The girl bowed her head, waiting for the blow, but the blow did not come. It had only been a warning. If, by the evening, she had not finished her work, then Lucrécia would receive the usual punishment. Damião looked at her; she was a scrawny little black girl, all skin and bone, with a scar on her forehead and a burn mark on her left hand. She was about eleven years old. Damião noticed, too, that she kept coughing, quietly, as if not wanting to disturb their conversation. He felt sorry for her and decided to take her side if she did not finish her work. Sinhá Rita would be sure to forgive her . . . Besides, she had been laughing at him, so it was his fault, if being funny can be a fault.

At this point, João Carneiro arrived. He blanched when he saw his godson there, and looked at Sinhá Rita, who came straight to the point. She told him he had to remove the boy from the seminary, that the child had no vocation for the ecclesiastical life, and it was far better to have no priest at all than a bad priest. One could just as easily love and serve Our Lord in the outside world. For the first few minutes, João Carneiro was too taken aback to reply; in the end, however, he did open his mouth to scold his godson for coming and bothering “complete strangers” and threatened him with punishment.

“What do you mean, ‘punishment’!” Sinhá Rita broke in. “Punish him for what? Go on, talk to his father.”

“I can’t promise anything; in fact, I think it’s highly unlikely, if not impossible . . .”

“Well, I’m telling you that it has to be possible. If you really try,” she went on in a rather insinuating tone, “I’m sure you can sort something out. You just have to ask nicely and he’ll give in. Because, Senhor João Carneiro, your godson is not going back to the seminary.”

“But, senhora—”

“Go on, off you go.”