"I can't believe it! So this is what life has become for you! Why, you ought to be out playing with other children.
"Yes."
Nacha could scarcely breathe for indignation. Then little by little, she brought out the child's story.
About eight years before, the girl's aunt had visited her parents, who were Spanish and lived in great poverty in La Coruña. This aunt was rich, and owned a store in Buenos Aires. Her little niece attracted her; and as the child's parents had ten other children, they gave her up to what seemed to them a prosperous future. Her aunt took her back with her, always treated her kindly; but the store no longer prospered, and finally, she was forced to close it. She told her little niece one day that they were so poor she would have to earn some money.
"We hadn't anything to eat," the child went on. "I didn't see what my aunt could do. And I didn't know what the place was she was sending me to. So I came, as she told me. But when I went home I cried, and said to my aunt I couldn't come to this house any more.... My aunt begged me to be brave, and told me that she was responsible for everything. But—it seemed so bad to me! I felt everything was all wrong. But my aunt says that when people do what they are forced to do, they are not really bad.... Can that be true? Tell me what you think?"
Nacha overwhelmed with horror, did not know what to reply.
"And is it wrong?"
Mme. Annette came in at this point and took the girl away with her. Nacha got up from her chair and rushed after them; but from the threshold of the room into which Madame had swept, she caught sight of a man and stopped short. Then she came back to the strange woman, towards whom, until this moment, she had felt a slight hostility.
"What a shame that is!" she broke out. "I have never in my life heard anything like that child's story. Exploited by her own aunt!"