Читать книгу Weeds онлайн

51 страница из 71

“I bring to you, dear Baroness,” said Mingote, “the youngster of whom we have spoken.”

“Is this the one?”

“Yes.”

“It seems to me I know this boy.”

“Yes. And I know you, too,” spoke up Manuel. “I was in a boarding-house on the Calle de Mesonero Romanos; the landlady’s name was Doña Casiana; my mother was the maid-of-all-work there.”

“Indeed. That’s so. And your mother,—how is she getting along?” asked the baroness of Manuel.

“She’s dead.”

“He’s an orphan,” interjected Mingote. “As free as the forest bird,—free to sing and to die of hunger. It was in just such circumstances that I myself arrived in Madrid some time back, and queerly, strangely enough, strangely indeed, I’d like to go back to those good old days.”

“And how old are you?” asked the baroness of the boy, unheedful of the agent’s reflections.

“Eighteen.”

“But see here, Mingote,” exclaimed the baroness, “this youngster is not the age you said he was.”

“That doesn’t matter at all. Nobody would say that he was a day over fourteen or fifteen. Hunger does not permit the products of nature to grow. If you cease watering a tree, or cease feeding a human being....”