The first Sunday Manuel was fast asleep in Senora Jacoba's house when
Vidal came in and waked him. It was after eleven; the marketwoman, as
usual, had departed at dawn for her stall, leaving the boy alone.
"What are you doing there?" asked Vidal. "Why don't you get up?"
"Why? What time is it?"
"Awful late."
Manuel dressed hurriedly and they both left the house. Nearby,
opposite Aguila street, on a little square, they joined a group of
boys who were playing _chito_, and they followed the fortunes of
the game with deep interest.
At noon Vidal said to his cousin:
"Today we're going to eat yonder."
"At your house?"
"Yes. Come on."
Vidal, whose specialty was finding things, discovered close by the
fountain of the Ronda, which is near Aguila Street, an old,
wide-brimmed high hat; the poor thing was hidden in a corner, perhaps
through modesty. He began to kick it along and send it flying through
the air and Manuel joined in the enterprise, so that between the two
they transported the relic, venerable with antiquity, from the Ronda
de Segovia to that of Toledo, thence to the Ronda de Embajadores,
until they abandoned it in the middle of the street, minus top and
brim. Having committed this perversity, Manuel and Vidal debouched
into the Paseo da las Acacias and went into a house whose entrance
consisted of a doorless archway.
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