To work! This word brought to her mind the plans she had matured in those hours of sleeplessness and despair in which all the past is retraced in thought and new plans are formed for the future and every possible course of action is deliberated upon. It was plain that Minguitos was unfitted for the material labor of cultivating the ground, or for making shoes, or grinding chocolate, like that good-looking Ramon; but he knew how to read and write and in arithmetic, with a little help from Leocadia, he would be a prodigy. To sit behind a counter kills nobody; to attend to a customer, to answer his questions, take the money, enter down what is sold, are rather entertaining occupations that cheer the mind than fatiguing labors. In this way the little hunchback would be amused and would lose a little of his terror of strangers, his morbid fear of being laughed at.
A few years before if anyone had proposed to Leocadia to separate her from her child, to deprive him of the shelter of her loving arms, she would have insulted him. Now it seemed to her so easy and natural a solution of the question to make him a clerk in a shop. Something, nevertheless, still thrilled in the depths of her mother's heart, some fibers still closely attached to the soul, that bled, that hurt. She must tear them away quickly. It was all for the good of the child, to make a man of him, so that to-day or to-morrow——
Leocadia held two or three consultations with Cansin, who had a cousin in Orense, the proprietor of a cloth shop; and Cansin, dilating upon his influence with him, and the importance of the favor, gave the schoolmistress a warm letter of recommendation to him. Leocadia went to the city, saw the shopkeeper, and the conditions on which he agreed to receive Minguitos were agreed upon. The boy would be fed and lodged, his clothes washed, and he would receive an occasional suit, made from the remnants of cloth left over in the shop. As to pay, he would be paid nothing until he should have acquired a thorough knowledge of the business—for a couple of years or so. And was he very much deformed? Because that would not be very pleasant for the customers. And was he honest? He had never taken any money out of his mother's drawer, had he?
Leocadia returned home with her soul steeped in gall. How should she tell Minguitos and Flores? Especially Flores! Impossible, impossible—she would create a scandal that would alarm the neighborhood. And she had promised to take Minguitos without fail on the following Monday! A stratagem occurred to her. She said that a relative of hers lived in Orense and that she wished to take the child there to make his acquaintance. She depicted the journey in glowing colors, so that Minguitos might think he was going on a pleasure trip. Did he not want to see Orense again? It was a magnificent town. She would show him the hot springs, the Cathedral. The child, with an instinctive horror of public places, of coming in contact with strangers, sorrowfully shook his head; and as for the old servant, as if she divined what was going on, she raged and stormed all the week. When Sunday came and mother and son were about to take their departure in the stage-coach Flores threw her arms around the neck of the boy as he was mounting the step, and embraced him with the tremulous and doting fondness of a grandmother, covering his face with kisses, and moistening it with the saliva on her withered lips. She spent the rest of the day sitting in the doorway, muttering words of rage, or of tender pity, her forehead pressed between her hands in an attitude of despair.
Leocadia, once they were in the diligence, tried to convince the boy that the change was for his good; describing to him the pleasant life that awaited him in that fine shop situated in the most central part of Orense, which was so lively, where he would have very little to do, and where he had the hope of earning, if not to-day, to-morrow, a little money for himself. At her first words the boy fixed on his mother his astonished eyes, in which a look of intelligence gradually began to dawn. Minguitos was quick of comprehension. He drew up close to his mother, and laid his head down on her lap without speaking.
As he continued silent, Leocadia said to him:
"What is the matter with you? Does your head ache?"
"No; let me sleep so—for a little—until we reach Orense."
And thus he remained, quiet and silent, lulled to sleep, apparently, by the creaking of the diligence and the deafening noise of the windows rattling in their sashes. When they reached the city Leocadia touched him on the shoulder, saying:
"We have arrived."