"A highly estimable woman!" muttered Golfin ironically.
"And no one knows who your father was?"
"Yes, Señor," said Nela with some pride. "My father was the first who ever lighted the lamps of Villamojada."
"Wonderful!"
"I ought to tell you," said the little girl with the gravity befitting the dignity of history, "that when the town council first had lamps hung up in the streets, my father was entrusted with the care of lighting and cleaning them. I was nursed by a sister of my mother's—not that she was married either, as they tell me. My father had quarrelled with her—they all lived together as I have heard—and when he went out to light the lamps he used to put me in his basket, with his lamp-chimneys and cottons and oil. One day when he went up to light the lamp on the bridge, he put the basket on the parapet, and I rolled out and fell into the river."
"And you were not drowned!"
"No, Señor; for I fell on the stones. Holy Mother of God! I was a dear little thing before that, they tell me."
"Yes, I am sure you were," said the stranger with an impulse of loving-kindness. "And so you are still.—But tell me what next. Have you lived long in the mines?"
"Thirteen years, they say. My mother took me back after my tumble. My father fell ill, and as my mother would not do anything for him, because he was wicked to her, he was taken to the hospital where they say he died. Meanwhile my mother came to work in the mines. They say the overseer discharged her one day because she drank so much."