"The grandmother, an Indian woman of the Seminoles who comes sometimes with baskets, and the wife of Miguel of the island. But they are all old, and their skins are curled: I like better the silver skin of the señora." Poor little Felipa lived on the edge of the great salt marsh alone with her grand-parents, for her mother was dead. The yellow old couple were slow-witted Minorcans, part pagan, part Catholic, and wholly ignorant: their minds rarely rose above the level of their orange trees and their fish-nets. Felipa's father was a Spanish sailor, and as he had died only the year before, the child's Spanish was fairly correct, and we could converse with her readily, although we were slow to comprehend the patois of the old people, which seemed to borrow as much from the Italian tongue and the Greek as from its mother Spanish. "I know a great deal," Felipa remarked confidently, "for my father taught me. He had sailed on the ocean out of sight of land, and he knew many things. These he taught to me. Do the gracious ladies think there is anything else to know?" One of the gracious ladies thought not, decidedly: in answer to my remonstrance, expressed in English, she said, "Teach a child like that, and you ruin her." "Ruin her?" "Ruin her happiness--the same thing." Felipa had a dog, a second self--a great gaunt yellow creature of unknown breed, with crooked legs, big feet and the name Drollo. What Drollo meant, or whether it was an abbreviation, we never knew, but there was a certain satisfaction in it, for the dog was droll: the fact that the Minorcan title, whatever it was, meant nothing of that kind, made it all the better. We never saw Felipa without Drollo. "They look a good deal alike," observed Christine--"the same coloring." "For shame!" I said.