El Bizco bolted the door. Dolores pushed the table to the middle of the room, went over to the wall, pulled away a scrap of kalsomined canvas about a yard square, and revealed a gap crammed with ribbons, cords, lace edging and other objects of passementerie.
"How's that?" said El Bizco. "And it's all of her own collecting."
"You must have quite a bit of money there."
"Yes. It's worth quite a bit," agreed Dolores. Then she let the strip of canvas fall into place against the excavation in the wall, fastened it and drew up the bed before it. El Bizco unbolted the door. In a few moments there was a knock.
"That must be Vidal," said El Bizco, adding in a low voice, as he turned to Manuel, "See here, not a word to him."
Vidal strutted in with his carefree air, expressed his pleasure at Manuel's coming, and the three left for the street.
"Are you going to be around here?" asked the old woman.
"Don't come late, then, eh?" added Dolores, addressing Bizco.
The cross-eyed bully did not deign to make any reply.
The three chums went to the square that faces Toledo bridge; near by, at a stand owned by Garatusa, a penitentiary graduate who ran a "fence" for thieves and didn't lose any money at it, they had a drink and then, walking along Ocho Hilos Avenue they came to the Ronda de Toledo.
The vicinity of El Rastro was thronged with Sunday crowds.
Along the wall of Las Grandiosas Américas, in the space between the Slaughter-house and the Veterninary School, a long row of itinerant hawkers had set up their stands.
Some, garbed like beggars, stood dozing motionless against the wall, indifferently contemplating their wares: old pictures, new chromographs, books; useless, damaged, filthy articles which they felt sure none of the public would purchase. Others were gesticulating and arguing with their customers; several repulsive, grimy old women with huge straw hats on their heads, dirty hands, arms akimbo and indecencies quivering upon their lips, were chattering away like magpies.
The gipsy women in their motley garments were combing their little brunettes and their black-skinned, large-eyed _churumbeles_ in the sun; a knot of vagrants was carrying on a serious discussion; mendicants wrapped in rags, maimed, crippled, were shouting, singing, wailing, and the Sunday throng, in search of bargains, scurried back and forth, stopping now and then to question, to pry, while folks passed by with faces congested by the heat of the sun,--a spring sun that blinded one with the chalky reflection of the dusty soil, glittering and sparkling with a thousand glints in the broken mirrors and the metal utensils displayed in heaps upon the ground. To add to this deafening roar of cries and shouts, two organs pierced the air with the merry wheeze of their blending, interweaving tones.