At last, at last, that tiresome stint of embroidery was done. The threads, no longer white, had tangled so often under the impatient tugs of those rosy little fingers that it was fully half an hour later than usual before Pilarica could jump up from the threshold, run back through the house to Tia Marta, display those finished three inches of “labors” and plead: “Tia Marta, with your kind permission I will now go out to play.” Tia Marta was stooping over a great, open chest in the inner room whose only other furniture was a wide, low bedstead and two canvas cots. All the family slept there except Pilarica’s big brother, Rodrigo, who was a student in the Institute of Granada and so, being a person of dignity, had the curtained box-bed in the kitchen. This outer room, like the bedroom behind it, was all of stone and so dim that the light from the doorway showed only a glimmer of copper and pewter on the side where the cooking was done. The bedroom had a window, so narrow that it seemed hardly more than a slit cut in the thick stone of the wall. There was no glass in the window and there were no rugs nor carpets on the cold, tiled floors. Tia Marta, huddled over the big chest in the duskiest corner of all, could not have seen the embroidery well, even though Pilarica’s eagerness thrust it close against the squinting red eyes; but she scolded, for Tia Marta enjoyed scolding, quite as sharply as if every moist little stitch had been measured and found wanting. “Worse and worse! The very gypsies would be ashamed to wear it. The donkeys would bray at it. What is to become of a girl born without the needle-gift? The saints take pity! But get you out into the sunshine, child, and play! This house is as dark as a wolf’s mouth. Out of doors with you!” [Illustration: TIA MARTA SCOLDS] And Tia Marta thrust the strip of linen back to Pilarica with such a jerk that the needle flew off the thread, slid to the floor and, after a merry hop or two, hid itself in a crack. This was fun for the needle, but it kept Pilarica away from the garden for ten minutes more while her small palms rubbed over the worn, uneven tiles in anxious search. But as soon as she knelt down and prayed to Santa Rita, the clever saint who can find anything that is lost, the needle gave her knee a saucy prick and consented, after its run-away frolic, to be stuck into the cloth again. For, you see, the needle had been working hard, too, and wanted its bit of holiday as much, perhaps, as Pilarica wanted hers.