Chapter II: Part 2

“Oh, I have a dolly, and she is dressed in blue,
With a fluff of satin on her white silk shoe,
And a lace mantilla to make my dolly gay,
When I take her dancing this way, this way, this way.

“When she goes out walking in her Manila shawl,
My Andalusian dolly is quite the queen of all.
Gypsies, dukes and candy-men bow down in a row,
When my dolly fans herself, so and so and so.”

“It’s only Big Brother,” spoke Rodrigo quietly and, stepping forward with his lantern, he turned its light on a brave little lassie cuddled in the window-recess of what had been the boudoir of a queen. She was hugging to her heart a most comforting, companionable doll, made out of a bundle of newspapers that one of the tourists had let fall. Pilarica’s wisp of a hair-ribbon was serving as a belt and the costume was completed by Rafael’s red fez. Although the child had not slept through all the long, dark hours, the shapeless doll had borne her such good company, rustling affably whenever conversation was in order, that she had forgotten to be afraid.

V

A BEAUTIFUL FEVER

Pilarica did not remember her father, and it was not without some persuasion that she consented to let the stranger carry her, while to Rodrigo was entrusted the newspaper doll, whose demeanor he pronounced quite stiff, although her intelligence was beyond dispute.

“Don’t lose the magic cap, pl--” murmured Pilarica, but for once her politeness remained incomplete, for no sooner was the silky head at rest on the broad shoulder than the exhausted child fell fast asleep. Curiously enough, the warm pressure of that nestling little body turned the thoughts of Don Carlos, for the first time since he had left the garden, to Rafael. Had he, perhaps, been too harsh with the youngster? How suddenly that first, happy look in the great eyes had been clouded with distress and shame! The boys’ mother had always been tender with them, even in their wrongdoing. And he, accustomed as he was to deal with bolts and wheels, must learn not to handle the hearts of children as if they, too, were made of iron. The father’s mood was already self-reproachful as they entered the stone kitchen, which a ruddy _brasero_, the Spanish fire-pan where charcoal is burned, and a savory odor of stew made cozy and homelike.

“Now praised be the Virgin of the Pillar!” cried Tia Marta, unceremoniously snatching Pilarica from Don Carlos and carrying her to the warmth of the _brasero_. And while Rodrigo, his vivacity unchecked by hunger and fatigue, poured forth the story of the rescue, which lost nothing in his telling, Tia Marta woke the little sleeper enough to make her swallow a cup of hot soup, undressed her, rubbed the slender body into a rosy glow and tucked her snugly away in bed. Grandfather stirred in his cot as the child was brought into the inner room and hummed a snatch of lullaby, but Rafael’s cot was empty.

Tia Marta’s squinting eyes, as she returned to the kitchen, peered into the shadows that lay beyond the flickering circle of light cast by the _brasero_.

“Rafael, come and get your soup and then to bed,” she called. “You must be as sleepy as the shepherds of Bethlehem.”

But no Rafael replied. Rodrigo and his father exchanged startled glances.

“Didn’t the boy come back to the house?” asked Don Carlos.

“Do you mean to say you didn’t take him with you?” demanded Tia Marta.

“Father commanded him to stop where he was,” said Rodrigo, aghast, and rushed out again into the rain, Don Carlos and Tia Marta at his heels.

They found Rafael, drenched to the skin, standing erect with folded arms beside the Sultana Fountain, a stubborn little image of obedience; but when his brother’s hand fell on his shoulder, the child reeled and fainted away. Rodrigo caught the boy just in time to save the dark head from crashing against the marble curb of the basin and, with Tia Marta’s help, carried him to the kitchen. Here they both worked over the passive form with rubbing, hot flannels and every remedy they knew, while Don Carlos, sick at heart, looked on, not venturing to touch his little son.

Rafael revived at last, but only to pass into fit after fit of convulsive crying. He lay in his brother’s arms, refusing to taste the hot soup, goat’s milk, herb tea, that, one after another, Tia Marta pressed upon him.

“But it’s peppermint tea, my angel,” she wheedled, “and peppermint is the good herb that St. Anne blessed.”

“It’s bed-time, Rafael,” pleaded Rodrigo. “Isn’t it, father? And no boy ever goes to bed without his supper.”

“Bed-time? I should think so indeed,” replied Don Carlos. “It’s quarter of two by my watch.”

At the word _watch_ Rafael’s wild crying broke out anew.

“Do you see those tears, Don Carlos?” scolded Tia Marta, whose anxiety had to vent itself in abuse of somebody. “Tears as big as chickpeas! A house in which a child weeps such tears as those is not in the grace of God. And why, in the name of all the demons, must you be talking of watches? Such is the tact of Aragon, not of Andalusia. Oh, you Aragonese! You would speak of a rope in the house of a man that had been hanged.”

Rafael’s crying suddenly ceased. The loyal little lad sat upright on Rodrigo’s knee and turned his stained and swollen face with a certain dignity upon the old servant.

“You are not to speak to my father like that, Tia Marta,” he said. “What my father does is right.”

“Oh, the impudent little cherub!” cried Tia Marta, hugely delighted, while Don Carlos had to turn away to hide the quiver that surprised his lip.

The next day Pilarica, though she slept till noon, was as well as ever, but Rafael lay, now shaking with chills, now burning with fever, yet always wearing the rumpled red fez, which his light-headed fancies seemed to connect with the look of comprehending love in his father’s eyes.

