Page:Brazilian short stories.djvu/48

 preme, day and night busily mowing down the grass of the pastures, so that in October the sky would be darkened by clouds of winged ants, male and female, frolicking about in their love-making.

Unopened roads, fallen fences, laborer's dwellings full of leaks, with shaky roofs, foretelling ugly ruins. Even in the manor-house, everything indicated approaching ruin; plastering falling, floors worm-eaten; paneless windows; rickety furniture; bulging walls .… was there anything whole to be found there?

Within this tumble-down setting, the planter, grown old under the burden of long disillusionment, and besides, gnawed by the voracious interest, without hope and without remedy, a hundred times a day scratched the cowlick of hair on his grey head.

His wife, poor Dona Izaura, having lost her autumnal strength, gathered upon her face all the freckles and crows-feet invented by the years, hand in hand with a hard-working life.

Zico the eldest child had turned out a good-for-nothing, fond of rising at ten, plastering his hair until eleven and spending the rest of his time in unlucky flirtations.

Aside from this vagabond, there was Zilda, then about seventeen, a pretty girl, but more sentimental than was reasonable and good for her parents' peace of mind. The girl spent her time reading love stories and building castles in Spain. …

There was only one way out of such a situation: sell the darned fazenda, to be able to breathe free from mortgages. It was difficult, however, at a time when coffee sold at