BLOND BASQUES

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 451, 19 June 1937, Page 3

BLOND BASQUES

BRIGHT BLUE EYES Delightful Children (By Air Mail.) . London, May 26. land PaMito are twins. They are seven, ytJars old. pure Basques, and speak no Span.sh. When one oit the officials in 'the Spanish children’s refugee camp outside Southampton wants to tell Pedrito to hold his tin mug, or Pablito to display his identity ticket, he fits to be interpreted through one of thir five bkliugual sisters. Otherwise, these two fdSr-haired email boys jusr smile and blush and . thake their heads. When the lanft guage difficulty becomes .too acute ' they dissolve into homesick tears, days Margaret Lane in the “Daily Mail.’*

Like bo many Basques, these two are ae blonde as any English children, have bright blue eyes and light freckled! skint They cling to each other, as twins do, finding themselves confusingly transplanted from the bombardments of Bilbao to 15 acres of Hampshire fields, tleeping in a tent with half a dozen ether little boys, being lined up at midday fbr great ladlings of rich stew —thick, interesting mixture —containing those almost forgotten phenomena, fresh meat and glutinous bones. “17th Century infantas.” Pedrito and Pablito leave ethe bones to the last, and hunched on the trampled grass to suck them Four of their sisters are quautered In another part of the camp. The fifth, a handsome girl of 19, is one of the hundred school teachers who came over to look after the children. In this vast camp one sees faces in the endless food queues that would stop one dead to turn and gaze wherever they were seen. Twp small dark-eyed sisters, their glossy black hair plaited in a coronet over ithe tops of their heads, their «*ars pierced and ornamented with tiny pearl ear-rings, watched the doling out of stew and bread with a grave detachment worthy of a pair of 17th century infanta*, in a Spanish painting. Their strangely matured hairdressing (the older sister does it for both), their long, full peasant skirts and air of reserve gave these two children— perhaps 8 (and 10 years old—a curiously womanly appearance. Creeping out behind the medical

tent, Maria Orsano was eating <a beef sandwich. She detired privacy, for the sandwich was large, a pleasure to be enjoyed alone. She could not have been more than six, _bult she was friendly as well as hungry, and was just beginning to tell me about her mother’s parting injunction to keep her cotton dress clean, when one of her small compat roits stumbled round the corner of the tent. This put -an end to what promised to be a congenial conversation, for Maria’s sociability was not proof against any possible threat to her sandwich. With *an alarmed glance at the other child she sidled away.