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Updated: June 28, 2025
Piedro spent a whole winter very unhappily. He expected that all his old tricks, and especially what his father had said of him in the market- place, would be soon forgotten; but month passed after month, and still these things were fresh in the memory of all who had known them. It is not easy to get rid of a bad character.
Little Piedro, who used to bask in the sun upon the sea-shore beside his father, and to lounge or sleep away his time in a fishing-boat, acquired habits of idleness, which seemed to his father of little consequence whilst he was BUT A CHILD. "What will you do with Piedro as he grows up, neighbour?" said the gardener. "He is smart and quick enough, but he is always in mischief.
"Partnership!" interrupted Francisco, drawing back alarmed; "I had no thoughts of that." "But won't you? can't you?" said Piedro, in a supplicating tone; "CAN'T you have thoughts of it? You'd find me a very active partner." Franscisco still drew back, and kept his eyes fixed upon the ground.
"I was not thinking of the profits," said Francisco; "but without meaning to be ill-natured to you, Piedro, I must say that I cannot enter into any partnership with you at present; but I will do what, perhaps, you will like as well," said he, taking half the fruit out of his basket; "you are heartily welcome to this; try and sell it in the children's fruit market.
"But," said Piedro, after he had taken several, "shall not I get you into a scrape by taking so many? Won't your father be apt to miss them?" "Do you think I would give them to you if they were not my own?" said Francisco, with a sudden glance of indignation. "Well, don't be angry that I asked the question; it was only from fear of getting you into disgrace that I asked it."
They had been borrowed from an old woman, who hired out glasses to the boys who sold lemonade. Piedro knew that it was the custom to pay, of course, for all that was broken; but this he was not inclined to do.
"The money, father," said Piedro, "that I got for the fish yesterday, and that I meant to give you to-day, before you went out." "Then I'll make you remember it against another time, sirrah!" said his father. "I'll teach you to fill your stomach with my money. Am I to lose my customers by your tricks, and then find you here eating my all?
"You'll pay for yourself and your sister, then," said Piedro, "for no credit is given here." "No credit do I ask," replied the lively boy; "when I told you I loved sugar-plums, did I tell you I loved them, or even my sister, so well as to run in debt for them?
He is a bankrupt in honesty." Piedro saw the mob, heard the indignant clamour, and, terrified at the approach of numbers, he fled with the utmost precipitation, having scarcely time to pack up half his sugar-plums. There was a prodigious number, more than would have filled many honest measures, scattered upon the ground and trampled under foot by the crowd.
"You did not, perhaps, hear, then," continued the man, "that there was a great search made, after the overturn, for a fine diamond cross, belonging to the lady in the carriage? That lady, though I did not know it till lately, was the Countess de Flora." "I know nothing of the matter," interrupted Piedro, in great agitation.
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