With Grandfather often asleep, Tia Marta always cross and Pedrillo in the dumps, the children found the advance guard more amusing. Rafael liked to push Shags forward and ride with Uncle Manuel, although, to tell the truth, he did not care much for his uncle’s talk. The practical-minded Galician was not interested in the heroes of Spain and only shrugged his shoulders when told of Rodrigo’s impulsive self-sacrifice. Rafael, on the other hand, was soon bored by details of profit and loss and by tirades against the railroads, fast doing away as they were with the time-honored mule-express. Though now and then some special business would take Don Manuel to one of the larger cities, as to Cordova, in general he served only those remote districts which the railroad had not yet invaded. Rafael would pore over his little Geography and then look off wistfully to the east, till the tawny waste was lost in the hazy blur, and dream of Toledo crowning the black cliff’s above the yellow Tagus,--Toledo, of which his father had told him so much, the ghost-city, now a mere white wraith of its once imperial self. And he was not to see Madrid, either, nor have a chance of taking off his red cap to the boy king. Still, it was grand to ride at the head of the procession and it was only when Uncle Manuel would begin to beguile the way by setting Rafael sums in arithmetic, that Shags was allowed to fall back to a more humble station. As for Pilarica, she was the pet of the caravan and as happy as the day was long. A yellow butterfly on a scarlet poppy was enough to set her blithe heart dancing. Where Tia Marta saw nothing but endless leagues of arid, barren soil, Pilarica would find, in dips and dimples of that parched tableland, patches of sage and rosemary, wild thyme and lavender, that, trodden under foot and hoof, sent up a cloud of mingled fragrances. The carriers vied with one another in coaxing the child to ride beside them. There was not a mule in the train on whose back she had not been perched, sitting crosslegged like a little Turk between the two big bales. Tenorio would tempt her by gifts. Whenever they passed through a village, and now the poorest hamlet was a welcome sight, with its doorways full of gossiping groups, and its laughing girls, water-jar on head, clustered about the fountain, his lank figure was to be seen stooping over stall or garden-hedge buying sweeties made of almonds and honey, a red carnation or, were there nothing better to be had, a bright green beetle in a paper cage. The shabby Hilario hunted through his ginger-colored blouse and trousers all in vain for one loose copper, but his head was better stored than his pockets and he could allure both the children by starting up a droning chant of some old ballad, as this: “The Cid was sleeping in his chair with all his knights around; The cry went forth along the hall that the lion was unbound.