That lady had the skill of a judge in getting words out of him.
That night, at the supper hour, the mother scarcely opened her mouth.
Her fingers communicated a nervous trembling to the plates and forks, and she looked at her son with tragic commiseration as though she foresaw terrible troubles about to burst upon his head.

She opposed a desperate silence to Esteban's questions and finally exclaimed: "Your father is deserting us!...

Your father has forgotten us!..." And she left the dining-room to hide her overflowing tears.
The boy slept rather restlessly, but he slept.

The admiration which he always felt for his father and a certain solidarity with the strong examples of his sex made him take little account of these complaints.
Matters for women! His mother just didn't know how to be the wife of an extraordinary man like Captain Ferragut.

He who was really a man, in spite of his few years, was going to intervene in this affair in order to show up the truth.
When Toni, from the deck of the vessel, saw the lad coming along the wharf the following morning, he was greatly tempted to hide himself....
"If Dona Cinta should call me again in order to question me!..." But he calmed himself with the thought that the boy was probably coming of his own free will to pass a few hours on the _Mare Nostrum_.