In fact, he was in a sense too lavish, for he used
at one time to bring her home presents of silks and clothes and toilet
things and stockings and hats, which were not in accord with her taste,
and only vexed her. Indeed, she resented wearing them, and could hardly
bring herself to thank him for them. At last, however, she induced him
to let her buy what she wanted with the presents of money which he might
give her.
On the whole Carmen fared pretty well, for he would sometimes give her a
handful of bills from his pocket, bidding her take ten dollars, and she
would coolly take twenty, while he shrugged his shoulders and declared
she would be his ruin. He had never repented of marrying her, in spite
of the fact that she did not always keep house as his mother and
grandmother had kept it; that she was gravely remiss in going to mass;
and that she quarrelled with more than one of her neighbours, who had an
idea that Spain was an inferior country because it was south of France,
just as the habitants regarded the United States as a low and inferior
country because it was south of Quebec. You went north towards heaven
and south towards hell, in their view; but when they went so far as to
patronize or slander Carmen, she drove her verbal stilettos home without
a button; so that on one occasion there would have been a law-suit for
libel if the Old Cure had not intervened.
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