THE PARDON
Emilia Pardo-Bazan
Of all the women busily engaged in lathering soiled linen in the public laundry of Marineda, their arms stiff with the biting cold of a March morning, Antonia the charwoman was the most bowed down, the most disheartened, the one who wrung the clothes with the least energy, and rinsed them with the greatest lassitude. From time to time she would interrupt her work in order to pass the back of her hand across her reddened eyelids; and the drops of water and soapy bubbles glistened like so many tears upon her withered cheeks.
Antonia's companions at the tubs eyed her compassionately, and every now and again, in the midst of the confusion of gossip and of quarrels, a brief dialogue would ensue in lowered tones, interrupted by exclamations of astonishment, indignation, and pity. The entire laundry knew, down to the smallest details, the poor washerwoman's misfortunes, which furnished occasion for unending comment. No one was unaware that, after her marriage a few years ago with a young butcher, she had kept house together with her mother and husband in one of the suburbs outside the town wall, and that the family lived in comfortable circumstances, thanks to Antonia's steady industry, and to the frugal savings of
