Page:Stories by Foreign Authors (Spanish).djvu/54

50 "Without knocking! Without waiting to be let in!"

"That is the devil's way," replied Berta's father; "he will slip in anywhere. I was not expecting him; I was reading that book that is lying open on the table, and as I was turning over a leaf, I felt something like a breath of air; I looked up and saw him before me. I was struck with amazement. I tried to rise, but he put his hand on my shoulder and obliged me to remain seated; and he smiled all the time; that is to say, he laughed in my face. He made a thousand excuses, indeed, treating me with such familiarity that before I had offered him a chair, he took one himself and sat down in it as if he had been in his own house."

Nurse Juana listened without moving a muscle of her face, and she would have thought that Berta's father was jesting if the terror depicted on his countenance had not testified to the truth of his words. Besides, the good man was not in the habit of jesting. Had he become suddenly mad? Mad, a man of so much good sense! The nurse crossed herself, inwardly, without knowing what to think of what she had just heard.

"And who was he looking for?" she asked; "what did he want?"

"He came in boldly," answered Berta's father. "He wanted me, and he came to make a proposal to me."