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.