Salome had a merry,
resolute air.
Yet, consider the irony of fate! Leandra, despite her slovenly ways,
her sour disposition and her addiction to drink, was married to a good
hardworking man, while Salome, endowed with excellent gifts of
industriousness and sweet temper, had wound up by going to live with
an outcast who made his way by swindling, pilfering and browbeating
and who had given her two children. Her humble or servile spirit,
confronted with this wild, independent nature, made Salome adore her
man, and she deceived herself into considering him a tremendous,
energetic fellow, though he was in all truth a coward and a tramp. The
bully had seen just how matters stood, and whenever it pleased him he
would stamp into the house and demand the pay that Salome earned by
sewing at the machine, at five centimos per two yards. Unresistingly
she handed him the product of her sweating toil, and many a time the
ruffian, not content with depriving her of the money, gave her a
beating into the bargain.
Salome's two children were not today in Senor Ignacio's home; on
Sundays, after dressing them very neatly, their mother would send them
to a relative of hers,--the proprietress of a workshop,--where they
spent the afternoon.
At the meal Manuel listened to the conversation without taking part.
They were discussing one of the girls of the neighbourhood who had run
off with a wealthy horse-dealer, a married man with a family.
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