"Show me your face, little one."
He looked in the child's face with astonishment; her black eyes shone with a red spot, like a spark, for the instant while the match lasted. She looked a child, for she was but a tiny creature, extremely thin and undeveloped; but she seemed like a little woman, for her eyes had not a childlike expression, and her face had the mature look of a nature which has gone through experience and acquired judgment—or will have acquired it soon. In spite of this anomaly, she was well-proportioned and her small head sat gracefully on her lean little body. You might have said she was a woman seen through a diminishing-glass; or, again, that she was a child with the eyes and expression of a grown-up person. In your uncertainty, it was hard to say whether she was astonishingly forward or lamentably backward.
"How old are you?" asked Golfin, shaking his fingers free of the match which was beginning to burn them.
"They say I am sixteen," said Nela, gazing in her turn at the doctor.
"Sixteen!" exclaimed Golfin. "Much less than that, child! You are twelve at most to judge by appearances."
"Holy Virgin! They say I am quite a phenomenon," said the girl in a tone of weariness of the subject.
"A phenomenon!" repeated Golfin laying his hand on her hair. "Well, perhaps so. Now, come along—show me the way."
Nela set out resolutely, keeping but a little way in front of the traveller but rather on one side of him, to show her just appreciation of such illustrious company. Her nimble little feet, which were bare, were evidently familiar with the ground they trod, with the stones, the puddles and the thistles. She wore a plain frock of scanty breadth, and the rudimentary simplicity of her garb, as well as the loose flow of her thick, short hair, which fell in natural waves, had a stamp of savage independence rather than of abject poverty. Her speech, on the other hand, struck Golfin by its modest propriety, indicating a formed and thoughtful mind. Her voice had a gentle inflection of kindliness, which could not be the result of education, and her glance was restless and shy, whenever she was not looking at the sky or the earth.
"Tell me," said Golfin. "Do you live in the mines? Are you the child of any of the workmen employed here?"
"They say I have neither father nor mother."
"Poor little girl! and you work in the mines?"
"No, Señor. I am of no use at all," she replied without raising her eyes.
"Well, you are modest, at any rate."
The doctor bent down to look closely at her face; it was small and freckled all over with little mole-like spots. Her forehead was narrow, her nose sharp but not ill-shaped, her eyes black and brilliant, but their light shone but sadly. Her hair, naturally of a golden brown, was dull for want of care, and from exposure to the sun, wind and dust. Her lips were so thin as to be hardly visible, and always wore a smile, but it was like the faint smile of the dead who have died dreaming of Heaven. Nela's mouth was, strictly speaking, ugly, still it deserved a word of praise from the point of view expressed in the line from Polo de Medina: "A mouth is sweet that asks for nothing." [1] In fact, neither in word, look, or smile, did the poor child betray any of the degrading habits of the beggar. Golfin stroked the sad little face, holding it under the chin and almost encircling it with his big fingers.
"Poor little body!" he said. "Providence has not been over-generous to you. Who do you live with?"
"With Señor Centeno, the overseer of the beasts belonging to the mines?"
"You do not seem to have been born in luxury.—Who were your parents?"
"They say my mother sold peppers in the market at Villamojada. She was not married. She had me one All-Saints' day, and then she went to be wet-nurse at Madrid."
"A highly estimable woman!" muttered Golfin ironically.
"And no one knows who your father was?"
"Yes, Señor," said Nela with some pride. "My father was the first who ever lighted the lamps of Villamojada."
"Wonderful!"
"I ought to tell you," said the little girl with the gravity befitting the dignity of history, "that when the town council first had lamps hung up in the streets, my father was entrusted with the care of lighting and cleaning them. I was nursed by a sister of my mother's—not that she was married either, as they tell me. My father had quarrelled with her—they all lived together as I have heard—and when he went out to light the lamps he used to put me in his basket, with his lamp-chimneys and cottons and oil. One day when he went up to light the lamp on the bridge, he put the basket on the parapet, and I rolled out and fell into the river."
"And you were not drowned!"
"No, Señor; for I fell on the stones. Holy Mother of God! I was a dear little thing before that, they tell me."
"Yes, I am sure you were," said the stranger with an impulse of loving-kindness. "And so you are still.—But tell me what next. Have you lived long in the mines?"
"Thirteen years, they say. My mother took me back after my tumble. My father fell ill, and as my mother would not do anything for him, because he was wicked to her, he was taken to the hospital where they say he died. Meanwhile my mother came to work in the mines. They say the overseer discharged her one day because she drank so much."
"And your mother went.... Go on, I take a real interest in the good woman; she went...."
"She went to a very big hole over there," said the child, standing still and speaking with intense pathos, "and she threw herself in."
"The devil she did! That was coming to a bad end. I suppose she did not come out again?"
"No, Señor," said Nela with perfect simplicity. "She is there still."
"And since that catastrophe, poor child," said Golfin kindly, "you have stayed at work here. Mining work is very hard labor and you have taken the hue of the soil; you are thin and ill-nourished. This life is enough to ruin the strongest constitution."
"No, Señor; I do not labor. They say I am not good for anything and never shall be."
"God forbid, silly child! why you are a treasure."
"No indeed," insisted the girl, "I cannot work at all. If I take up ever so small a load, I fall down, and if I am set to any hard work I faint away before long."
"You are as God made you—and if you fell into the hands of any one who knew how to treat you, you would work very well."
"No, Señor, no indeed," she repeated as energetically as though it were in her own praise that she spoke, "I am no good to any one—only in the way."
"Then you are a mere vagabond?"
"No, Señor, for I attend on Pablo."
"And who is Pablo?"
"That young blind gentleman, whom you met in La Terrible. I have been his guide for the last year and a half. I take him everywhere; we go for long walks in the fields."
"He seems a good fellow, this Pablo."
Nela again stood still and looked up at the doctor, and her face glowed with enthusiasm as she exclaimed:
"Holy Virgin! He is the best and dearest creature in the whole world! Poor fellow!—and he is cleverer without eyes than all those who can see."
"Yes, I liked your master. Does he belong to the place?"
"Yes, Señor; he is the only son of Don Francisco Penáguilas, a very kind and very rich gentleman who lives in the houses at Aldeacorba."
"Tell me, why are you called Nela? What does it mean?"
The child shrugged her shoulders, and after a pause,