“Ah! ha, ha, my rich one! And what shall I inherit, sir? All your whims and notions, and your old sombrero, maybe? ‘No?’”
“‘Sta buen’! Laugh if thou wilt; in derision now, but, by-and-by, in glee. And what shalt thou inherit? Wait and see. Wait and see. I would have told thee but for thy ridicule. No matter. Quite time enough for thee—when Sutro Vives is done with life. Which will be soon, no? But I say—yes.”
“And I say no, no, no! good Sutro,” said Steenie, sobered instantly by the gloomy look which settled upon her old comrade’s face. “You are to live longer than any Vives who ever was, and to use every bit of your wonderful riches for your own cristy, crusty, blessed self. Hear me say that, my caballero,—I, your own ‘Little Lady of the Horse’! So there! And home again!”
Sutro smiled once more. His mood was wholly dependent upon that of his beloved “niña’s,” who was his one object in life; and, with the smile still upon his face, he swung her from Tito’s back, and led the latter away to the comfortable stall which now bade fair to become his permanent home.
“Here we are, Papa, Grandmother! And the loveliest time in all the world! Oh, it’s just fun, fun, fun to go to school in a summer-house—and be a colt teacher afterward—Why, Papa! What—what is the matter? Are your eyes—”
But she did not finish the sentence. A groan, such as is wrung from strong men only by great trouble, fell from her father’s lips, as he stretched out his arms to enfold her, and dropped his poor, sightless eyes upon her shoulder. “My dear little Steenie! What is to become of you!”
The child’s glance flew round to her grandmother’s face; but its expression startled her even more than her father’s despondency. Madam Calthorp sat gazing straight before her, but seeing nothing, saying nothing, while every drop of blood seemed to have left her white cheek, and the seams of an added decade to have fallen upon it.
“Grandmother—don’t! Don’t look like that! What awful thing has happened? Do speak to me—please! Somebody!”
The words broke the spell of that strange silence. But Steenie had never in her life seen anything so sorrowful as the gaze which came out of vacancy to fix itself upon her own person.
“My poor little darling, everything has come upon us—but death. We are ruined. Ruined!”