“Ah,” said Punch, “and I can’t understand plain Spanish. But I know what you mean, and I will try to eat.—’Tis good. Give us a bit more.”
For the next ten minutes or so the peasant-girl remained seated upon the bedside attending to the wounded boy, breaking off the softer portions of the cake, soaking them in the warm milk, and placing them to the sufferer’s lips, and more than once handing portions of the cake to Pen and giving him the clean wood vessel so that he might drink, while the sun lit up the interior of the hut and lent a peculiar brightness to the intently gazing eyes of its three occupants, till the rustic breakfast came to an end, this being when Punch kept his lips closed, gazed up straight in the girl’s face, and smiled and shook his head.
“Good!” said the girl in her native tongue, and she nodded and laughed in satisfaction before playfully making believe to close the boy’s eyes, and ending by keeping her hand across the lids so that he might understand that he was now to sleep.
To this Punch responded by taking the girl’s hand in his and holding it for a few moments against his cheek before it was withdrawn, when the poor wounded lad turned his face away so that no one should see that a weak tear was stealing down his sun-browned cheek.
But the girl saw it, and her own eyes were wet as she turned quickly to Pen, pointed to the bread and milk, signed to him that he should go on eating, and then hurried out into the bright sunshine, Pen following, to see that she was making straight for the waterfall.
The next minute she had disappeared amongst the trees.
“Well, Punch,” cried Pen, as he stepped back to the hut, “feel better for your breakfast?”
“Better? Yes, of course. But I say, she didn’t see me snivelling, did she?”
“Yes, I think so; and it made her snivel too, as you call it. Of course she was sorry to see you so weak and bad.”
“Ah!” said Punch, after a few moments’ silence, during which he had lain with his eyes shut.