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 celebrated 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 granite benches to look at them.

The girls, all pretty; with elegant airs in their pale colored waists cut in accordance with the most recent vagary 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 spasms 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.