The revolution had taken place while Antonio was on the voyage from New York to Gibraltar. The news had greeted him when he landed. As he had journeyed from Gibraltar to Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, and then, northward still, to Guimarães, people everywhere were talking of the great event. Since then, travelling by foot from Guimarães out into the hill country and past the little market-place, always the one topic of interest had been King Manuel's banishment and the fact that the Portuguese people were now to rule and govern themselves. Jose could not understand all that the change meant. But to Antonio and his father it meant better times,--not so much money to be paid in taxes, better laws, and a chance for the children to go to school. Almost all of the education which the Almaida children had received had been at home. Senhor Almaida was a man better educated than many of his neighbors. When the evening work was done, the mother and the two older sisters drew around the hearth. Tiny Tareja soon fell asleep in the mother's arms. Joanna and Malfada began to embroider: Portuguese girls do beautiful work with their needles. The hearth-fire of maple wood burned brilliantly. Two candles on the mantel lighted up the crucifix. Every few moments the parrot in its cage near the mantel, opened its eyes, blinked, and called out "_Accolade! à deus!_"--Welcome! Good-by! "I am sure the old parrot remembers you, Antonio," the mother said, each time. "He has not talked so much as this for six months." Now it was that Antonio opened his heavy travelling-bag. One by one he took out the presents he had brought. Joanna and Malfada quickly put aside their work. First there was a silver watch for the father,--who had never before in all his life owned a watch. Next came three silver-link hand-bags, the largest for the mother, the middle sized one for Joanna, the smallest for Malfada. When Malfada hung the bag from her round wrist and held it forth to look at it, Antonio burst into a hearty laugh and said: "That is just the way I imagined that Malfada would dangle the little bag from her wrist." Antonio put the present for sleeping Tareja into his mother's hands. It was a wonderful American doll with yellow hair and with eyes which would shut and open, and it was dressed all in white, just as Joanna had sometimes, on rare visits to Guimarães, seen foreign children dressed. Then how gleefully they all laughed at the next present which Antonio brought out! It was for the house,--a china salt-cellar, red and round like a tomato. "We must put it in the cabinet. It is too fine to use except on holidays and feast-days," said the mother. Jose's present was the last to appear. Now it was the little boy's turn to receive a paper-covered package, tied with pink string. Jose's short fingers trembled in impatience as he untied the string,--careful, even in his haste, not to break it, for a piece of string was very precious to the boy.