Our Elders, It Is
True, Showed Anxious Faces, But They Were Often Anxious About Matters
Which Did Not Affect Us Children, And Therefore Didn't Matter.
But by
and by even we little ones were made to realize that there was a
trouble in the land which touched us too, since it deprived us of the
companionship of the native boy who was our particular friend and
guardian during our early horseback rambles on the plain.
This boy,
Medardo, or Dardo, was the fifteen-years-old son - illegitimate of
course - of the native woman our English shepherd had made his wife.
Why he had done so was a perpetual mystery and marvel to every one on
account of her person and temper. The very thought of this poor
Natalia, or Dona Nata as she was called, long dead and turned to dust
in that far pampa, troubles my spirit even now and gives me the
uncomfortable feeling that in putting her portrait on this paper I am
doing a mean thing.
She was an excessively lean creature, careless, and even dirty in her
person, with slippers but no stockings on her feet, an old dirty gown
of a coarse blue cotton stuff and a large coloured cotton handkerchief
or piece of calico wound turban-wise about her head. She was of a
yellowish parchment colour, the skin tight-drawn over the small bony
aquiline features, and it would have seemed like the face of a corpse
or mummy but for the deeply-sunken jet-black eyes burning with a
troubled fire in their sockets.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 121 of 355
Words from 34026 to 34288
of 98444
