"Of course. How do you expect them to speak of you when you don't put your name to your verses?" she said. "They don't know whose they are. They are wondering, likely----"
"What difference does the name make? They could say the same things of the pseudonym I have adopted as of Segundo García. The few people who will trouble themselves to read my verses will call me the Swan of Vilamorta."
Segundo García, the lawyer's son, and Leocadia Otero, the schoolmistress of Vilamorta, had met each other for the first time in the spring at a pilgrimage. Leocadia had gone with some girls to whom she had taught their letters and plain sewing. Before the chorus of nymphs Segundo had recited verses for more than two hours in an oak grove far from the noise of the drum and the bagpipes, where the strains of the music and the voices of the crowd came softened by distance. The audience was as silent as if they were hearing mass, although certain passages of a tender or passionate nature were the occasion, among the children, of nudges, pinches, laughter instantaneously suppressed; but from the black eyes of the schoolmistress, down her cheeks, pitted by the smallpox and pale with emotion, flowed two large, warm tears, followed so quickly and in such abundance by others that she was obliged to take out her handkerchief to wipe them away. And returning by starlight, descending the mountain on whose summit stood the sanctuary, by sylvan footpaths carpeted with grass and bordered with heather and briars, the order of march was as follows: first the children, running, jumping, pushing one another among the heather and greeting every fall with shouts of laughter; Leocadia and Segundo behind, arm-in-arm, pausing from time to time to talk in subdued tones, almost in whispers.
A sad and ugly story was told about Leocadia Otero. Although, without actually saying so, she had given it to be understood that she was a widow, it was whispered that she had never been married; that the puny Dominguito, the little cripple who was always sick, was born while she lived in the house of her uncle and guardian at Orense, after the death of her parents. What was certain was that her uncle had died shortly after the birth of the child, bequeathing to his niece a couple of fields and a house in Vilamorta, and Leocadia, after passing the necessary examinations, had obtained the village school and gone to settle in that town. She had lived in it now for more than thirteen years, observing the most exemplary conduct, watching day and night over Minguitos, and living with the utmost frugality in order to rebuild the dilapidated house, which she had finally succeeded in doing shortly before her meeting with Segundo. Leocadia was a woman of notably industrious habits; in her wardrobe she had always a good supply of linen, in her parlor bamboo furniture with a rug before the sofa, grapes, rice, and ham in her pantry, and carnations and sweet basil in her windows. Minguitos was always as neat as a new pin; she herself, when she raised the skirt of her habit of Dolores, of good merino, displayed underneath voluminous embroidered petticoats, stiff with starch. For all which reasons, notwithstanding her ugliness and her former history, the schoolmistress was not without suitors--a wealthy retired muleteer, and Cansin, the clothier. She rejected the suitors and continued living alone with Minguitos and Flores, her old servant, who now enjoyed in the house all the privileges of a grandmother.