Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/302

 "You've been away from Mother Barberin for a long time; how do you know if she isn't dead?"

This terrible thought had never occurred to me, and yet poor Vitalis had died, ...how was it I had not thought that I might lose her...

"Why didn't you say that before?" I demanded.

"Because when I'm happy I don't have those ideas. I have been so happy at the thought of offering your cow to Mother Barberin and thinking how pleased she'd be, I never thought before that she might be dead."

It must have been the influence of this dismal room, for we could only see the darkest side of everything.

"And, oh," cried Mattia, starting up and throwing out his arms, "if Mother Barberin is dead and that awful Barberin is alive and we go there, he'll take our cow and keep it himself."

It was late in the afternoon when the door was thrown open and an old gentleman with white hair came into our prison.

"Now, you rogues, answer this gentleman," said the jailer, who accompanied him.

"That's all right, that's all right," said the gentleman, who was the public prosecutor, "I'll question this one." With his finger he indicated me. "You take charge of the other; I'll question him later."

I was alone with the prosecutor. Fixing me with his eye, he told me that I was accused of