Those first few days left little memory of their stupors and their nauseas and their pains, but when Rafael began to pay heed to life once more, he found himself thin and languid, to be sure, but the object of most gratifying attentions from the entire household. His cot had been placed--not without a pitched battle between Don Carlos and Tia Marta--under the old olive tree just before the door, and Grandfather, in his accustomed seat on the mosaic bench, had brightened up again into the best of entertainers. All this stir and excitement in the household seemed to have scattered the mists that had been creeping slowly over his brain. He was more alert than for many months and no longer played with oranges and snails. He knew his son-in-law now and while he had as many riddles in his white head as ever, he gave them out only as the children called for them. When Rafael saw that they amused his father, the boy began to hold them in higher esteem.

“They do well for girls at any time,” he confided to Rodrigo, “and for men when we are ill.” But he insisted that the answers should be guessed.

“Ask us each a riddle in turn, please, Grandfather,” he requested one marvelous Andalusian evening, when the earliest stars were pricking with gold the rich purple of the sky, “and I will pronounce the forfeits for those who fail.”

“With whom do I begin?” asked Grandfather.

“With my father, of course,” responded Rafael.

“No, no, my son. Always the ladies first,” corrected Don Carlos, drawing Pilarica to his side.

“Then it is Tia Marta who begins, for she is bigger than I am, and so she must be more of a lady,” observed Pilarica wisely.

Just then the five-minute evening peal from the old Watch-Tower rang out, and Grandfather, turning to Tia Marta, recited:

“Shut in a tower, I tell you truth,
Is a saintly woman with only one tooth;
But whenever she calls, this good old soul,
Sandals patter and carriages roll.”

“Bah!” ejaculated Tia Marta. “As if I had not known that ever since I could suck sugarcane! To ask a church-bell riddle of one who was born on the top of the Giralda!”

“I was born in a bell-tower;
So my mother tells;
When the sponsors came to my christening,
I was ringing the bells,”

sang Grandfather roguishly, strumming on his guitar.

“But this fiddling old grasshopper is enough to set the blood of St. Patience on fire,” snapped Tia Marta, who had been standing in the doorway and now indignantly popped back into her kitchen.

“_Did_ Tia Marta ring the bells when she was a teenty tinty baby?” asked Pilarica.

“Not just that,” replied Don Carlos, who was seated in the hammock that he had swung beside Rafael’s cot in order to care for the sick boy at night, “but it is true that she was born high up in the Giralda, which, as she may have told you, is the beautiful old Moorish minaret, that looks as if it were wrought of rose-colored lace, close by the glorious cathedral of Seville. There are thirty bells in this tower and they all have names. One is Saint Mary, I remember, and one Saint Peter, and one The Fat Lady, and one The Sweet Singer. Tia Marta can tell you all the rest, for she spent the first seventeen years of her life among them, way up above the roofs of the city. The hawks that build their nests even higher, under the gilded wings of the crowning statue of Faith, used to drop their black feathers at her feet and she would wear them in her hair when she came down to the festivals of Seville. She was a wonderful dancer in those days, I have heard your grandfather say.”

“Ay, that she was,” chimed in the old man, speaking with unwonted animation. “I can see her now in her yellow skirt spangled all over with furbelows, wearing her wreath of red poppies with the best, while her little feet would twinkle to the clicking of the castanets.”

“But how did she happen to grow so old and ugly?” asked Rafael.

“Oh, Rafael!” exclaimed Pilarica, shocked by such unmannerly frankness.

“Very nobly,” answered Don Carlos, stroking his little daughter’s hair. “By love and by service. When her father, the bell-ringer, died, and a stranger took his rooms in the Giralda, Marta came down into the city and entered the home of your grandfather and sainted grandmother--”

“May God rejoice her soul with the light of Paradise!” murmured Grandfather devoutly.

“There Marta was nurse-maid for your mother, then a little witch two or three years old,” continued Don Carlos. “And she grew so fond of her charge that she never left her, not even when your mother had the infinite goodness to marry me, and we moved to Cadiz, my naval station then. And now Tia Marta, for your mother’s blessed sake, spends all her strength and devotion upon you. We must never forget what we owe her, and we must always treat her with respect and affection.”

Rodrigo, who was pacing the tiled walks near by, trying to puzzle out a mathematical problem, turned to say:

“I’ll bring her a cherry ribbon from Granada to-morrow.”

“And she may wash my ears as hard as she likes,” magnanimously declared Rafael.

But Pilarica slipped from within the circle of her father’s arm and ran into the house to surprise Tia Marta with a sudden squeeze and shower of kisses.

By the time the little girl came out again, Grandfather had a riddle for her:

“When she wears her silvery bonnet,
My lady is passing fair;
But she’s always turning her head about,
Gazing here and there.”

As the child hesitated, Rodrigo pointed to the luminous horizon, and she promptly said: “The Moon.”

“But that’s not playing fair,” protested Rafael.

“Oh, we don’t expect girls to play fair,” laughed his brother.

“But I _want_ to play fair,” urged Pilarica. “And I want to be punished, like Rafael, when I do wrong. Why wasn’t it just as bad in me to disobey Tia Marta and run off with the Alhambra children as it was in Rafael to leave me alone?”

“It’s hard to explain, Sugarplum,” said her father, “but the world expects certain things of a man, courage and faithfulness and honor, and a boy is in training for manhood.”

“And what is a girl in training for?” asked Pilarica.

“To be amiable and charming,” answered Rodrigo promptly.

“But I want to be faithful and hon’able, too,” persisted Pilarica.

“A man must do his duty,” declared Don Carlos, slowly and earnestly. “That is what manliness means. He must satisfy his conscience. But it is enough for a little girl if she content her father’s heart, as my darling contents mine. And when the years shall bring you a husband, then he will be your conscience.”

“But I want a conscience of my own,” pouted Pilarica. “And I do not want a husband at all. If I must grow up, I will be a nun and make sweetmeats.”

