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"Good-day to you, signor," he replied, resuming his seat and watching me curiously as I turned away. I passed out of the wretched street feeling faint and giddy. The end of the miserable rag-dealer been told to me briefly and brutally enough yet somehow I was moved to a sense of regret and pity.
I began again to think about the poor widow's last mite, that I would have stolen a schoolboy's cap or handkerchief, or a beggar's wallet, that I would have brought to a rag-dealer without more ado, and caroused with the proceeds. In order to console myself to indemnify myself in some measure I take to picking all possible faults in the people who glide by.
The rag-dealer and his wife were amazingly skilful and quick at this work. On rainy days the assorting was done in the shed. During such weather the depression became a dismal, repellant swamp, and in order to cross it one had to sink into the mud, in places half way up to the knee.
Manuel, who spent many hours in conversation with Senor Custodio, noted very soon that the rag-dealer, though fully aware of his very humble condition, was a man of extraordinary pride and that as regarded honour and virtue he had the ideas of a mediaeval nobleman.
"Hi, hi, hi," bawled the omnibus-drivers, threading a dangerous way. A drunken American sailor wandered about tearfully inquiring, "What's he want anyhow?" A leathery-faced rag-dealer upon a little pony-drawn cart soared up over the tumult by virtue of his voice. "Garn 'ome, you Brasted Giant!" he brawled, "Garn 'Ome! You Brasted Great Dangerous Thing!
It is a quadrangular ditch, blackened by smoke and coal dust, hemmed in by crumbling walls and heaps of rubbish. As he reached the edge of this depression, the rag-dealer stopped and pointed out to Manuel a hovel standing next to a broken-down merry-go-round and some swings, saying: "That's my house; take the cart down there and unload it. Can you do that?" "Yes, I think so." "Are you hungry?"
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