While she distributed their tasks among the children, saying to one, "Take care to make this hem straight," to another, "Make this seam even, the stitch smaller," to a third, "Use your handkerchief instead of your dress," and to still another, "Sit still, child, don't move your feet," Leocadia cast a glance from time to time toward the plaza in the hope of seeing Segundo pass by. But no Segundo was to be seen. The flies settled themselves to sleep, buzzing, on the ceiling; the heat abated; the afternoon came, and the children went away. Leocadia felt a profound sadness take possession of her and, without waiting to put the house in order, she went to her room and threw herself on the bed.
The glass door was pushed gently open, and some one entered softly.
"Mamma," said the intruder, in a low voice.
"Mamma, mamma," repeated the hunchback, in a louder voice. "Mamma!" he shouted at last.
"I have a slight headache. There, leave me in peace."
Minguitos turned round and walked in silence toward the door. As her eyes fell on the protuberance of his back, a sharp pang pierced the heart of the schoolmistress. How many tears that hump had cost her in other days. She raised herself on her elbow.
"Don't go away. How do you feel to-day? Have you any pain?"
"I feel pretty well, mamma. Only my chest hurts me."
Leocadia sat up in the bed and, taking the child's head between her hands, looked at him with a mother's hungry look. Minguitos' face was long and of a melancholy cast; the prominent lower jaw was in keeping with the twisted and misshapen body that reminded one of a building shaken out of shape by an earthquake or a tree twisted by a hurricane. Minguitos' deformity was not congenital. He had always been sickly, indeed, and it had always been remarked that his head seemed too heavy for his body, and that his legs seemed too frail to support him. Leocadia recalled one by one the incidents of his childhood. At five years old the boy had met with an accident--a fall down the stairs; from that day he lost all his liveliness; he walked little and never ran. He contracted a habit of sitting Turkish fashion, playing marbles for hours at a time. If he rose his legs soon warned him to sit down again. When he stood, his movements were vacillating and awkward. When he was quiet he felt no pain, but when he turned any part of his body, he experienced slight pains in the spinal column. The trouble increased with time; the boy complained of a feeling as if an iron band were compressing his chest. Then his mother, now thoroughly alarmed, consulted a famous physician, the best in Orense. He prescribed frictions with iodine, large doses of phosphates of lime, and sea-bathing. Leocadia hastened with the boy to a little sea-port. After taking two or three baths, the trouble increased; he could not bend his body; his spinal column was rigid and it was only when he was in a horizontal position that he felt any relief from his now severe pains. Sores appeared on his skin, and one morning when Leocadia begged him with tears to straighten himself, and tried to lift him up by the arms, he uttered a horrible cry.
