"Bookworm! Books! They teach dissoluteness. Look at that woman, the bookish one. She can't even go to market herself. All she can do is to carry on with the officers. She receives them in the daytime. I kno-o-w."
I wanted to cry, "That's not true. She does not carry on," but I was afraid to defend the tailor's wife, for then the old woman might guess that the book was hers.
I had a desperately bad time of it for several days. I was distracted and worried, and could not sleep for fear that Montepaine had come to grief. Then one day the cook belonging to the tailor's household stopped me in the yard and said:
"You are to bring back that book."
I chose the time after dinner, when my employers lay down to rest, and appeared before the tailor's wife embarrassed and crushed. She looked now as she had the first time, only she was dressed differently. She wore a gray skirt and a black velvet blouse, with a turquoise cross upon her bare neck. She looked like a hen bullfinch. When I told her that I had not had time to read the book, and that I had been forbidden to read, tears filled my eyes. They were caused by mortification, and by joy at seeing this woman.
"Foo! what stupid people!" she said, drawing her fine brows together. "And your master has such an interesting face, too! Don't you fret about it. I will write to him."
"You must not! Don't write!" I begged her. "They will laugh at you and abuse you. Don't you know that no one in the yard likes you, that they all laugh at you, and say that you are a fool, and that some of your ribs are missing?"
As soon as I had blurted this out I knew that I had said something unnecessary and insulting to her. She bit her lower lip, and clapped her hands on her hips as if she were riding on horseback. I hung my head in confusion and wished that I could sink into the earth; but she sank into a chair and laughed merrily, saying over and over again:
"Oh, how stupid! how stupid! Well, what is to be done?" she asked, looking fixedly at me. Then she sighed and said, "You are a strange boy, very strange."
Glancing into the mirror beside her, I saw a face with high cheek-bones and a short nose, a large bruise on the forehead, and hair, which had not been cut for a long time, sticking out in all directions. That is what she called "a strange boy." The strange boy was not in the least like a fine porcelain figure.