“Time enough to change your mind,” scoffed Rodrigo. “What is my riddle, Grandfather?”

“Wait till my father has had his turn,” jealously interposed Rafael.

Grandfather was all ready:

“Here comes a lady driving into town;
Softly the horses go;
Her mantle’s purple, and black her gown;
Gems on her forehead glow.”

“But this is difficult,” groaned Don Carlos, thinking so hard that the hammock creaked.

“I know,” cooed Pilarica. “Grandfather told it to me once before.”

“Don’t give my father a hint,” warned Rafael.

“But Rodrigo gave me a hint,” returned Pilarica.

“Oh, that’s different,” declared Rodrigo, almost impatiently. “_Men_ must play fair.”

But it was some time before Don Carlos found the right answer, “Night”; and Rodrigo had almost as much trouble in guessing his.

“I’m a very tiny gentleman,
But I am seen from far.
Out walking in the evening
And lighting my cigar.”

He called out “Firefly” only just in time to escape a forfeit, but Rafael, to whom fell the puzzle:

“A plate of nuts upset at night,
But all picked up by morning light,”

quickly guessed “Stars.”

He could hardly help it, with such a shining company of them shedding their gracious looks down upon the garden.

“How many stars are there, Grandfather?” he asked.

“One thousand and seven,” replied Grandfather, “except on Holy Night, the blessed Christmas Eve, when there flashes out one more, brightest of all, the Star of Bethlehem.”

“That is your Andalusian arithmetic,” laughed Don Carlos, shaking his head. “They say in Galicia that a man should not try to count the stars, lest he come to have as many wrinkles as the number of stars he has counted.”

“Where’s Galicia?” asked Pilarica.

“Far from here, in the northwest corner of Spain,” answered Don Carlos, more gravely than seemed necessary. “My sister--your Aunt Barbara--lives there, and one of these days I am going to tell you more of her, and of her husband, your Uncle Manuel, and of your Cousin Dolores, who is a year or two younger than Rodrigo. They are the only kindred we have in the world.”

Even Rodrigo wondered at the sudden seriousness in Don Carlos’ tone, but Grandfather, at that moment, chanted another riddle, which, as it turned out, nobody could guess, not even Tia Marta, who had come to the doorway again.

“Tell me, what is the thing I mean,
That the greater it grows the less is seen.”

Grandfather finally had to tell them the answer, “Darkness,” and then Rafael assigned to everybody a forfeit. Tia Marta was sent into the house after a treat, which, for Rafael’s own forfeit, he was not to taste; Pilarica danced, Rodrigo vaulted over the cot, and Don Carlos was begged to “tell about the heroes of Spain.”

“To-morrow,” said the father, taking Rafael’s wrist in his cool fingers and counting the pulse. “You have had quite enough talking for to-night, my son.”

And then the English consul, whose home was on the Alhambra hill, dropped in, just as Tia Marta was passing around--but not to Rafael--the most delicious cinnamon paste whose secret she had learned from the nuns in Seville. The consul shook hands with Don Carlos and Rodrigo, patted Pilarica’s head, complimented Tia Marta on the paste, and then bent over Rafael’s cot.

“So you have been having a fever, my little man?” he said.

“Oh, such a beautiful fever!” sighed Rafael blissfully, snuggling his face against his father’s coat sleeve.

“But how is that?” queried the consul in surprise.

“It’s the red cap,” volunteered Pilarica. “It doesn’t exactly turn real stones into real bread, but it makes trouble pleasant, and that’s the same thing, only better.”

The Englishman did not look much enlightened.

VI

HEROES AND DONKEYS

On the morrow Don Carlos was promptly called upon to redeem his forfeit. Rafael was so much better that he had been lifted over to his father’s hammock, where, propped against pillows, he sat almost upright, taking, for the first time since his illness began, his usual breakfast of chocolate and bread. Pilarica, in celebration of this happy event, had waited to breakfast with him, and the two children were having great fun, throwing back their heads in unison as they dipped the long strips of bread into their bowls of cinnamon-flavored chocolate, so thick that it clung to the bread in a sticky lump. They were very dexterous in whirling up the bread-sticks and directing the sluggish brown trickle into their mouths without spilling a drop, afterwards biting off the chocolate-laden end of the bread and hungrily dipping again.

“And now for the heroes!” called Rafael.

“You didn’t say please,” rebuked Pilarica.

“Heroes, please,” amended the boy, “but girls ought not to correct their brothers.”

“Do me the favor to excuse me,” apologized Pilarica.

“There is no occasion for it,” returned Rafael with his best Andalusian manner.

“A thousand thanks,” responded Pilarica. And now that this series of polite phrases, taught in every Spanish nursery, was duly accomplished, Rafael called again for the heroes.

“One at a time,” responded the father, throwing out his hands with a gesture of playful remonstrance. He had just come back from his morning walk with Rodrigo, whom he liked to accompany for at least a part of the way to the Institute, and was warm from the return climb. “One hero a day, like one breakfast a day, is quite enough for Don Anybody.”

Then he told them stories of a champion who was mighty in Spain eight hundred years ago.

“If I were one hundred times as old as I am,” cried Rafael with sparkling eyes, “perhaps I would have seen him.”

“Perhaps,” smiled Don Carlos, and went on to tell the children that this warrior’s name was the name of their own brother, Rodrigo, though he had other names, too, as Ruy Diaz de Bivar, and was most often called the Cid, or Lord, a title given him by the five Moorish kings whom he conquered all at once.

“_Five--Moorish--kings!_” exclaimed Rafael in rapture, while Pilarica, to help her imagination, propped up five tawny breadsticks in a row.

