"_Mother_.--How! Ah, here's for your 'whatever you like.' (_She beats her_.) Take that, and maybe it'll teach you to disobey me. "_Father_.--Let the child alone. "_Daughter_.--Ah, mother, mother, don't kill me! (_Cries out; a neighbor enters_.) "_Neighbor_.--What's this, what's this? Why do you beat the little girl? "_Wife_.--Ah, sir, it's this wasteall that wants to give away all we have for nothing. He'll put us out of house and home. Olives as large as walnuts! "_Husband_.--I swear by the bones of my ancestors that they are no bigger than grains of millet. "_Wife_.--I say they are. "_Husband_.--I say they're not. "_Neighbor_.--Will you please, ma'am, to go inside? I undertake to make all right (_She enters the house_.) Now, my friend, explain this matter. Let us see your olives. If you have twenty fanèques, I will purchase all. "_Father_.--You don't exactly comprehend. The fact is--do you see?--and to tell the honest truth, the olives are not just in the house, though they are ours. "_Neighbor_.--No matter. Sure it's easy to get them brought here. I'll buy them at a fair price. "_Daughter_.--My mother says she must get two reals [Footnote 15] the bushel. [Footnote 15: The Spaniards keep their accounts in piastres, reals, and marvedis, the first-named being worth about 8s. 6d. of our money. Thirty-four marvedis make a real, eight reals a piastre. The real mentioned in the text was probably a piece of eight or piastre.] "_Neighbor_.--That's rather dear. "_Father_.--Now isn't it, sir? "_Daughter_.--My father only asks a real and a half. "_Neighbor_.--Let us see a sample. "_Husband_.--Ah, don't ask to talk about it farther. I have to-day put down a small plot of olives. My wife says that within seven or eight years we'll be able to gather four or five fanèques of fruit from them. She is to collect them, I to take them on the ass to market, and our daughter to sell them, and she must not take less than two reals. She says yes, I say no, and that's the whole of it. "_Neighbor_.--A nice a fair, by my faith! The olives are hardly planted, and yet your daughter has been made to cry and roar about them. "_Daughter_.--Very true indeed, sir, what you say. "_Father_.--Don't cry any more, Menciguela. Neighbor, this little body is worth her weight in gold. Go, lay the table, child. You must have an apron out of the very first money I get for the olives. "_Neighbor_.--Good-by, my friend; go in and be agreeable with your wife. "_Father_.--Good-by, sir. (_He and his daughter go in_.) "_Neighbor, alone_.--It must be owned that some things happen here below beyond belief. Ouf! quarrel about olives before they're in existence!" {19}