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Marta was the daughter of Simeão of Prazins, a farmer of moderate means who had a rich brother called Feliciano in Pernambuco. Simeão called his brother a thief because, in twenty years, he had sent him only three gold coins. Of that money, six thousand réis were intended for their mother, three thousand for the souls in Purgatory at Negrelos, and only the remainder was left for Simeão.
Marta had spoken with several young men from farming and the trades, but her father had begun to negotiate her marriage to Zeferino das Lamelas. Zeferino was a wealthy master builder, already mature and much older than she was. It was then that José Dias, the son of a rich farmer from Vilalva, appeared and began to draw close to Marta. José was studying Latin in preparation for religious life, but he was thin, pale and in delicate health. A surgeon warned his father that the effort of study and memorising was not good for the boy.
The narrator uses this warning to mock the priests of the Minho region at that time, who, he claims, scarcely needed to exercise their memories. In his caricature, some were ordained with almost no memory, understanding or will, and read the Mass and the Psalms with little idea of what the words meant. Although ordination seemed so easy, Joaquim Dias decided to remove his son from Latin lessons. His teacher was Frei Roque, a former friar of the Third Order, whose paralysed sister could read and do needlework and taught girls to occupy herself.
It was in the courtyard of Frei Roque's house that José first began to take real notice of Marta. She was very fair, thin, neat and serious, and wore her hair tied back, a yellow skirt and a blue jacket with red-lined cuffs. The other girls thought her excessively demure and called her the sly quiet one. The other students, coarse boys with pieces of maize bread in their pockets and dirty copies of Virgil, made bold jokes at her expense. As the stone staircase was steep and open to the courtyard, they also tried to look at the pupils' legs as the girls climbed it. José kept apart from that group and watched Marta pass in silence, with lowered eyes, carefully guarding her skirt.
Marta was about fourteen when her father heard that the students were bothering her and decided to remove her from the school. Simeão complained to Frei Roque, who became indignant and ordered the nine boys to line up in the classroom. He called Marta in and, pointing first to José, asked whether he was the one who had bothered her. Blushing deeply and with a trembling voice, Marta replied that José had never said anything to her. She accused none of the others and murmured that she had not even been the one who complained.
The report had come from Zeferino, who was building a granary on Frei Roque's property and had observed the students' behaviour. He had not been moved by respect for good behaviour but by his desire for Marta, for he was already over thirty-two and was falling in love for the first time. Frei Roque warned him not to slander the pupils, who were destined for a profession as serious as the priesthood. The incident might have ended there, but two students who were better with a stick than with conjugations secretly beat Zeferino one night in a pine wood. Zeferino never knew for certain who had attacked him and blamed the beating on rivals in the building trade who were offended because he had criticised a church design. The narrator humorously turns that explanation into martyrdom for Architecture and places the master builder beside great persecuted architects.
After some time, Marta completed her lessons, could read primers and old legal judgements kept at Prazins, and wrote with some confidence. The first letter she wrote by following a model was addressed to her uncle Feliciano in Brazil and asked for his blessing and two gold coins to buy earrings. Simeão dictated a long list of hardships, seizures of property, taxes and crop pests, many of them false, in an attempt to move his rich brother. As he sealed the letter, he said that he wanted to see whether the thief would send anything. The second letter, now written without a model or dictation, was Marta's own initiative and was addressed to José Dias. By then, José had left his studies because the effort of memorising was harming his delicate health.
During that same period, Zeferino made Simeão a proposal which treated Marta as part of a business deal. He first asked Simeão how much he owed. Simeão answered with a question, asking whether the builder intended to pay his debts for him. Zeferino showed that he knew the household accounts well: one conto and one hundred thousand réis owed to the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Negrelos and four hundred thousand réis from the settlement with Simeão's brother. In total, he calculated, the debt must have exceeded one conto and five hundred thousand réis. Simeão confirmed the amount and added about ten coins, small purchases at the shop and the remainder of the price of a yellow cow.
Zeferino pushed back his hat, gripped Simeão by the shoulders and asked whether he wanted to make a deal. Simeão thought that he wanted to buy the meadow by the watermill and immediately replied that it was not for sale. Zeferino told him to look carefully at him, because he was speaking to a man of his word. He offered to pay all the debts in exchange for marrying Marta. He also said that Simeão could leave the other property to his son, since he wanted nothing else. Surprised, Simeão asked whether he was serious. Zeferino replied that Simeão should know who he was dealing with and that his word was his bond. Simeão wanted to confirm the terms: Zeferino wanted the girl without a dowry, without a deed and without any share of the property. Zeferino again confirmed that he did. Simeão then declared, "The girl is yours."
Marta was not present, was not consulted and gave no consent to the agreement made about her future. The narrator states that Simeão traded his daughter as he had traded a yellow cow bought at the fair. The conversation took place beneath a chestnut tree full of birds, in the calm green light of an August afternoon, and the beauty of the setting makes the bargain even more brutal.
The two men, wearing wooden clogs and clothes stained with sweat and dust, were coarse in gesture and speech, but the narrator warns that similar contracts are also made in the drawing rooms of civilised cities. In those drawing rooms, fathers who have their daughters taught French and buy them fashion magazines still bargain them away to rich men. The narrator links the wealth of such buyers to twenty years of hard labour and the purchase of thousands of enslaved Black women, before the money is used to buy a white woman.
With his provocative irony, he says that the difference at Prazins was that Zeferino gave money for the woman he desired and was also willing to give his own blood. That intensity describes only Zeferino's feelings and does not turn the contract into a choice made by Marta.
The narrator further contrasts that passion with the economic marriages of other builders who have returned from abroad dressed in city fashions. In his cruellest image, such men buy a reproductive machine and leave open the possibility that another buyer may acquire the widow after their death. The narrator's language thus exposes the same logic of purchase both in the village and among socially respected people. By the end of the afternoon, Zeferino had Simeão's word, but not Marta's.