“Ay, indeed! Tia Marta! Tia Marta!” came a mocking response from where a wiry figure, arrayed in saffron kerchief and purple petticoat, was seen hurrying in another direction through the shrubbery. “Always Tia Marta, from cock-crow to pigeon-roost! Now it’s Shags that brays to Tia Marta for his mouthful of chopped straw, and then it’s Roxa that mews to Tia Marta for a morsel of dried fish. It’s not slave to every Turk I was in the days when they counted me the fairest maid and the finest dancer in Seville. But all make firewood of a fallen tree.” “This is natural, at all events,” exclaimed the officer, with the first smile since he had entered the garden. “My good Marta, I kiss your hands.” “Don Carlos!” screamed the old servant, her sharp brown face, so like a walnut, shining with welcome as she scrambled toward him through bushes that seemed, for very mischief, to catch at her skirts and hold her back. She grasped him by the shoulders and, as he laughingly tried to free himself, pulled down his head and gave him a resounding smack on either cheek. “May all the saints be praised! To see you safe home again is as sweet as God’s blessing. But to think--oh, I could beat my bones for very rage!--that the supper to-night is not a supper of festival.” “Never mind that!” protested Don Carlos. “Who but you taught me the saying that no bread is hard to the hungry? Let me see the children. Where is Pilarica?” “The children! Can I have them forever like puppies under my feet? Pilarica! Do you expect me to keep her shut up in a sugar-bowl for you? She is off with Rafael, who promised to look well after her. Never fear! He has, like every boy, a wolf in his stomach, and supper-time will soon bring them home again.” “Off with Rafael!” repeated Rodrigo, ridding himself of his satchel. “That is why he did not meet me this afternoon at the Gate of the Pomegranates. Ha! I hear him running now,--but he is alone.” All three--for Grandfather had wandered away in search of his guitar--turned to face a bareheaded little lad, drops of sweat standing out upon his forehead and the dark red glowing through the clear brown of his cheeks. Suddenly arrested in his rush, he stood gazing up with wide, happy eyes at the father whom he recognized at once, the father for whom he cherished in secret a passionate hero-worship. “Where is Pilarica?” three voices asked in chorus. But Rafael heard only the deep, stern tone of Don Carlos, and it struck him dumb with dismay. “What have you done with your sister?” demanded that accusing voice again. “Why--I--I left her--I left her at the foot of the old Watch-Tower,” faltered the culprit. “I wanted--I wanted to meet Rodrigo. And then--and then--I--I forgot Pilarica.” Rafael’s voice sank lower and lower under his father’s gathering frown. That father, accustomed as a naval officer to enforce strict discipline, spoke again with such cutting rebuke that the child before him shivered from head to foot.