It was not until the doughnuts were spluttering in the olive oil that the children had the answer in their throats, and then it was on the way down instead of up. The carriers, even Don Manuel, came crowding about that tempting kettle, but Tia Marta, her thin face twitching, still sat on her three-legged stool at the table, crumbling her share of the loaf for the chickens and doves, and wishing she could give Roxa a shred of the fried fish. Pedrillo lingered near. Since her absorption in Juanito, as she called the child whom she had taken to her heart on St. John’s Eve, she seemed to have half forgotten her grudge against Pedrillo. He came up to her now to show her that the baby slept. “_Angelito_,” she murmured over it, touching the tiny cheek. “See, it is fatter already! I could make him well and strong, as I made the donkey. But what am I to be? A stranger in a strange land, a servant in another woman’s kitchen, with not even a cat of my own to mew to me. Never before have I been without a child to rear. There were my little sisters first, and then my blessed Catalina, and then her rosy Rodrigo--ah, that cruel Cuba!--and then those cherubs there that Doña Barbara will steal away from me. Blood is thicker than water, though it be water of tears. _Ay de mi!_” “But eat, woman, eat,” gruffly implored Pedrillo. “You are giving away all your luncheon. Eat, and your trouble will be gone. Bread is relief for all kinds of grief.” “Not for mine,” wailed the Andalusian. “Everyone knows his own sorrow, and God knows the sorrow of us all. Are the doors of Santiago so narrow that the gifts of Heaven may not enter in? Oh, this Don Manuel! This Galician with his soul shut in his account book! Growing richer every trip and grudging a few drops of milk as if he were a son of ruin with nothing left for God to rain on!” “Patience, patience!” urged Pedrillo, his snub-nosed face so intent on Tia Marta that he inadvertently tilted Juanito wrong side up. “Did you never hear of the monk who, as he was telling his beads in his vineyard, suddenly held out his hand to see if it rained? Down flew a thrush and laid an egg on his palm. So the holy man waited, always with his arm outstretched, day after day, till five eggs had been laid, and then week after week, till they had all been hatched out and the fledglings had flown away. Then the mother-thrush, perching on the nearest fig tree, sang to the monk a song as sweet as an angel’s, so that he was well rewarded for his patience.” “Bah! and how about the ache in his arm? But it is long since you have told me one of your foolish stories, Don Pedrillo.” And Tia Marta, for the first time since Cordova, smiled on him. “Ah!” murmured Pedrillo, hastily righting Juanito who was puckering for a roar. “Give the canary hempseed and you’ll see how it will sing.”