“It won’t. They’re only in great whiles, you know. Make Benoni go. He’s lazy, the dear! He’s had too much grass.”
Indeed the handsome creature did need urging. He was loath to turn away from that direction in which his old home lay, and it was with a very different pace from his usual one that he again set forward.
Then cried Carlota, in fear:
“Carlos, he isn’t lazy! He’s sick. He surely is!”
“Nonsense! He needs encouraging, that’s all.”
After a trick he had been taught by a horse-trainer, once resident at Refugio, the lad leaned forward and whispered in the animal’s ear. The ruse seemed to succeed. Benoni quickened his steps to his usual graceful lope, which jarred his riders no more than the swaying of a cradle. This movement was so natural and familiar that their own spirits rose. To a gay little melody which he had learned from Anita, Carlos began to sing:
“We’re going to our father, oh! we’re going to our father,
We’re going to our father on this happy, sunny day!”
Carlota joined him to the best of her ability, though she had often to pause in admiration of his genius, which could work into the rhythm details of home happenings and even the things they passed by the way. He, also, thought his sister’s voice the sweetest ever heard; and thus, in their absorbed pride in each other they travelled far before they realized how intolerably warm it was and how Benoni was again sorely lagging.
“Never mind. We’re almost to some little hills. There are trees on them and so there must be water. I guess a drink is what we all want.”