The girl, opening a large knotted handkerchief which she had [pg 240]brought filled with sweet biscuit, took a step or two forward to meet the bull. Nestling against his huge head, powerful enough to bear up a horse and rider impaled upon his horns, she calmly fed the great beast from her store. Never could there have been a more beautiful picture since the day when another bull submitted to the caresses of Europa.
Vivillo scarcely deigned to look at Dick, who made some bids for his favour. All his chivalrous soul of toro bravo was absorbed in pleasure at Pilar's return, gratitude for her remembrance of him. I would scarcely have believed that it could be real, had I not seen it.
For ten minutes she stayed, Dick close at her side, always ignored by the bull; then she returned and walked towards us, slowly, the herdsman keeping near and Vivillo marching after in a resolute way which would have turned grey the hair of a nervous man or woman.
But if Dick were conscious of his nerves in such an unusual situation, he did not show it. His head was bent over Pilar's, talking earnestly, and though she never looked up at him in answer, once she broke out laughing, so merrily, I wondered what he had said.
In our own meadow again, safely delivered from the bulls, Pilar slipped instantly to her father's side and began chattering about Vivillo, who stood by the ditch looking wistfully after her as he chewed his last biscuit. Dick and I were thus thrown together; and though Dick's face is no tell-tale, I guessed somehow that his mind was not as calm as his features.
“I should think that might have been a little upsetting to an amateur,” I said.
“Maybe,” answered Dick, absent-mindedly. “But it isn't that, if I'm looking queer. Say Ramón, I've done it.”
“What?”
“Proposed to a girl for the first time in my life. What's more, I grovelled. I called Vivillo a lamb, though at the moment he was looking more like several dozen lions. I told her if she'd [pg 241]marry me, she could have him and any other bulls sitting about on our hearthrug; that we'd have a nice big one on purpose.”
“That ought to be an inducement—even from a heretic.”