"Why?"
"She says it is dirty."
Amalia then rose, repaired to the child's room, took her by the arm, and shaking her roughly, she said:
"What is this pride? Don't you know, silly, that you are only here out of pity? Take care and don't vex me, or one day, when least expected, I will put you in the street where you came from."
The servants heard these words and always bore them in mind. Until now Josefina had been brought up like a child of the señores, now she was treated like an illegitimate child, and afterwards like a little pariah. The servants now took pleasure in paying off the little attentions they had been formerly obliged to accord her, and the sharp rebukes they had incurred on her account.
Concha in particular, the dwarfish maid, felt an indescribable delight, peculiar to her malignant, spiteful character, every time that the señora evinced in any way her scorn for the adopted child. Josefina had a large, cheerful room looking on to the garden. Although Concha was head maid and dressmaker of the house, she had a duller room that she shared with Maria looking on to the street. Josefina's room had always been an object of envy to her. More than once she had given strong hints on the subject; and now, profiting by her mistress's state of mind, she got permission to sleep in the child's room under the pretext that Paula, who occupied the next bed, snored so loudly. So she installed herself comfortably there, and made use of the little girl's toilet things. A few days later she sent her to sleep with Maria without saying a word to her mistress. When Amalia did know of it, it had been going on for some time, and she heard it without any resentment at not having been told before, and she did nothing to alter what had been done.
Soon after, she thought of another means of degrading the child. Josefina dined at table with the señores. The pompous old Grandee had not consented to this at first, but he at last conceded to the importunities of his wife. Concha, full of spite like her señora, set to intriguing to deprive the foundling of this privilege. Exaggerating what it gave to do, the mess that it made, and the disturbance of the waiting at table, the little girl was finally removed to, and located at, a little table, which was put in the ironing-room near the kitchen. A few days after Amalia, in a fit of bad temper, said that the double service could not be tolerated, and that she was to dine in the kitchen with the servants. Concha sat her on a stool, pushed her a plate of thick soup and a tin spoon saying: "Eat."
The child raised her head in amazement, but seeing the malignant smile in the girl's eyes, she put it down again, and began to eat without any protest whatever. Concha was not pleased at this, for she wanted to see her rebel and cry.
"What is it? Don't you like your spoon? Then, child, you'll have to eat with it as I do, who am quite as good as you. What do you take yourself for, you little fool? Do you think because you wear a fine hat and a cambric chemise you are a young lady? Young ladies don't come in a basket covered over with dirty rags." And so she went on, bursting into sarcastic, insulting laughter until poor Josefina at last began to cry. Although the other servants were not so malignant, they were pleased at the child's humiliation. They ended by taking her part, whilst Concha, relentless and colder and harder than marble, went on persecuting her with the greatest cruelty. A few days later, as Josefina was passing through the ironing-room to the dining-room, she heard Concha say to Maria:
"I say, girl, have you ironed the foundling's clothes?"