Bad news, possibly,
but still news, if only she could lay hands on him. Where and how was
he hiding? Every effort to find him had been fruitless hitherto.
At Valetta Joe's they knew no such name, so they told her when she
inquired cautiously for Benito from some of the loafers hanging about
the shop.
Yet that was the place to which he was to proceed on arrival. The
letter she had picked up in Bombardier Lane said so. He must be
hiding, or in disguise; and now, when her anxiety for her beloved
Stanislas was at its highest pitch, she was more than ever resolved to
find out somehow what Benito was doing.
One afternoon, when business was rather slack at Mother Charcoal's,
she seized a chance of visiting the hut-town.
"Any work?" she asked, in Spanish, of Valetta Joe himself, whom she
met at the door of his shanty.
"What can you do? Where do you come from? Spain?" replied the baker in
the same tongue.
"Yes, from Malaga. I can do anything--try me."
"Can you sell bread through the camp? I am a man short, and could take
you on, perhaps, until he is better. Come down below, and I will give
you a basketful to hawk about."
"I shall have to tell them at the canteen--Mother Charcoal's--that I
am going to leave."
"That won't do. You must come at once if you come at all.
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