Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/158

 Pablo—the display was satisfactory. Every day they grow more beautiful. There's a great advance this year.

. Clotilda, the hair-dresser, dropped in this morning. She was asking for you. Busy times for us all.

. That girl is too serious. She talks about marriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

. To you?

. In such matters I make it a rule to follow the catechism: the sacraments in their proper order. Marriage comes seventh, after extreme unction.

. Good!

. [Laughing loudly] Who would ever have thought of that?

. Unless it were yourself, Don Guillermo; only you do all your work in the dark. Do you know who has moved in across the street? Teresa, the corsetière.

. A terrible bore. She reckons everything from the date of her mishap. "One year after," "Two years after"…

. What mishap was that?

. Ah!

. Why! She's a slip of a child

. Exactly, a slip of a child.

. [sic] [Laughing] Ah! Ah! Clever!

. Now who would ever have thought of that?

. Ready for anything! I envy that man; he will have his joke.

. We all know Don Teodoro.

. I have no mind for such business, but if you could only put down everything that has happened to him, saints and martyrs, but you would have a book!

. It would be on the index expurgatorius.

. Bring us the vermouths.