Manuel served the soup and all the boarders took it, sipping it with a
disagreeable inhalation. Then, according to his mother's orders, the
youngster remained standing there. Now followed the beans which, if
not for their size then for their hardness might have figured in an
artillery park, and one of the boarders permitted himself some
pleasantry about the edibleness of so petreous a vegetable; a
pleasantry that glided over the impassive countenance of Dona Casiana
without leaving the slightest trace.
Manuel sat about observing the boarders. It was the day after the
conspiracy; Dona Violante and her daughters were incommunicative and
in ugly humour. Dona Violante's inflated face at every moment creased
into a frown, and her restless, turbid eyes betrayed deep
preoccupation. Celia, the elder of the daughters, annoyed by the
priest's jests, began to answer violently, cursing everything human
and divine with a desperate, picturesque, raging hatred, which caused
loud, universal laughter. Irene, the culprit of the previous night's
scandal, a girl of some fifteen or sixteen years with a broad head,
large hands and feet, an as yet incompletely developed body and heavy,
ungainly movements, spoke scarcely a word and kept her gaze fixed upon
her plate.
The meal at an end, the lodgers went off to their various tasks.
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