So their father told them how the Cid, when a stripling not twenty summers old, had ridden forth on his fiery horse, Bavieca, followed by a troop of youthful friends, against those five royal Moors who, with a great army, were plundering Castile, and how he overthrew them and set their host of Christian captives free.

“Our Rodrigo would have done that, too,” declared Rafael proudly, while Pilarica, with one valiant dab of her forefinger, tumbled the five bread-sticks into the dust. Later, remembering Tia Marta, she picked them up and polished them off with a handful of rose-petals before restoring them to the plate.

Finding his hero so popular, Don Carlos recited what he could remember of an old Spanish ballad that tells of the Cid’s offer to give Bavieca to the King of Castile.

“The King looked on him kindly, as on a vassal true;
Then to the King Ruy Diaz spake after reverence due:
‘O King, the thing is shameful, that any man beside
The liege lord of Castile himself should Bavieca ride:

“‘For neither Spain nor Araby could another charger bring
So good as he, and certes, the best befits my king.
But that you may behold him, and know him to the core,
I’ll make him go as he was wont when his nostrils smelt the Moor.’

“With that, the Cid, clad as he was in mantle furred and wide,
On Bavieca vaulting, put the rowel in his side;
And wildly, madly sped the steed, while the mantle streamed behind
As when the banner of Castile beats in a stormy wind.

“And all that saw them praised them; they lauded man and horse
As mated well and rivalless for gallantry and force;
Ne’er had they looked on horseman might to this knight come near,
Nor on other charger worthy of such a cavalier.

“Thus, to and fro a-rushing, the fierce and furious steed,
He snapped in twain his hither rein. ‘God pity now the Cid!’
‘God pity Diaz!’ cried the lords, but when they looked again,
They saw Ruy Diaz ruling him with the fragment of his rein;
They saw him proudly ruling with gesture firm and calm,
Like a true lord commanding, and obeyed as by a lamb.

“And so he led him foaming and panting to the King;
But ‘No!’ said Don Alfonso, ‘it were a shameful thing
That peerless Bavieca should ever be bestrid
By any mortal but Bivar. Mount, mount again, my Cid!’”

Rafael’s mind was still full of the Cid when, two or three days later, he was well enough to take a short ride on Shags outside the garden. The rough-coated, mouse-colored donkey carried his young master jauntily, being apparently well pleased to see him out again. Don Carlos, racking his memory for more ballads of the Cid, was walking beside Shags, when Pilarica, who had tripped on ahead and turned a corner, uttered a cry of distress. The father sprang forward and found the child on her knees in the dust of the highway, her face streaming with tears, while she held up her clasped hands in entreaty to a sullen-faced fellow who was brutally beating his ass. The poor creature, hardly more than skin and bones, was so cruelly overladen with sacks of charcoal that he had stumbled on a steep and stony bit of the road and broken the fastenings of one of the sacks, whose contents were merrily making off downhill like little black imps on a holiday. The peasant, in a fury, was dealing the ass great fisticuffs on the tender nose, and between the eyes, shut in patient endurance of the blows.

Don Carlos had often seen animals beaten and had usually passed by with a shrug of annoyance, but the anguish of pity in his little daughter’s face and attitude suddenly smote him with an intolerable feeling, as if that horny fist were pounding his own heart.

“Hold, there, my friend!” he protested. “Enough is as good as a feast. If you kill your donkey, who will carry the load?”

The charcoal seller, his arm raised for another blow, stared in astonishment at the speaker.

“You would do well to put your tongue in your pocket,” he growled. “This ass is mine, to beat if I choose and to kill if I choose. I am thinking that is what I will do, for his skin is the best of him now.”

Pilarica rose and rushed to her father, her eyes their deepest pansy purple with beseeching.

“Oh, dearest father, if you please! If you would kindly do me the favor! Instead of the doll with golden hair, if only you would give me this sweet, beautiful donkey!”

Her father lifted her in his arms, so that the flushed, wet face was pressed against his own.

“Do you mean it, Honeydrop? Think again. Do you really wish me to buy you this wretched ass in place of the wonderful dolly with Paris clothes, in the Granada shop? I am afraid there is not money enough for both.”

“Oh, yes, yes!” entreated Pilarica. “The doll is happy in the shop-window, where she can see the children smile at her as they go by, but the donkey--oh, father, _the donkey!_”

The peasant, whose arm had fallen to his side and who had been listening shrewdly, now stepped forward, touching his hat with a surly civility.

“It’s not for the price of a basket of cabbages I would be selling my fine donkey. I’m a poor man, your Worship. All that God has given me for my portion in the world is morning and evening, three pennyworths of poverty, and a bushel of children with the gullets of sharks. What would become of us all without my strong, good ass?”

“I’ll give you two dollars for your dingy old rattlebones, my man, and that is twice what anybody else would be fool enough to give you,” said Don Carlos, holding out the coins.

The charcoal-seller looked at them greedily, but still hung back.

“Come, now!” spoke Don Carlos sharply. “Don’t stand hesitating like a grasshopper that wants to jump and doesn’t know where. Remember that covetousness bursts the bag. Is it a bargain or not?”

The decision of the officer’s tone and, still more, the tempting gleam of the silver prevailed, but the peasant would not give over his donkey until he had delivered the load of charcoal. So Don Carlos and Pilarica, Rafael and Shags, escorted Sooty-Face and his limping ass to the hotel hard by the Alhambra, where the sale was at last effected.

“And now the donkey, such as he is, is yours,” said Don Carlos, putting the shabby bridle into Pilarica’s hand. “Haven’t you a smile for me now?”

