"Why do you say that?"
"Three times," said Pilar.
"Now you've had one."
"Only three times?"
"For most people, never," Pilar told her.
"You are sure it moved?"
"One could have fallen off," Maria said.
"I guess it moved, then," Pilar said.
"Come, then, and let us get to camp."
"What's this nonsense about three times?" Robert Jordan said to the big woman as they walked through the pines together.
"Nonsense?" she looked at him wryly.
"Don't talk to me of nonsense, little English."
"Is it a wizardry like the palms of the hands?"
"Nay, it is common and proven knowledge with _Gitanos_."
"But we are not _Gitanos_."
"Nay.
But you have had a little luck.
Non-gypsies have a little luck sometimes."
"You mean it truly about the three times?"
She looked at him again, oddly.
"Leave me, _Ingles_," she said.
"Don't molest me.
You are too young for me to speak to."
"But, Pilar," Maria said.
"Shut up," Pilar told her.
"You have had one and there are two more in the world for thee."
"And you?" Robert Jordan asked her.
"Two," said Pilar and put up two fingers.
"Two.
And there will never be a third."
"Why not?" Maria asked.
"Oh, shut up," Pilar said.
"Shut up. _Busnes_ of thy age bore me."
"Why not a third?" Robert Jordan asked.
"Oh, shut up, will you?" Pilar said.
"Shut up!"
All right, Robert Jordan said to himself.
Only I am not having any.
I've known a lot of gypsies and they are strange enough.
But so are we.
The difference is we have to make an honest living.
Nobody knows what tribes we came from nor what our tribal inheritance is nor what the mysteries were in the woods where the people lived that we came from.
All we know is that we do not know.
We know nothing about what happens to us in the nights.
When it happens in the day though, it is something.
Whatever happened, happened and now this woman not only has to make the girl say it when she did not want to; but she has to take it over and make it her own.
She has to make it into a gypsy thing.
I thought she took a beating up the hill but she was certainly dominating just now back there.
If it had been evil she should have been shot.
But it wasn't evil.