In a moment he deftly cuts the stitches of the mattress and lays bare the wool which he never touches with his fingers.  The longer stick in his right hand describes great circles in the air and descends with the whistle of a sword upon the wool of which it picks up a small handful.  Then the shorter stick comes into play, picks the wool from the longer, throws it into the air, beats it this way and that, tosses it and catches it until every fibre is clear, when the fluffy mass is deftly cast aside.  All the while, through the beating of the wool, the two sticks beaten against each other play a distinct air, and each mattress-maker has his own, handed down from his forefathers, ending with a whole chromatic scale as the shorter stick swoops up the length of the longer to sweep away the lingering wool.  Thus the whole mattress is transferred from a sodden heap to a high and fluffy mountain of carded wool, all baked by the heat of the sun.

The man has a hundred attitudes, full of grace.  He works with a skill which is a conscious pleasure; a pleasure unknown to those who have never had opportunity of acquiring a manual craft or appreciating the wondrous power that God has put into human limbs.  He has complete control over his two thin sticks, can pick up with them a single strand of wool, or half a mattress.  He can throw aside a pin that lurks in a ball of wool, or kill a fly that settles on his work, without staining the snowy mass.  And all the while, from the moment that the mattress is open till the heap is complete, the two sticks never cease playing their thin and woody air so that any within hearing may know that the “colchonero” is at work.

When the mattress case is empty he pauses to wipe his brow (for he must needs work in the sun) and smoke a cigarette in the shade.  It is then that he gossips.

In a Southern land such a worker as this must always have an audience, and the children hail with delight the coming of the mattress-maker.  At the Convent School of the Sisters of the True Faith his services were required once a fortnight; for there were many beds; but his coming was none the less exciting for its frequency.  He was the only man allowed inside the door.  Father Muro was, it seemed, not counted as a man.  And in truth a priest is often found to possess many qualities which are essentially small and feminine.

The mattress-maker of Pampeluna was a thin man with a ropy neck, and keen black eyes that flashed hither and thither through the mist of wool and dust in which he worked.  He was considered so essentially a domestic and harmless person that he was permitted to go where he listed in the house and high-walled garden.  For nuns have a profound distrust of man as a mass and a confiding faith in the few individuals with whom they have to deal.

The girls were allowed to watch the colchonero at his work, more especially the elder girls such as Juanita de Mogente and her friend Milagros of the red-gold hair.  Juanita watched him so closely one spring afternoon that the keen black eyes kept returning to her face at each round of the long whistling stick.  The other girls grew tired of the sight and moved away to another part of the garden where the sun was warmer and the violets already in bloom; but Juanita lingered.