But Anita did not care to join in the uninteresting and rather monotonous dance, a few shuffling steps and a circling around, repeated and repeated. "It is not graceful like the other," she commented.
"Perhaps no," responded Rodrigo, "but after the so great exercise of jota is a restfulness. Let us make a walk and see what is go on while the dance continue."
They wandered about among the groups of people now thronging the grounds. The train had brought a large addition to the numbers, and automobiles brought more. Pitiful looking beggars, lame, halt, blind, deformed, crawled up to them to ask for alms. Gypsies waylaid them promising a good fortune. Dealers in cakes, in nuts, in sweet insipid drinks, offered their wares. Gallegos trolled forth their songs. Melancholy ballad singers wailed out doleful stanzas about tombstones, sepulchres and ghostly apparitions. It was all very novel, very interesting to the American-bred girl, who, in her manton de Manila looked her part of a Spanish maiden.
Rodrigo, anxious to show attention, brought up one after another of his acquaintances. Amparo, eager to display hospitality, presented her young friends who claimed the new found cousin as their own countrywoman and made much of her.
It was a young aldeano who seemed most attracted to the American girl, "Inglesa," he called her. "She reminds me somewhat of one I knew," he said in an aside to Rodrigo, "and the name is the same. Perhaps it is that it is a Beltrán family resemblance."
"Ah-h," cried Rodrigo. "Who, Anselmo, is this of whom you speak?"
"A lad of my pueblo, Pepé Beltrán he was. Ay de mi, the poor Pepé. It is long since I saw him. We were friends, yes, we were good friends."
"Pepé Beltrán, did you say?"
"The same."
"And where is he?"