Anita turned. "Come out, mother. Ven aqui," she repeated. "It is so lovely and restful. Listen to that song. Isn't it truly Spanish? There, he is singing another, oh, so pathetically."
"Soy de Pravia,
Soy Praviana,
Y mi madre es de Pravia,"
the clear, high tenor voice reached them.
"It almost makes me weep," said Anita, "and yet all he is saying is that he is of Pravia and his mother is of Pravia, but it is such a haunting air, so different from anything we might hear at home. Don't you like it all, and aren't you content to stay a long, long while? It is so quiet and pleasant and so delightfully cheap."
They stood together till the singer had ceased, the brightest star which they had been watching, was lost behind the mountain, and only the song of the fountain, and the queer little tink-tank, tink-a-tank of the night insects broke the silence. Then they went in.
CHAPTER VI
O las Piedras!
The travellers were awakened in the early morning by the drone of cow-carts, by the singing of a thrush in a cage hung at the doorway of their inn, and by the chatter of girls flocking to the fountain. As soon as she was dressed Anita went out upon the balcony to look down on the little plaza which was lively enough now that the village was awake. Groups of women and girls gossiped at the fountain; the shoemaker across the way kept time to his singing with the tap-tap upon his last; the little moza of the inn skurried from the bakery with freshly-baked loaves for the señorita's breakfast; half a dozen bright-plumaged parrots paraded up and down before the door of a shop, laughingly watched by a group of men; two turkeys honk-honked below the balcony, turning up an inquiring eye at the possible bestower of bounty watching from above.