Page:Brazilian short stories.djvu/52

 the details as he saw them to his more than busy wife.

"He is young well dressed  Panama hat  looks like Chico Canhambora "

At last the man arrived; dismounted; presented his card: Pedro Trancoso de Carvalhaes Fagundes. A finer young fellow and of pleasanter speech had never landed at Espigao.

He began relating all sorts of things with the ease of a man who is as much at home in the world as in his own house in pyjamas—the journey, incidents connected with it; a marmosette he had seen hanging from branch.

As soon as they had entered the waiting room Zico glued his ear to the keyhole, from there whispering to the women busily setting the table all he could catch of the conversation. Suddenly he squeaked to his sister with a suggestive grimace:

"He's a bachelor, Zilda!"

The girl dropped the cutlery as though unintentionally and disappeared. Half an hour later she appeared, decked out in her best dress and with two little round red roses painted on her cheeks.

Anyone entering the oratory of the fazenda at that moment would note the absence of several petals of the red tissue paper roses that adorned the image of Saint Anthony and a little candle lighted at the feet of the image. In the country, rouge and marriages spring from the oratory

Trancoso was delivering a dissertation upon various agricultural themes.