But the child, though she kissed her father gratefully, flung her arms about the donkey’s neck, and, pressing her cheek to the bruised nose, cried harder than ever, until Shags felt it time to interfere. That generous-minded animal, whose long ears had been responding, with various cocks and tremors, to every stage of the proceedings, now drowned Pilarica’s sobs in a resounding bray. The stranger seemed to understand this greeting better than he understood Pilarica’s endearments and took a timid step or two toward his new comrade.

“Shall we call him Bavieca?” asked Rafael, eying the sorry beast doubtfully. He certainly did small credit to the name of the peerless steed.

“Better call him Rosinante,” laughed the father, “after the forlorn old horse of Don Quixote, who was something of a hero, too, in his way. Most people, as, for instance, his fat squire, Sancho Panza, who rode a famous ass named Dapple, thought it a very foolish way.”

“Why?” questioned Pilarica, whisking off her tears with the ends of her hair-ribbon.

“Oh, he took windmills for giants, and wayside inns for castles, and flocks of sheep for armies. He rode through the country trying to right wrongs and only got knocked about and made fun of for his pains. In fact, this coming to the rescue of an abused donkey is something after his fashion.”

And Don Carlos, a little shame-faced, looked his purchase over. The ass was lame in one foot, covered with welts and fly-bites, and so weak that he seemed hardly able to walk even now that his load had been removed. But Pilarica was enchanted with him and kept lavishing caresses upon the gaunt beast, whose large, liquid eyes looked out wonderingly at her.

“I want to call him Don Quixote,” she announced. “I think Don Quixote is a lovely hero, and this is such a lovely, lovely donkey.”

“Very well!” assented her father, with a shrug. “At any rate, he’s lean enough. And now to see what Tia Marta will have to say to this performance of ours!”

But Tia Marta unexpectedly took Don Quixote to her heart. As the ass stood before her for inspection, hanging his head as if aware of his unsightliness, and now and then slowly shaking his drooped ears, she surveyed him for a moment, her squinting eyes taking account of all the marks of cruel usage, and then stamped her foot in anger.

“That charcoal-seller ought to be thrashed like wheat,” she cried. “How I wish I had the drubbing of him! I would like to split him in two like a pomegranate. But God knows the truth, and let it rest there. And this donkey is not so bad a bargain, Don Carlos. See what I will make of him, with food and rest and ointment. The blessed ass of Bethlehem, he who warmed with his breath the Holy Babe in the manger and bore Our Lady of Mercy on his back to Egypt, could have no better care from me than I will spend on this maltreated innocent.”

Tia Marta was as good as her word. Her choicest balsams were brought to bear upon the donkey’s hurts, and Leandro, whom Rodrigo asked over to see the animal, for gypsies are wise in such matters, agreed with the old woman that the ass was of good stock and might have, under decent conditions, years of service in him yet. When the charcoal stains were washed away and the discoloration of the bruises had faded out, the discovery was made, to Pilarica’s ecstasy, that Don Quixote was a white donkey. Oh, to possess a plump white donkey! The child was in such haste to see those scarecrow outlines rounded out that Tia Marta grew extravagant and added handfuls of barley to the regular rations of chopped straw. And as it would never do to feed the new-comer better than the faithful Shags, that Long-Ears, too, found his fare improved, so that, with a chum to share his cellar and a festival dinner every day, he waxed fat and frisky and often sang, as best he could, his resonant psalm of life.

Pilarica went carolling like a bird through the old garden in those blithe spring mornings, and Rafael had grown so vigorous that he was again more than a match for her at their favorite game of _Titirinela_. The children would clasp hands, brace their feet together until the tips of Rafael’s sandals strained against his sister’s, fling their small bodies back as far as the length of their arms would allow, and then spin around and around like a giddy top, singing responsively:

“‘Titirinela, if you please!’
‘Titirinela, bread and cheese!’
‘What is your father’s worshipful name?’
‘Sir Red-pepper, who kisses your hands.’
‘And how does he call his beautiful dame?’
‘Lady Cinnamon, at your commands.’
_Titirinela, toe to toe!_
_Titirinela, round we go!_”

Once, as Don Carlos came to pick up his little daughter, after the whirling top had broken in two and each half had rolled laughing on the ground, Pilarica clasped her arms tight about his neck, exclaiming:

“Dearest father, are we not the very happiest people in all the world!”

But he hastily thrust an official-looking envelope into his pocket and, for his only answer, shut the shining eyes with kisses.

VII

THE GEOGRAPHY GENTLEMAN

Rafael woke three times that night and put out his hand to his father’s hammock, only to find it empty. Listening intently, he would hear measured steps pacing up and down at the further end of the garden. The third time, he ventured to call, and the steps quickened their beat and came toward him.

“Anything amiss, my son?” asked Don Carlos, stooping over the cot.

“I keep waking up and missing you,” confessed Rafael, half ashamed. “Isn’t it very late?”

“Yes, or very early, as one may like to call it,” answered Don Carlos, looking to the east, where a pearly gleam was already stealing up the sky. “But I will turn in now, if your rest depends on mine. A youngster like you should make but one sleep of it the whole night long, and not lie with eyes as wide open as a rabbit’s.”

The next morning Tia Marta noticed that Don Carlos had a haggard look and that, when he returned from his walk with Rodrigo, his face was grave and anxious.

“The master’s furlough must be nearly up,” she remarked to the cat, with whom she was in the habit of holding long conversations, “or he worries about the new conscription, fearing for the _señorito_. But it is not our bonny Rodrigo who would draw a lot for the soldiering. He is ever the son of good-luck. And yet--ah, well! well! Each man sneezes as God pleases. As for you and me, Roxa, we will not be troubling the master with questions. Some broths are the worse for stirring.”

