Anita sighed. From her youthful outlook it was hard to realize that suffering could be else than an evil. She changed the subject. "Do you know where we are to stop in Barcelona?"
"I have the address of a good and quiet boarding place which that good Benilda procured for me from one of her friends. It is not in the heart of the city but in one of the suburbs, is quite Spanish and not high priced. If we need to be in the city for any length of time it will be a safe and comfortable harborage, for from there we can pursue our investigations, and feel that we are not at undue expense."
"Suppose we find Pepé at once, that same day?"
Mrs. Beltrán covered her eyes. "Somehow I cannot believe we shall. It would be almost too dazzling a prospect."
Again Anita was quiet for some time while she gazed out of the car window at the changing scene. After a while she turned around again. "I have been thinking that it would be dreadful to be disappointed in Pepé. He didn't have very refined associations, did he, there at uncle's?"
"Don Marcos must have been a man of some refinement," replied Mrs. Beltrán thoughtfully. "He came of good stock, not of the nobility, but of good substantial people, land owners and people of education who had their coat of arms and who held themselves proudly. His wife, no. She came of the poorer peasantry. You know they told us that her mother was a servant in your great grandfather's house. I do not care, however, what my boy may be so long as he is good and honorable. He is young enough to learn polish, but character is a thing which must have good stuff to start with."
"Anselmo, that nice Anselmo, is very gentlemanly. All those I met were the same. They were all well mannered, so probably Pepé will not be less so. Do you suppose he is just a common workman, mother?"
"Probably he is. He has had no training for anything else."
Anita sighed. Brought up as she had been she could but look down upon the laboring man. It was another shock to her this idea of a coarse-mannered, hard-handed workman for a brother. She would like him to be a distinguished caballero; in fact she had always pictured him as a proud, fine-looking person. She followed out her thought in her next remark: "Just think, mother, we don't know in the least what he looks like, whether he is tall or short, whether he has bushy curly hair like Rodrigo's or reddish locks like Anselmo's. We might meet him face to face and never know him."
"That is one of the sad things about it. He was rather a fair child, blue-eyed and with light brown hair, but his hair may be dark by now, his father's was. He was fairly tall for his age, Anselmo said, but he has probably grown in the five years since they met."