The boy pretended to be listening to their conversation, but all the
while he was preparing mentally a question he had decided to put to don
Andrés the day before.

At last he made up his mind.

"You know everybody, don Andrés. Well, yesterday, up on San Salvador, I
met a fine-looking woman who seems to be a foreigner. She says she's
living here. Who is she?"

The old man burst into a loud laugh, and pushed his chair back from the
table, so that his big paunch would have room to shake in.

"So you've seen her, too!" he exclaimed between one guffaw and another.
"Well, sir, what a city this is! That woman got in the day before
yesterday, and everybody's seen her already. She's the talk of the town.
You were the only one who hadn't asked me about her so far. And now
you've bitten!... Ho! Ho! Ho! What a place this is!"

When he had had his laugh out--Rafael, meanwhile, did not see the
joke--he continued in more measured style:

"That 'foreign woman,' as you call her, boy, comes from Alcira. In fact,
she was born about two doors from you. Don't you know doña Pepa, 'the
doctor's woman,' they call her--a little lady who has an orchard close
by the river and lives in the Blue House, that's always under water when
the Júcar floods? She once owned the place you have just beyond where
you live, and she's the one who sold it to your father--the only
property don Ramón ever bought, so far as I know. Don't you remember?"