for so long as you feel no pain
“I would lay a good wager with you, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that now that you are talking on without anyone to stop you, you don’t feel a pain in your whole body. Talk away, my son, say whatever comes into your head or mouth, for so long as you feel no pain, the irritation your impertinences give me will he a pleasure to me; and if you are so anxious to go home to your wife and children, God forbid that I should prevent you; you have money of mine; see how long it is since we left our village this third time, and how much you can and ought to earn every month, and pay yourself out of your own hand.”
“When I worked for Tom Carrasco, the father of the bachelor Samson Carrasco that your worship knows,” replied Sancho, “I used to earn two ducats a month besides my food; I can’t tell what I can earn with your worship, though I know a knight-errant’s squire has harder times of it than he who works for a farmer; for after all, we who work for farmers, however much we toil all day, at the worst, at night, we have our olla supper and sleep in a bed, which I have not slept in since I have been in your worship’s service, if it wasn’t the short time we were in Don Diego de Miranda’s house, and the feast I had with the skimmings I took off Camacho’s pots, and what I ate, drank, and slept in Basilio’s house; all the rest of the time I have been sleeping on the hard ground under the open sky, exposed to what they call the inclemencies of heaven, keeping life in me with scraps of cheese and crusts of bread, and drinking water either from the brooks or from the springs we come to on these by-paths we travel.”
“I own, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that all thou sayest is true; how much, thinkest thou, ought I to give thee over and above what Tom Carrasco gave thee?”
“I think,” said Sancho, “that if your worship was to add on two reals a month I’d consider myself well paid; that is, as far as the wages of my labour go; but to make up to me for your worship’s pledge and promise to me to give me the government of an island, it would be fair to add six reals more, making thirty in all.”
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