Mattia translated it as well as he could. It appeared that I was born on Thursday, August the 2nd, and that I was the son of John Driscoll and Margaret Grange, his wife.
What further proofs could I ask?
“That’s all very fine,” said Mattia that night, when we were in our caravan, “but how comes it that peddlers were rich enough to give their children lace bonnets and embroidered pelisses? Peddlers are not so rich as that!”
“It is because they were peddlers that they could get those things cheaper.”
Mattia whistled, but he shook his head, then again he whispered: “You’re not that Driscoll’s baby, but you’re the baby that Driscoll stole!”
I was about to reply but he had already climbed up into his bed.
Chapter XXVIII
A Mysterious Stranger
If I had been in Mattia’s place, I should perhaps have had as much imagination as he, but I felt in my position that it was wrong for me to have such thoughts. It had been proved beyond a doubt that Mr. Driscoll was my father. I could not look at the matter from the same point of view as Mattia. He might doubt… but I must not. When he tried to make me believe as he did, I told him to be silent. But he was pig-headed and I was not always able to get the better of his obstinacy.
“Why are you dark and all the rest of the family fair?” he would ask repeatedly.