CHAPTER VIII

IN ALL HASTE

A little later the scene had changed.  Don Cayetano, finding rest from his sublime labors in a gentle slumber that had overcome him after dinner, reclined comfortably in an arm-chair in the dining-room.  Rosarito, seated at one of the windows that opened into the garden, glanced at her cousin, saying to him with the mute eloquence of her eyes: 

“Cousin, sit down here beside me and tell me every thing you have to say to me.”

Her cousin, mathematician though he was, understood.

“My dear cousin,” said Pepe, “how you must have been bored this afternoon by our disputes!  Heaven knows that for my own pleasure I would not have played the pedant as I did; the canon was to blame for it.  Do you know that that priest appears to me to be a singular character?”

“He is an excellent person!” responded Rosarito, showing the delight she felt at being able to give her cousin all the data and the information that he might require.

“Oh, yes!  An excellent person.  That is very evident!”

“When you know him a little better, you will see that.”

“That he is beyond all price!  But it is enough for him to be your friend and your mamma’s to be my friend also,” declared the young man.  “And does he come here often?”

“Every day.  He spends a great deal of his time with us,” responded Rosarito ingenuously.  “How good and kind he is!  And how fond he is of me!”

“Come!  I begin to like this gentleman.”

“He comes in the evening, besides, to play tresillo,” continued the young girl; “for every night some friends meet here—­the judge of the lower court, the attorney-general, the dean, the bishop’s secretary, the alcalde, the collector of taxes, Don Inocencio’s nephew——­”

“Ah!  Jacintito, the lawyer.”

“Yes; he is a simple-hearted boy, as good as gold.  His uncle adores him.  Since he returned from the university with his doctor’s tassel—­for he is a doctor in two sciences, and he took honors besides—­what do you think of that?—­well, as I was saying, since his return, he has come here very often with his uncle.  Mamma too is very fond of him.  He is a very sensible boy.  He goes home early with his uncle; he never goes at night to the Casino, nor plays nor squanders money, and he is employed in the office of Don Lorenzo Ruiz, who is the best lawyer in Orbajosa.  They say Jacinto will be a great lawyer, too.”

“His uncle did not exaggerate when he praised him, then,” said Pepe.  “I am very sorry that I talked all that nonsense I did about lawyers.  I was very perverse, was I not, my dear cousin?”

“Not at all; for my part, I think you were quite right.”

“But, really, was I not a little—­”

“Not in the least, not in the least!”

“What a weight you have taken off my mind!  The truth is that I found myself constantly, and without knowing why, in distressing opposition to that venerable priest.  I am very sorry for it.”