Yes, the girl in the gaudy sweater hastened inside. Drops of water still glistened on the mass of black hair that was knotted loosely at that back of her head.
The papag creaked unpleasantly as she sat down without a word. It was the cobbler who went to the market; it was the cobbler who hung the wet clothes in the backyard every morning. From somewhere in the distance a church bell made itself heard and tolled the hour.
From somewhere in the distance a church bell made itself heard and tolled the hour. Did any? She was so small, so soft, so still in the flickering candle light. With renewed buoyancy, she moved about the shop the rest of the afternoon, excited, humming a tune as she worked. People might come in, he added. The woman was so frightened but the man comfort her and let the woman stay in his shop. And he chose to let her go. And something she could only feel but not name assumed definite proportions with the dawn.She had been happy, she assured him, because the seorita was kind. The only chair in the shop had been borrowed that afternoon by a neighbor and had not yet been returned; he apologized with an embarrassed laugh.
There was his stool in the middle of the small shop, directly under the red lamp, and there was a small papag in a corner by the small, tightly closed window.
She coughed a dry, unnatural sound that shook her small body from head to foot. In the dim light of the lamp he had not discerned the color of those eyes.
So I came in, she gasped on, but now I shall go. His face was pale in the late afternoon light; his hands were none too steady.
The water streamed along the gutters, foaming at the heaps of filth congested there, rejected scraps of food, bits of yellow paper, pieces of rags, and untidy dirt.