"Perhaps he's gone to bed with seven kerchiefs on his head." When Don Pedro returned, the house recovered its normality of a quiet and well-regulated clock.

Dona Cinta, after many consultations, had come to believe his collaboration indispensable.

The professor mildly supplemented the authority of the traveling husband, and took it upon himself to represent the head of the family in all outside matters....
Many times Ferragut's wife would be awaiting him with impatience in order to ask his mature counsel, and he would emit his opinion in a slow voice after long reflection.
Esteban found it intolerable that this gentleman, who was no more than a distant relative of his grandmother, should meddle in the affairs of the house, pretending to oversee him as though he were his father.

But it irritated him still more to see him in a good humor and trying to be funny.

It made him furious to hear his mother called "Penelope" and himself "the young Telemachus."...