“A fine little fellow that!” commented Tenorio, whose long legs easily kept pace, on the climb, with Coronela. Uncle Manuel tried his best not to look pleased. “Needs training,” he said harshly. “Needs discipline. All boys do. I set him sums to work out in his head every day now as we ride.” “Ay, and put him to figuring after supper, when he can hardly keep two eyes open,” grunted Tenorio. “You’ll wear out the youngster’s brains, Don Manuel.” “The feet of the gardener never hurt the garden,” replied the master-carrier, who prided himself on the practical education that he was giving his nephew. As the animals came in sight of the cascading stream, they brayed with joy. The donkeys and the riding mules plunged at once into the water, and the carriers speedily released the pack-mules so that these, too, might cool their legs in the pleasant swash of the current. “Ah!” sighed Hilario, looking up from the bank where he had thrown himself down at full length to drink. “A brook of Galicia is better than a river of Castile.” “It’s wetter, any way,” growled Bastiano, who had gone some distance up the stream to fill a leather bottle with the pure flow of the cascade. “The rivers of Castile are dry half the year and without water the other half.” “What is the thing--can’t you tell me yet?-- That falls into the water and doesn’t get wet?” hummed Grandfather, while his eyes followed the play of a sunbeam in the waves. “Did you ever hear,” asked Pedrillo of the children, as they watched Shags and Don Quixote revelling in the rill, “of that peasant called Swallow-Sun?” “What a funny name!” exclaimed the little girl. “A thousand thanks, Don Bastiano.” For Bastiano, who was never surly with Pilarica, had brought his bottle to her before he drank himself. “He was called so,” continued Pedrillo, “because one day, when his donkey was drinking out of a stream in which the sun was reflected, the sky suddenly clouded over, and the peasant cried out in dismay: ‘Saint James defend us! My donkey has drunk up the sun.’” It was so pleasant by the rivulet, under the shade of the great locusts, that Uncle Manuel permitted an hour’s rest. “Don’t let us overrun the time,” he said to his nephew, and the men exchanged winks as Rafael, with an air of vast importance, consulted his watch. Everybody welcomed Uncle Manuel’s decision. Shags and Don Quixote trotted off to a velvet patch of grass and rolled in the height of donkey happiness, their hoofs merrily beating the air. Pedrillo gathered twigs and made a bit of a fire on a broad grey rock, so that Tia Marta might heat the milk for Baby Bunting, who lay kicking on his kid-skin beside her, in the little soft shirt she had knit for him. “This is not Castile, where I had to dig up the roots of dead bushes for fuel,” said Pedrillo, his face more comical than ever as he puffed out his cheeks to blow the flame.