trees, and the duenna who is keeping watch for them half dead with envy
and fright; all this I say is as good as honey."

"And you, what do you think, young lady?" said the curate turning to the
landlord's daughter.

"I don't know indeed, senor," said she; "I listen too, and to tell the
truth, though I do not understand it, I like hearing it; but it is not
the blows that my father likes that I like, but the laments the knights
utter when they are separated from their ladies; and indeed they
sometimes make me weep with the pity I feel for them."

"Then you would console them if it was for you they wept, young lady?"
said Dorothea.

"I don't know what I should do," said the girl; "I only know that there
are some of those ladies so cruel that they call their knights tigers and
lions and a thousand other foul names: and Jesus! I don't know what sort
of folk they can be, so unfeeling and heartless, that rather than bestow
a glance upon a worthy man they leave him to die or go mad. I don't know
what is the good of such prudery; if it is for honour's sake, why not
marry them? That's all they want."

"Hush, child," said the landlady; "it seems to me thou knowest a great
deal about these things, and it is not fit for girls to know or talk so
much."

"As the gentleman asked me, I could not help answering him," said the
girl.