Encarnacion was sad that she could neither read nor write, and was proudly jealous of her younger sister, who, working in the milk factory, was being taught to spell.
She of course acquired a proprietary right in us. She upheld the honour of the house, and gave a lesson in manners to a gipsy girl from the cave dwellings who had once thrown a stone at me. She also criticized our work. To the almost daily parties of strangers who walked into our house whenever the door was left unlocked, she acted as guide to our pictures drying on the walls, and she would explain to whom each house in the sketches belonged.
There are considerable differences between Spanish customs and those of ordinary Europe, and these are apt to disconcert the traveller. Here are a few Spanish ones that we noted _en passant_.
You may walk into any house or garden if moved to do so by curiosity if you, previous to entering, utter the magic formula: "Se pueda entrar?"[18]
You may stare as much as you like at anything or anybody, for staring is in reality a compliment.
If you feel friendly towards an acquaintance you may call on him at nine in the morning and you may repeat your call three or four times during the same day. (What the man does to get rid of you we have not yet discovered. We have only been the victims, not the visitors.)
You must refuse everything that is suddenly offered to you, except cigarettes or sweets offered in the fingers. Do not accept other things until the third offer. But to refuse sweets or cigarettes is almost insulting.
You must offer to give any object to anybody who admires it (especially objects of jewellery or babies).
You may ask any questions you like, even upon the most intimate of subjects; and you must expect to be asked similar questions.
If invited to a meal, you may refuse no dish that is served to you, even though indigestion is clutching at your vitals, or repletion stopping your throat.
For a specimen of the small tradesman class of the malecon we had La Merchora. She kept the village shop, the last house on the terrace, and was in some way a relative of Antonio. Her home was planned like ours was, and one of the rooms beside the entrada had been filled with a counter, some shelves, and a large tin of paraffin oil; ginger-coloured sausages were festooned from the roof and the shop was complete. She was unmarried, and therefore, from a theoretical point of view, negligible; but it did not disturb her. Indeed, little did disturb her. She had the figure which grows out of a combination of good living, no thinking and reasonable working. In any village you will find an example of her kind. She is good-natured but respected. Liberties are not taken with her, and in Cornwall she is called Aunt So-and-so. La Merchora was not even black-visaged, there was in fact nothing that one can count for Spanish about her.