“I can’t bear to do it!” she murmured, “but I never give money, and her little feet were cut and bleeding.”
In that drawer lay many pairs of half-worn little shoes—shoes that had pattered gaily down the Vicarage stairs and danced across the sacred lawn. Her eyes were very soft as she chose out a pair of little strap shoes and some woollen socks. Had the Murillo cherub, chattering in her sweet jargon of Pyrenean Spanish under the shade of the yew trees, seen the face of the Vicaress just then, she would not have refused to go with her. But the Vicaress kept what Mr. Barrie tenderly calls her “soft face” for solitary places. The best that people could say of her was, that if her manner was hard her deeds were often kindly. She filled a basin with warm water and went through the silent house into the garden again. Zita laughed and showed her white teeth as she dabbled her feet in the water, becoming quite friendly; then the Vicaress dried her brown legs and arrayed her in the new shoes and socks. On the party being regaled with Vicarage cake and milk, the mother informed her hostess that they purposed to go on to Gloucester that day—a fifteen-mile walk.
“Have you no money to go by train?” asked the Vicaress.
“Oh, no, senora! My ’usban’ sell ze ice cream there, he cannot send me large money.”
“But you can’t get there to-night; where will you sleep?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders, turning her unoccupied hand outward with an expressive gesture. “In the hedge, senora, it is cool and dry.”
“But the children?”
“Oh, zay sleep—and Zita, she walk well till her foots come to ze ground.” Then turning to the child she said something rapidly in Spanish, adding: “She sing for you, senora, you so kind for her.”
“A la puerta del cielos, venden zapatos,” crooned Zita in her funny little nasal chant, and sang the lullaby right through.
“What is it all about?” demanded her hostess with a queer little catch in her voice.