There was a grand ball-game arranged for the following Sunday at Erribiague, a far-distant village, near the tall mountains. Ramuntcho, Arrochkoa and Florentino were to play against three celebrated¹ ones of Spain; they were to practice that evening, limber their arms on the square of Etchezar, and Gracieuse, with other little girls of her age, had taken seats on the granite² benches to look at them. The girls, all pretty; with elegant airs in their pale colored waists cut in accordance with the most recent vagary³ of the season. And they were laughing, these little girls, they were laughing! They were laughing because they had begun laughing, without knowing why. Nothing, a word of their old Basque tongue, without any appropriateness, by one of them, and there they were all in spasms⁴ of laughter.—This country is truly one of the corners of the world where the laughter of girls breaks out most easily, ringing like clear crystal, ringing youthfulness and fresh throats.
 
Arrochkoa had been there for a long time, with the wicker glove at his arm, throwing alone the pelota which, from time to time, children picked up for him. But Ramuntcho, Florentino, what were they thinking of? How late they were! They came at last, their foreheads wet with perspiration⁵, their walk heavy and embarrassed. And, while the little, laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when they are in a troupe⁶, assume ordinarily to interpellate boys, these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic⁷ sound.—Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from Spain, heavy with copper⁸ coin bearing the effigy⁹ of the gentle, little King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account, they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this debased coin, destined¹⁰ to be circulated at par¹¹ at the coming fairs, in different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current. They were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of copper. They made all this fall like rain on the antique granite of the benches, at the feet of the amused girls, asking them to keep and count it for them; then, after wiping their foreheads and puffing¹² a little, they began to play and to jump, being light now and lighter¹³ than ordinarily, their overload¹⁴ being disposed of.
 
Except three or four children of the school who ran like young cats after the lost pelotas, there were only the girls, seated in a group on the lowest one of these deserted¹⁵ steps, the old, reddish stones of which bore at this moment their herbs and their flowers of April. Calico gowns, clear white or pink waists, they were all the gaiety of this solemnly sad place. Beside Gracieuse was Pantchika Dargaignaratz, another fifteen year old blonde, who was engaged to Arrochkoa and would soon marry him, for he, being the son of a widow, had not to serve in the army. And, criticizing the players, placing in lines on the granite rows of piled-up copper cents, they laughed, they whispered, in their chanted accent, with ends of syllables¹⁶ in “rra” or in “rrik,” making the “r's” roll so sharply that one would have thought every instant sparrows were beating their wings in their mouths.
 
They also, the boys, were laughing, and they came frequently, under the pretext¹⁷ of resting, to sit among the girls. These troubled and intimidated¹⁸ them three times more than the public, because they mocked so!
 
Ramuntcho learned from his little betrothed¹⁹ something which he would not have dared to hope for: she had obtained her mother's permission to go to that festival of Erribiague, see the ball-game and visit that country, which she did not know. It was agreed that she should go in a carriage, with Pantchika and Madame Dargaignaratz; and they would meet over there; perhaps it would be possible to return all together.
 
During the two weeks since their evening meetings had begun, this was the first time when he had had the opportunity to talk to her thus in the day-time and before the others—and their manner was different, more ceremonious <............