Mistaking a natural change
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Não vi que a mudança era natural; temi que houvesse mudado a resolução assentada, e entrei a tratal-o com palavras e gestos carinhosos, até entrarmos no omnibus.
I did not see that the change was natural; I feared he had changed the settled decision, and I began to treat him with affectionate words and gestures, until we boarded the omnibus.
Bento misreads the shift, fears a reversal, and turns coaxing until they board the omnibus.
The chapter turns inward at its close, and the whole scene reveals its stakes. Bento, still a boy, cannot read José Dias's slowing manner as the mere unwinding of a happy man; he takes it for a warning sign that the 'resolução assentada' — the decision to keep him out of the seminary — might be coming undone. His misreading is the young narrator's confession of how much he depends on this man's favor.
So he does what the powerless do: he flatters. 'Palavras e gestos carinhosos' are the boy's instruments, deployed anxiously all the way to the omnibus. It is a quiet, painful inversion — the child courting the dependent, buying with tenderness the outcome he cannot command. Machado shows, without a word of judgment, how early Bento learned that affection can be strategy, a lesson that will shadow every later scene of his jealous love.
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