his servants. He would marry Ramón to Bernarda--an ugly, ill-humored,
yellowish, skinny creature--but sole heiress to her father's three
beautiful orchards. Besides, she was conspicuous for her industrious,
economical ways, and a parsimony in her expenditures that came pretty
close to stinginess.

Ramón did as his father bade him. Brought up with all the ideas of a
rural skinflint, he thought no decent person could object to marrying an
ugly bad-tempered woman, so long as she had plenty of money.

The father-in-law and the daughter-in-law understood each other
perfectly. The old man's eyes would water at sight of that stern,
long-faced puritan, who never had much to say in the house, but went
into high dudgeon over the slightest waste on the part of the domestics,
scolding the farmhands for the merest oversight in the orchards,
haggling and wrangling with the orange drummers for a _centime_ more or
less per hundredweight. That new daughter of his was to be the solace of
his old age!

Meantime, the "prince" would be off hunting every morning in the nearby
mountains and lounging every afternoon in the cafe; but he was no longer
content with the admiration of the idlers hanging around a billiard
table, nor was he taking part in the game upstairs. He was frequenting
the circles of "serious" people now, had made friends with the _alcalde_
and was talking all the time of the great need for getting all "decent"
folk together to take the "rabble" in hand!

"Ambition is pecking at him," the old man gleefully remarked to his
daughter-in-law. "Let him alone, woman; he'll get there, he'll get
there... That's the way I like to see him."