When Don Carlos, however, came upon Rafael and Pilarica running races in the garden, his bearing was so gay that they mischievously barred his passage, standing across the walk, hand in hand, and singing:

“Potatoes and salt must little folks eat,
While the grown-up people dine
Off marmalade, peanuts and oranges sweet,
With cocoanut milk for wine.
On the ground do we take our seat;
We’re at your feet, we’re at your feet.”

As they suited the action to the words, he bent and lightly knocked the black heads together, saying merrily:

“What a pity that nobody wants to spend the day with me in Granada!”

“A whole day!”

“In Granada!”

And the madcaps, wild with glee, flashed about the fragrant garden more swiftly than the swallows, whose _chirurrí_, _chirurrí_, _chicurrí_, _Beatriiiiíz_, Pilarica mocked so truly that her father could not always tell which was child and which was bird.

“_What, what, gentlemen! What, what, what! What, what, ladies! What, what, what!_ As the old duck quacks when the barnyard gets too lively,” called Grandfather, who was trimming one of the boxwood hedges. Even his physical energies seemed to have been somewhat restored in these three eventful weeks since Don Carlos had come home.

“Save your strength, you little spendthrifts,” bade their father. “It’s a long road to Granada, and a longer road back. And now run to Tia Marta to be made fine.”

“May Shags go with us?” shouted Rafael.

“And Don Quixote, please,” begged Pilarica.

“Not all the way,” replied Don Carlos, “but Grandfather, if he will be so kind, may bring the donkeys to meet us at the Gate of the Pomegranates an hour before sundown.”

“With much pleasure,” assented Grandfather, while the children scampered off to be arrayed in their simple best.

Such a joyous day as it was! They walked down slowly, with frequent rests, in which Don Carlos would tell them still more stories of the Cid, and of Bernardo del Carpio, the valiant knight who loved his father even better than he loved his country.

“And so do I,” said Rafael shyly, and Don Carlos, though he shook his head, pinched the square chin, so like his own, and did not look displeased. But at their next rest he began to tell them what a glorious history their country had,--how the Spanish Peninsula, after the Romans, once masters of the world, had occupied and ruled it for nearly seven centuries, was possessed by the Goths, one of the wild, free races from the north of Europe that poured down upon the sunny southern lands and wrested them from the grasp of Rome, then weakened by luxury and unable to resist.

“But this does not interest Pilarica,” the speaker interrupted himself to say. “There are flowers over yonder, Honey Heart, that you might run and gather.”

“Oh, but I love it!” protested the little girl, all her face aglow. “I can just see the Goths rushing down from the top of the world, and the lazy Romans looking so surprised while their countries are taken away from them.”

“Huh!” snorted Rafael. “I don’t see any such thing. Do be quiet, Pilarica, while my father tells me what happened next.”

“Something more than two centuries of Gothic rule, which was Christian rule, happened next,” continued Don Carlos, “and then the Moors, followers of the false prophet Mohammed, swarmed over from Africa and drove the Christians back and back, till even stout little Galicia, which made a stubborn resistance up in its far corner, was conquered. It was feared that the Mohammedans would pass the Pyrenees, that majestic mountain range which shuts off our Peninsula from the rest of Europe, and overrun all Christendom, and it is the supreme service of Spain to civilization, her crowning honor and her holiest pride, that in this crisis of destiny she saved Europe from the Moslems. Against that dark tide of invasion, checked by the mountain bar, she flung the fighting force of all her chivalry, and little by little, century by century, the armies of the Cross forced the armies of the Crescent southward, drenching all the way with blood, until at last, at last, under our great wedded sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Moors were driven out even from their last stronghold in the Peninsula, from Granada, and sent flying back across the Straits.”

In the fervor of his feeling, Don Carlos had risen and swept off his hat, as if in the presence of that august Spain whose heroic past he was relating. Pilarica’s slender arms were extended to help in pushing out the Moors. Rafael, breathing hard, was the first to speak.

“Oh-h! I am so glad to be a Spaniard.”

“And well you may be,” said Don Carlos, holding out his hand to Pilarica for resuming the walk. “Not only does Europe owe, perhaps, her very existence as a Christian continent to Spain, but it was through the faith and practical support of Queen Isabella that the Italian adventurer, Columbus, was enabled to cross the vast, unknown Atlantic and discover America.”

“Are not Europe and America very grateful to us?” asked Pilarica, as she tripped along by her father’s side, taking three steps to his one.

“Of course they are,” Rafael took it upon himself to answer. “Isn’t that a silly question, father? But Pilarica is only a girl.”

“Queen Isabella, who did such wonderful things for Spain and the world, was only a girl once,” remarked Pilarica.

Rafael pretended not to hear.

Their father brought them first to the stately cathedral of Granada. Here, in the Royal Chapel, all three stood silent for a moment above the dim vault where rest in peace the ashes of Ferdinand and Isabella. Then he took them to the magnificent promenade, the _Alameda_, along whose sides tower rows of giant trees that throw an emerald arch across the avenue. Here fountains were playing, roses, myrtles and jessamines were in rich bloom, and there were dazzling glimpses of the snow-robed Sierra Nevada. But when the little feet began to lag under the noontide heat, Don Carlos led the children to a neighboring square and, pausing before one of the tallest houses, reached his arm through the iron bars of the outer door and twitched a bell-chain that was looped within.

“Who comes?” called a voice from above, as in the old times of warfare between Christian and Moor.

“Peace,” answered Don Carlos, and in a moment both doors swung wide.

A little old man came hurrying across the marble court to meet them. His head was covered by a close-fitting red silk cap, his eyes were two black twinkles, and his face was yellow as an orange.

“It’s the Geography Gentleman,” whispered Rafael to Pilarica, while their host was greeting Don Carlos. “I met him once when I was walking with Rodrigo and he gave me macaroons.”

