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                                MORRIÑA

                           (_HOMESICKNESS_)




                                MORRIÑA
                           (_HOMESICKNESS_)

                            BY EMILIA PARDO
                           BAZÁN, TRANSLATED
                          BY MARY J. SERRANO

                            [Illustration]

                      CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
                               NEW YORK

                          COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY

                      CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.

                        _All rights reserved._

                      THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
                             RAHWAY, N. J.




                                MORRIÑA

                           (_HOMESICKNESS_).




I.


If the apartment which Doña Nogueira de Pardiñas and her only son
Rogelio occupied in Madrid was neither the sunniest nor the most
spacious to be found in the city, it possessed, on the other hand, the
inestimable advantage of being situated in the Calle Ancha de San
Bernardo, so close to the Central University that to live in it was, as
one might say, the same as living in the university itself.

Seated in her leather-covered easy-chair by the window, widening and
narrowing the stocking she was

[Illustration: “Seated in her leather-covered easy-chair by the
window.”]

knitting without once looking at it, Señora de Pardiñas would follow her
adored boy with her gaze, which, traversing space and passing through
the solid substance of the walls, accompanied him to the very
lecture-room of the university. She saw him when he went in and when he
came out--she noticed whether he stopped to chat with any one, whom he
talked to, whether he laughed; she knew who his companions were, whom he
liked and whom he disliked; who were the industrious students and whom
the idle ones; who were regular and who were irregular in their
attendance. She was familiar, too, with the faces of the professors, and
made a study of their expression and their manner of returning the
salutations of the pupils, drawing from external signs important
psychological deductions bearing on the problem of the examinations:
“Ah, there comes old Contreras already, the Professor of Procedure. How
amiable he looks! what a saint-like face he has. How slowly he walks,
poor man. ’Tis easy to see that he suffers from rheumatism as I do. The
more’s the pity! I like him on that account, and not on that account
alone, but because I know that he is indulgent and that he will give
Rogelio a good mark in his examination. Now comes Ruiz del Monte, so
stiff and so conceited. He looks as if he were made all in one piece.
Poor us! Neither favor nor influence nor anything else is of any use
with him. He would have the boys know the studies as well as he does
himself. If he wants that let him give them his place in the
college--and the pay as well. Ah, here we have Señor de Lastra. He
stoops a little. What comical caricatures the boys make of him in the
class! And he is familiar to a fault. There he is now clapping Benito
Diaz, Rogelio’s great friend, on the back. He looks to me like a good
easy-going man. My blessing upon him! I don’t know what there is to be
gained by torturing poor boys and distressing their parents.”

Pausing in her soliloquy, the good lady ran her knitting needle through
the coil of her hair, now turning gray, and scratched her head lightly
with it. Suddenly her withered cheek flushed brightly as if a breath of
youth had blown across it.

“Ah, there is Rogelio,” she cried.

The student emerged from the building, wrapped in his crimson plush
cloak, his low, broad-brimmed hat slightly tipped to one side, his
glance fixed, from the first moment, on the window at which his mother
was sitting. Generally he would give her a