[27] The arroba holds about thirty-two pints.

[28] The azumbre is two quarts.

“You have poured out a large quantity, Escalanta, my daughter; but God will give me strength.”  Whereupon, without once taking breath, and at one draught, she poured the whole from the cup down her throat.  “It is real Guadalcanal,"[29] said the old woman, when she had taken breath; “and yet it has just a tiny smack of the gypsum.  God comfort you, my daughter, as you have comforted me; I am only afraid that the wine may do me some mischief, seeing that I have not yet broken my fast.”

[29] A favourite wine, grown on the shore of the Manzanares.

“No, mother; it will do nothing of the kind,” returned Monipodio, “for it is three years old at the least.”

“May the Virgin grant that I find it so,” replied the old woman.  Then turning to the girls, “See, children,” she said “whether you have not a few maravedis to buy the candles for my offerings of devotion.  I came away in so much haste, to bring the news of the basket of linen, that I forgot my purse, and left it at home.”

“Yes, Dame Pipota,”—­such was the name of the old woman,—­“I have some,” replied Gananciosa; “here are two cuartos for you, and with one of them I beg you to buy a candle for me, which you will offer in my name to the Senor St. Michael, or if you can get two with the money, you may place the other at the altar of the Senor St. Blas, for those two are my patron-saints.  I also wish to give one to the Senora Santa Lucia, for whom I have a great devotion, on account of the eyes;[30] but I have no more change to-day, so it must be put off till another time, when I will square accounts with all.”

[30] The Virgin Martyr, Santa Lucia, had her eyes burnt out of her head, and is regarded, in the Catholic Church, as particularly powerful in the cure of all diseases of the eyes.  She is usually represented as bearing her eyes on a salver, which she holds in her hand.

“And you will do well, daughter,” replied the old woman.  “Don’t be niggard, mind.  It is a good thing to carry one’s own candles before one dies, and not to wait until they are offered by the heirs and executors of our testament.”

“You speak excellently, Mother Pipota,” said Escalanta; and, putting her hand into her pocket, she drew forth a cuarto, which she gave the old woman, requesting her to buy two candles for her likewise, and offer them to such saints as she considered the most useful and the most likely to be grateful.  With this old Pipota departed, saying,

“Enjoy yourselves, my dears, now while you have time, for old age will come and you will then weep for the moments you may have lost in your youth, as I do now.  Commend me to God in your prayers, and I will remember you, as well as myself, in mine, that he may keep us all, and preserve us in this dangerous trade of ours from all the terrors of justice.”  These words concluded, the old woman went her way.