The Little Lady of the Horse

THE Little Lady of the Horse
BY EVELYN RAYMOND
BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 1898
Copyright, 1894 , By Roberts Brothers.
University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A.
Old Sutro and young Steenie were where they might have been found on almost every day at the same hour,—down on the beach, where the great cañon cut through the mesa to the sea.
A group of rocks, roughly piled, and a few evergreen shrubs clustering about them, made a pleasant break in a long, monotonous stretch of coast, and the coolness of the spot was always refreshing after their canter in the sunshine. Their horses had been unsaddled and set free to browse upon the herbage up the cañon; and these moved here and there, lazily, as if—like the old caballero himself—they felt the languor of that midday hour.
“Sutro, what makes the water so bluey-green?” asked the little girl, who had been sitting silent for full one minute and gazing dreamily at the shining waves.
“ Caramba! How can I tell?”
“But you should know, shouldn’t you? Doesn’t everybody keep learning things all the time? If I were a’most a hundred, like you, I should know everything, I think. In verity, I should be able to answer a simple question such as that. And so I tell you.”
“ Si? Thou wouldst find thou knew nothing at all, maybe; and thou wouldst not trouble if it were so. Because, if the good Dios wished to make us wise He would put wisdom into our heads without labor to us, wouldn’t he? Why not?”
“Fie, my Sutro! Do I learn reading that way? But no. I should wait a long time first, my father says. Well, then, if you do not know what makes the water green, I s’pose, at least, you can tell what lies beyond the water?”