“I can understand, too,” said Doña Martina. “I try to be severe with her and she turns my own weapons against me. She can already wheedle Juan into anything, and as for Tomás.” “Ah, zat young man”--began Paulette. “What were you going to say?” asked Doña Martina, seeing that she did not go on. “Only zat he is a very amiable young man, zat was all.” Doña Martina looked puzzled but did not pursue the subject. Instead she proposed that they join Patty and Don Juan who were sitting under the big tree at the side of the _plaza_. As the two passed out Matilda stopped to give them a hearty greeting in her boisterous tones, Rosario looked up from her embroidery frame with a shy smile, and Consuelo coming from the bakery across the way with some little twisted loaves in a basket, fairly beamed when the ladies gave her a word in Spanish. A large wagon drawn by mules in jingling harness, had stopped before the door; men were unloading pigskins of wine and were joking heartily with Matilda. Doña Martina and Paulette waited for two creaking cow-carts to pass before they crossed the road to the big tree. The carts were led by somber-looking men with long goads laid across the shoulders. A touch of the goad between the horns of the cows sufficed to guide them. The patient creatures with a sheepskin pad to hold the yoke and a red fringe over their eyes to protect them from insects, plodded along slowly. “Will they ever get there?” said Patty, looking after them. “I don’t wonder it is considered inelegant to walk briskly in this country when even the teams creep along like that.” “I have seen donkeys go at quite a trotting pace,” said Paulette. “So have I, and you, too, would go at a trotting pace if you had a hatpin jabbed into you at every step. I saw a girl this morning taking that very means of making her poor little donkey go faster.” “I wish I had seen her,” said Don Juan, fiercely. “I would have stopped that business fast enough.” “Oh, yes he would,” Doña Martina hastened to say, seeing that Patty looked incredulous. “He would have rated her soundly. None of them dare to practise such cruelties when Don Juan is around, I can assure you. It is time to get ready, Patty, if we are to take the noon train.” “Don Felipe should have sent his coach for us,” said Patty, rising to her feet. “The train will get us there sooner than the coach could.” “Yes, but there is no haste in Spain, and fancy the glory of riding in such a magnificent way. Do you prefer milk-white steeds or coal-black ones, Polly?” “I prefaire to go in the train,” returned Paulette, scornfully. “Perhaps you will prefaire to come back in the coach,” said Patty, mockingly. “Have you decided what to wear, Polly, dear?” “Ze gown which is ze most unbecoming,” Paulette declared.