neck,
which had become a mere thread; the mother to stifle its feeble moans
would press it to her breast, but the child would turn away its mouth
guessing the inutility of expending its strength on that rag of flesh
from which it could only succeed in extracting the last drop.

Gabriel examined the child, noting its extreme emaciation and the
spots that scrofula had spread over its straw-coloured skin. He shook
his head incredulously when the neighbours who had gathered round the
invalid each diagnosed some particular ailment, and recommended every
imaginable sort of household remedy, from decoctions of rare herbs and
stinking ointments to applications on the chest of miracle working
prints, and tracing seven crosses on the navel with as many
paternosters.

"It is hunger," said Luna to his niece, "nothing but hunger." And
depriving himself of part of his own food, he sent to the shoemaker's
house the milk that had been brought up for himself. But the child's
stomach could not retain the liquid too substantial for its weakness,
and threw it up as soon as swallowed. The Aunt Tomasa, with her
energetic and enterprising character, brought a woman from outside the
Cathedral to nourish the child, but after two days, and before the
effects became visible, she came no more, as if she had felt disgusted
at the miserable and corpse-like little body touching her. In vain the
gardener's widow searched; it was not easy to find generous breasts
who would give their milk for very little pay.

In the meanwhile the child was dying. All the women came in and out of
the shoemaker's house, and even Don Antolin would stand at the door in
the mornings.

"How is the little one? Just the same? It is all in God's hands."

And he would retire, doing the shoemaker the great charity of not
speaking to him about the pesetas he owed him, on account of the sick
child.

"Virgin's Blue" was annoyed by this incident, which upset the calm of
the cloister, and disturbed the bliss of his digestion as a happy and
well-fed servant of the Church. It was a shame that that shoemaker
should be allowed to live in the Claverias with all that flock of
wretched and scurvy children; one would die every month; all sorts
of illness would lay hold on them. By what right were they in the
Cathedral when they drew no wage from the Obreria? Such stinking
excrescences ought to remain outside the Lord's house.

His mother-in-law was furious.

"Silence, you thief o