XXIX

The next morning my father dictated, and I wrote, while he was shaving. His curling hair, still abundant on the back part of his head, seemed to him a little too long. Opening the door into the corridor, he called my sister.

“She is in the garden,” María answered from my mother’s sewing-room. “Do you need anything?”

“Do you come, María,” he replied. I was just bringing him some letters to sign.

“Do you want to go down the valley tomorrow?” he asked me, as he signed the first one.

“Certainly.”

“That will be well, for there is a great deal to do. If we both go, we will be through the sooner. Perhaps Señor A⁠⸺ will write something in this mail about his journey; he is already delaying in telling us when you are to be ready. Come in, daughter,” he added, turning to María, who was waiting outside the door.

She came in, wishing us good morning. Whether it was that she had heard my father’s last words about my journey, or that she could not conquer her timidity in his presence⁠—all the more so since he had spoken to her about our love⁠—she turned slightly pale.

“Look,” said my father, smiling, as he showed her his hair, “don’t you think I have a great deal of hair?”

She also smiled as she replied, “Yes, Señor.”

“Then cut it off a little.”

He took a pair of scissors from a case on the table and gave them to her.

“I will sit down so that you can do it more conveniently.”

Saying this, he sat down in the middle of the room, turning his back to the window and us.

“Be careful, my daughter, in shearing me,” said he when she was about to begin. “Have you begun the other letter?” he asked me.

“Yes, Señor.”

He began to dictate, talking with María while I was writing.

“So you think it is funny that I ask you if I have not a lot of hair?”

“No, Señor,” she replied, looking at me to ask if she was doing her work properly.

“Well, however it is now,” continued my father, “the time has been when it was as black and heavy as some other I know.”

María just then dropped the hair she was holding.

“What is it?” asked he, turning to look at her.

“I am going to comb it, so as to cut it better.”

“Do you know why it turned gray, and fell out so early?” he asked her, after dictating a sentence to me.

“No, Señor.”

“Be careful, my boy, to make no mistake.”

María smiled, looking at me furtively lest my father should notice it in the washstand mirror, which was in front of him.

“Well, when I was twenty years old,” proceeded he, “that is to say, about the time of my marriage, I used to wash my head every day with cologne-water. What nonsense! don’t you think so?”

“You do it still,” said she.

He laughed, with that agreeable and echoing laugh which he possessed. I read the end of the last sentence written, and he, after dictating another, resumed his conversation with María.

“Is it done now?”

“I think so⁠ ⁠… don’t you?” she added, asking my opinion.

As María leaned forward to brush away the snips of hair which had fallen on my father’s neck, the rose which she wore in one of her braids fell at his feet. She was going to pick it up, but my father had already seized it. María returned to her post behind his chair, and he said to her, after carefully examining himself in the glass, “I will put it back now where it was, to reward you for your good work.”

He went up to her, and fastening the flower with as much skill as Emma could have displayed, added:

“I am still capable of envy.”

María was anxious to go away, out of fear of what he might say in addition, but he detained her, kissed her forehead, and said to her, in a low voice, “Today will not be like yesterday; we shall get through early.”