Pablo’s grave face broke into a smile at this idea. “Thees Onc’ Aaron he have learn a few words, but he speak them very fonny. I wish if you hear him.”
Joanne laughed. She could imagine the bungle Unc’ Aaron would make of a foreign language. “I’d like to hear him,” she said, “but while I am here, Pablo, you have some one to talk to.”
“This is true, but it when you go that I have the homesick.”
Joanne corrected this speech and then, since the half hour was up, went off to join her comrades. She thought a good deal about the situation, however, and wished that she might transplant some Spanish family to the neighborhood, but this would be an undertaking beyond her powers, therefore Pablo would have to get used to being lonely. Having decided this she thought no more about it, having, indeed, plenty of other things to think about.
Just now it was Claude Lafayette and his wardrobe which interested her, and she set off with Winnie and Claudia to the country store where they meant to lay in a supply of materials. It was a walk of about three miles, along a country road, a short cut through a piece of woods, then the highway to the village.
“We might have had Chico,” said Joanne when they were turning off into the woods. “We could have taken turns in riding him.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed Winnie. “Who wants to ride? It is a great deal better for us to walk. It will be only six miles all told, three miles there and three miles back; that is nothing, and we don’t have to go at a rush. It is warm here in the woods, to be sure, but that doesn’t matter. We’ll get the breeze from the river when we are out on the road again, though it won’t be so shady there.”
They loitered along through the sweet smelling woods, stopping once in a while to take note of a bed of moss or a new species of fern. It was so still that only the distant sound of rushing waters or the rustle of leaves in the tree-tops reached their ears, though once in a while the voices of men working in the fields came uncertainly.
It was when they had almost reached the point where trees ended and road began that Joanne stopped short. “Hark!” she said.
The other girls came to a halt. “What is it?” Winnie was the first to ask.