"I hope she will not tell that we gave her bread," murmured Rosa to
herself as the usual quiet settled over the panaderia. "We can't
afford to give bread to many people."

The weeks went by, and the panaderia did not prosper very well. It
grew to be a customary thing for the thin, sick woman to come daily
for bread, and she was never refused. She said with a sensitive
eagerness that when she was well again she would work and pay all
back, and Rosa's grandmother answered "Yes," cheerily, to this
promise, though any one who looked at the poor young mother's face
could see that there was small prospect of her ever being well again
in this world. Her husband still drank.

Times grew harder and harder at the panaderia. In the midst of the
winter a heavy blow fell, for the Zanjero's wife took a fancy to
making her own bread, and as she was the regular customer who bought
more loaves and paid more promptly than the other, the panaderia
felt the loss keenly. Customers were very scarce, and the
grandmother's eyes became so weak that she could no longer sew. Rosa
sewed the little that she could, but some days there was scarcely
enough to eat at the panaderia, except the very few loaves in the
case--the loaves that the three hardly knew whether to dare eat or
not, for fear some one should come in and want to buy. There were
many other people who were poor and without work, and the little
family kept their troubles to themselves. The poor sick neighbor
always came every day and was given bread. Winter passed and spring
arrived without much change in the panaderia's prospects.

"We could have eaten that ourselves," thought Rosa one night when
the neighbor went out with the bread.