used to cuff him when there were less than ten coppers in the tambourine.
They traveled around from place to place, with a big yellow dog and a
little blue wagon that contained the show. They hitched their wagon to a
dog. At night they would sleep in some shed back of a tavern, or under a
table at a market, and Mariano would pillow his head on the yellow dog
and curl up in a ball trying to keep warm.

When the father died, a tall man, who carried a sword and wore spurs, and
had two rows of brass buttons down the front of his coat, took the dog
and the wagon and the Punch and Judy show and sold 'em all--so as to get
money to pay the funeral expenses of the dead man.

The tall man with the sword might have sold little Mariano, too, or
thrown him in with the lot for good measure, but nobody seemed to want
the boy--they all had more boys than they really needed already.

A fat market-woman gave the lad a cake, and another one gave him two
oranges, and still another market-woman, fatter than the rest, blew her
nose violently on her check apron and said it was too bad a boy like that
didn't have a mother.

Mariano never had a mother--at least none that he knew of, and it really
seemed as if it didn't make much difference, but now he began to cry,
and, since the fat woman had suggested it, really wished he had a mother,
after all.

There was an old priest standing by in the group. Mariano had not noticed
him. But when the priest said, "But God is both our father and our
mother, so no harm can come to us!" Mariano looked up in his face and
felt better.