“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