"Then I went to bed. The first question I asked myself, when I had
blown out the candle, was, Are there fat wethers enough in my flock
to pay for the cream-noses? Then I asked, How many fat wethers will
it take at the price Don Sebastian--a miserly cheat be it said in
passing--offers me a head for them to make up the amount I require?
"That was the question; but, you see, friends, I could not answer it.
At length, about midnight, I resolved to light the candle and get an
ear of maize; for by putting the grains into small heaps, each heap
the price of a wether, then counting the whole, I could get to know
what I wanted.
"The idea was good. I was feeling under my pillow for the matches to
strike a light when I suddenly remembered that all the grain had been
given to the poultry. No matter, said I to myself, I have been spared
the trouble of getting out of bed for nothing. Why, it was only
yesterday, said I, still thinking about the maize, that Pascuala, the
cook, said to me when she put my dinner before me, 'Master, when are
you going to buy some grain for the fowls? How can you expect the soup
to be good when there is not even an egg to put in it? Then there is
the black cock with the twisted toe--one of the second brood the spotted
hen raised last summer, though the foxes carried off no less than three
hens from the very bushes where she was sitting--he has been going
round with drooping wings all day, so that I verily believe he is going
to have the pip.
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