother, Gatchutcha, for several days has acted much better
to me, I think--For example, Sunday, you remember, when I asked you to
dance--"

"Oh! don't trust to that, my Ramuntcho! you mean day before yesterday,
after the high mass?--It was because she had just talked with the Mother
Superior, have you not noticed?--And the Mother Superior had insisted
that I should not dance with you on the square; then, only to be
contrary, you understand--But, don't rely on that, no--"

"Oh!" replied Ramuntcho, whose joy had already gone, "it is true that
they are not very friendly--"

"Friendly, mama and the Mother Superior?--Like a dog and a cat,
yes!--Since there was talk of my going into the convent, do you not
remember that story?"

He remembered very well, on the contrary, and it frightened him still.
The smiling and mysterious black nuns had tried once to attract to the
peace of their houses that little blonde head, exalted and willful,
possessed by an immense necessity to love and to be loved--

"Gatchutcha! you are always at the sisters', or with them; why so often?
explain this to me: they are very agreeable to you?"

"The sisters? no, my Ramuntcho, especially those of the present time,
who are new in the country and whom I hardly know--for they change them
often, you know--The sisters, no--I will even tell you that I am like
mama about the Mother Superior. I cannot endure her--"

"Well, then, what?--"

"No, but what will you? I like their songs, their chapels, their houses,
everything--I cannot explain that to you--Anyway, boys do not understand
anything--"

The little smile with which she said this was at once extinguished,
changed into a contemplative expression or an absent expression, which
Ramuntcho had often seen in her. She looked attentively in front of her,
although there were on the road only the leafless trees, the brown mass
of the crushing mountain; but it seemed as if Gracieuse was enraptured
in melancholy ecstasy by things perceived beyond them, by things which
the eyes of Ramuntcho could not distinguish--And during their silence
the angelus of noon began to rin