“And you have brought your cherubs, as I begged you,” twittered the Geography Gentleman, pecking at Pilarica’s cheeks. “And how are you called, my sweeting?”

“Maria Pilar Catalina Isabel Teresa Mariana Moreto y Hernandez, at the service of God and yourself,” responded the child, demurely kissing the clawlike hand and smiling trustfully into the queer yellow face so near her own.

“Aha! So our Lady of the Pillar has you under her protection, and Catalina is for your mother, whom I knew before she was as tall as you are now--ah, white pearl among the souls in Paradise!--and the other names?”

“Are for the great queen whose tomb I have just taken her to see and for her sponsors in baptism,” explained Don Carlos.

“Good, good! And this is Rafael, an old friend of mine, though so young. Aha, ha, ha! And now you children are wondering why I keep my cap on in the house, and that, too, when it is honored by the presence of a little ladybird. It is not because I am such a good Spaniard that I must always wear the red with the yellow; not that, not that. It is because I am bald, like St. Peter. Did you never hear it said that a silent man is as badly off for words as St. Peter for hair? I will teach you a verse about him:

“St. Peter was so bald,
Mosquitoes bit his skin,
Till his mother said: ‘Put on your cap,
Poor little Peterkin.’

“But you are hot; you are tired; you are well-nigh slain by that enemy, the sun. Come and rest! Come and rest! The house is yours. All that it holds is yours. Come and rest!”

It seemed to the awed children that their house held a great deal, as they followed the Geography Gentleman, to whom their father had offered his arm. First he led them to the central court, an Andalusian _patio_, open to the air, with violet-bordered fountain, with graceful palms and, planted in urns, small, sweet-blossoming trees. Then their adventurous sandals climbed a wide marble stairway and pattered on over the tiled floors from chamber to chamber out to a shaded balcony. Pilarica and Rafael were less impressed by the Moorish arches and windows, the delight of foreign visitors, than by objects less familiar to their eyes,--statues, pictures, tapestried walls, curtained bedsteads, hanging lamps and, strangest of all the strange, an American rocking-chair.

A smiling maid came in, bearing a silver pitcher and basin, and the children bathed their faces and hands in the cool, rose-scented water, but when the maid offered them the embroidered towel of fine linen she carried on her arm, Pilarica drew back in dismay.

“But we would get it wet,” she objected.

Nobody laughed, although the black eyes of the Geography Gentleman twinkled more brightly than ever. Don Carlos stepped forward and held over the basin his own hands, on which the maid poured a fresh stream from the pitcher. Then he dried his hands upon the towel and passed it to Pilarica, who, though still reluctant, ventured to use one end, while Rafael, at the same time, plunged his dripping face into the other.

The luncheon, it seemed to the little guests, was a repast fit for heroes, even for the Cid and Bernardo del Carpio,--a cold soup like a melted salad, a perfumed stew in which were strangely mingled Malaga potatoes, white wine, honey, cinnamon and cloves, and, for a crowning bliss, a dish of sugared chestnuts overflowed by a syrup whose every spoonful yielded a new flavor,--lemon peel, orange peel, tamarind, and a medley of spices.

After luncheon everybody, in true Spanish fashion, took a nap, the Geography Gentleman in one of the hushed chambers, and Don Carlos in another, but the children slept far more soundly on couches in adjoining balconies, though over Pilarica’s slumber two canaries in a gilded cage were chirping drowsily about their family affairs, and a bright green parrot, chained to a perch, did his best to waken Rafael by screaming for bread and butter.

VIII

ONLY A GIRL

Pilarica and Rafael were finally aroused from the siesta by a commotion in the square. Peeping over the queerly twisted iron railing of the balconies, they saw many women, in the bright-hued costume of Andalusian peasants, surging by in stormy groups, talking wildly and making violent gestures. Then came a dozen lads of about Rodrigo’s age, locked arm in arm and chorusing in time to their swinging tread:

“To-morrow comes the drawing of lots;
The chosen march delighted
And leave the girls behind with those
Whom the King has not invited.”

The children looked and wondered for a while, and then, as they had been bidden, went down to the patio.

Don Carlos and his host were smoking there together and talking so earnestly that they did not notice the light footfalls.

“No, if it comes to that, I shall not buy him off,” Don Carlos was saying. “He must take his chance with the rest of the eighty thousand whom Spain has flung like acorns into Cuba.”

“My own three sons among them, my gentle José, my fearless Adolfo, my merry Celestino,” moaned the old man, rocking himself to and fro like one in bodily pain. “My money can do nothing for them now--my gallant boys!--but if you would accept from an old friend, for the comfort of his lonely heart, the thousand pesetas--”

“Thanks upon thanks, most honored sir, but no, no!” interrupted Don Carlos, laying his hand upon the other’s arm, while his voice deepened with emotion. “If you, one of the wealthiest of the Granadines, were too loyal a patriot to buy off your sons from military service, shall I, who wear the uniform, hold back my own?”

“Ah, but my lads would not be bought off, though when it came to Adolfo, I consented, and when it came to Celestino, I besought. They were all for adventure and for seeing the world. They had lived among my globes and maps too long. Woe is me! Woe is me!”

Tears were streaming down the yellow face of the Geography Gentleman, and Pilarica could not bear the sight. She ran forward and, leaning against his knee, reached up and tried to wipe the tears away with her tiny handkerchief.

“Oho, oho!” he chirped, changing his manner at once. “Here is our Linnet wide awake again! What now? What now? A fairy story, shall it be? That’s what little girls like--stories of the fairies and the saints.”

“I would rather, if you please, hear about Cuba,” replied Pilarica, nestling close to those trembling knees. “What is it, and why does Spain drop people into it like acorns?”

