But Ramuntcho, Florentino, what were they thinking of?
How late they were! They came at last, their foreheads wet with perspiration, their walk heavy and embarrassed.

And, while the little, laughing girls questioned them, in that mocking tone which girls, when they are in a troupe, assume ordinarily to interpellate boys, these smiled, and each one struck his chest which gave a metallic sound .-- Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy 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, destined to be circulated at par 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 puffing a little, they began to play and to jump, being light now and lighter than ordinarily, their overload 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 deserted steps, the old, reddish stones of which bore at this moment their herbs and their flowers of April.