Читать книгу Chata and Chinita. A Novel онлайн

106 страница из 163

ssss1

The acquaintance thus unpromisingly begun among the three children grew apace. At first, Chinita’s visits were as infrequent as Pedro’s watchfulness and Doña Rita’s antipathy to the foundling could render them, although neither openly interfered,—Pedro, for reasons best known to himself, and Doña Rita out of respect to her mother-in-law, who she saw, in her undemonstrative and quiet way, seemed inclined to regard the child with an interest differing from that with which she favored the children of the herdsmen and laborers. Doña Feliz seldom gave Chinita anything, even in the way of sweets, with which on special festival days she sometimes regaled the others; but in the chill days of the rainy season, or when the norther blew, she it was who chid her if she ran barefooted across the courts, or left her shoulders and head uncovered, and who set all the children to string wonderful beads of amber and red and yellow, placing the painted gourd which contained them close to the brasier of glowing coals, so that the shivering little creature might benefit by its warmth.