Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/338

 taking any notice of me. I went towards my grandfather, but he would not let me get near him, and like the evening before, he spat at my side, which stopped me short.

"Ask them," I said to Mattia, "what time I shall see my mother and father?"

Mattia did as I told him, and my grandfather, upon hearing one of us speak English, seemed to feel more amiable.

"What does he say?"

"He says that your father has gone out for the day and that your mother is asleep, and that if we like we may go out."

"Did he only say that?" I asked, finding this translation very short.

Mattia seemed confused.

"I don't know if I understood the rest," he said.

"Tell me what you think you understood."

"It seemed to me that he said that if we found some bargains in the city we were not to miss them. He said that we lived at the expense of fools."

My grandfather must have guessed that Mattia was explaining what he had said to me, for with the hand that was not paralyzed, he made a motion as though he were slipping something into his pocket, then he winked his eye.

"Let us go out," I said quickly.

For two or three hours we walked about, not daring to go far for fear we might become lost. Bethnal-Green was even more horrible in the daytime than it had been at night. Mattia and I