So Pilarica’s eyes, those great, changeful Andalusian eyes, that gleam like jewels but are in color nearest to the deep purple of pansies, grew dark, like dusky velvet, with the fear that Rafael might have found her latest gift from Big Brother, her castanets. Stepping softly from one broken piece of paving to another, along a mere thread of a path that wound in and out of the scented shrubbery, the child came to what had once been a summer-house with silken awnings, enclosed by a low marble colonnade. The blue sky roofed it now and only one of those graceful white columns was still standing and still--O happy Pilarica!--keeping safe watch and ward over the little yellow clappers, adorned with red tassels, which had been buried at its foot under a drift of perfumed leaves and petals. Pilarica caught them to her heart, those shells of hollowed wood, with a gasp of joy. Running her thumbs through the loops of red cord that bound each pair together, she flung her arms above her head and, beating out with the middle finger a sharp, clicking music from the castanets, began to dance. It was a wonderful sight to see Pilarica dance, whirling about and about, her feet as light as her heart, in the circle of the summer-house, but there was only one column to look on, and he was not greatly impressed, for he was old and weather-worn and tired and, besides, he had seen grand Moorish ladies, with castanets of ivory and pearl, dancing very much like Pilarica, hundreds of Aprils ago. II THE MAGIC CAP “Whoop!” sounded suddenly from over Pilarica’s head, and a red Turkish fez came flying down from the high garden-wall, alighting neatly on the top of the solitary column. At the edge of that wall a sturdy, square-chinned boy, by way of getting up his courage for the leap, was chanting an old nursery rhyme: “There was a Señor Don Cat. In a chair of gold he sat. In a suit of silk he was clad, And pointed shoes he had. His Godfather came and said: ‘If you would like to wed A beautiful Moorish tabby, Take a walk on the roof of the abbey.’ But when he saw her there, He tumbled into the air, And on the cloister stones Arrived with broken bones.” Thump! The boy was sitting on the ground, in the very center of the summer-house, vigorously rubbing those portions of his body which had suffered most in the adventure; but as Pilarica, with the deference due to an athlete as well as to a brother, sprang up and handed him his cap, he flung it on, cocked it jauntily and shook back the gilt tassels that were tickling his ears. “This is a magic cap and, when I wear it, I am anybody I choose to be,” announced the new-comer, somewhat breathlessly. “I am now,” he continued, still sitting on the ground but waving his arms suggestively, “Rafael the Archangel.”