Rafael, standing close beside his father, felt him start as if to check the childish questions, but already the Geography Gentleman was rising, not without difficulty, from his carven chair.

“Ugh!” he groaned. “My poor bones creak like a Basque cart. But no matter! As for the old, they may sing sorrow. Come with me to my study, all of you, all of you, and we will find out what Cuba looks like. Ah, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba!”

Don Carlos tried again to protest, but the Geography Gentleman would have his way. So he led them to a room unlike anything that the children had ever seen before. Great globes swung in their standards, maps lined the walls, a desk with many pigeon-holes stood near a huge _brasero_, and everywhere were cases of books. Rafael hung back in bewilderment, but Pilarica kept close to their guide and watched with eager eyes while he gave the largest globe a twirl.

“Did you know the world was round?” he asked. “And that there is a red-haired goblin who sits in the center and holds on to our feet so we shan’t tumble off? When he yawns, it gives us an earthquake. A good old fellow, that, but he has too long a name for such little pink ears as yours.”

“My ears are larger,” suggested Rafael.

“And Shags and Don Quixote have the largest ears of all,” added Pilarica, and then blushed to see that even her father smiled, while the Geography Gentleman gurgled and wheezed until his yellow face was streaked with purple.

“Good! good! good!” he squeaked, as soon as he could muster even so much voice again. “The goblin’s name is Gravitation, and he sits all doubled up, with his long nose gripped between his knees, pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling, till his arms are almost ripped out of his shoulders, but not quite. For though he’s uglier than hunger, he’s stronger than the sun and the moon.”

The child gazed doubtfully at the big globe.

“Will you please open it and show him to me?”

Again the Geography Gentleman fell to laughing until he had to hold his aching sides.

“But do you think I have wind-mills in my head that I talk such a monstrous heap of nonsense?” he asked. “It is only that pretty little ladies like nonsense better than sense. No, I cannot open my globe for you, dainty one, but see! I can show you Spain.”

But Pilarica’s faith in the Geography Gentleman was shaken.

“Spain is not blue,” she objected, looking critically at the color of the patch beneath his thumb. And even while he pointed out Andalusia in the south, with its Moorish cities of Granada and Seville and Cordova, and the port of Cadiz; and Castile, occupying the middle of the Peninsula, with its ancient city of Toledo and its royal city of Madrid; and her father’s native province of Aragon to the northeast, with Saragossa, the home of his boyhood, still Pilarica’s air was so skeptical as to throw the lecturer into frequent convulsions of mirth.

“But where is the basket,--the big basket that Spain flings acorns into?” she questioned.

This, again, was too much for the Geography Gentleman, and while he was gasping and choking, Don Carlos came to his little daughter’s aid.

“Cuba is an island,” he explained, “the largest of the West Indian islands and almost all that is left to Spain of her once vast American possessions. One by one, the lands she had discovered and claimed--you remember about Queen Isabella and Columbus--rebelled against her, or otherwise slipped from her hold, and even now there is a revolt in Cuba that has already cost Spain dear in life and treasure.”

“And if the Yankees take a hand in the game,” put in their host, “may cost us Cuba herself.”

“What are Yankees?” asked Rafael, frowning quite terribly at this suggestion.

“The most powerful nation in America,” replied Don Carlos, “a nation that threatens to go to war with us, if the trouble in Cuba continues much longer.”

“They must be very wicked people,” declared Rafael with flashing eyes.

“No, my son; they are much like the rest of the world,” answered his father, quietly. “I have met a few of them, but not to know them well, for they did not understand Spanish.”

“Not understand Spanish!” exclaimed Pilarica. “Then at least they must be very stupid, for Spanish even the donkeys understand!”

This reproach set the Geography Gentleman off again, and his sides were still shaking as he pointed out Cuba on the globe.

And now all Pilarica’s gathering suspicions of the science of geography were confirmed.

“But if Cuba belongs to Spain, who put it there close to America?” she asked. “Did the Yankees make that globe and put it there themselves?”

And once more the Geography Gentleman laughed till the close-fitting cap fell off and showed his shining bald head.

“‘Honey is not for the mouth of an ass,’” he quoted, “‘and learning is not for women.’ But what a pity, Don Carlos, that this child is only a girl! Her wits run bright as the quicksilver fountain that used to sparkle in the royal garden of Seville.”

“She is like Rodrigo, keen as a Toledo blade,” assented Don Carlos. “It is this youngster,” drawing Rafael closer to him, “who has the slow brains of his father.”

“Slow and sure often wins the race,” said the old teacher, turning kind eyes on Rafael. “He will make a scholar when the time comes, and it should come soon now. Will you not enter him in the lower school next year? He may not be the mathematical wonder that his brother is, taking prizes as naturally as other lads bite off ripe mulberries, but if his father’s steadfastness of purpose has descended to him with his father’s chin, he will do well in the world. Character is better than talent. But this rosebud brings back to me her mother, who used to coax and coax me, when she was the merest midget, to teach her to read my books. Her parents spent several summers in Granada and, if they had consented, I would have liked to see what a girl’s head could do. But of course they would not hear of it. She was taught to dance and to embroider, only that. Her mind went hungry. But bless my heart! Such talk as this is not meal for chickens. A penny for your thoughts, my sober little man!”

“I was thinking about Spain,” answered Rafael, who all this time had been glowering at the globe. “How did we lose what was ours? Were there no more great kings after Ferdinand?”

“Yes,” said Don Carlos. “Spain has had strong kings and weak kings, wise and foolish, but even the best of them blundered at times. Ferdinand and Isabella themselves made mistakes. So some thirty years ago, when I was a boy, Spain tried to be a republic and get on without any king at all, but she did not prosper so.”