“It is gone now, mama; I don’t remember it all.”
Sisa did not insist: she attached no importance to dreams.
“Mama,” said Basilio after a moment of silence, “I’m not sleepy either. I had a project last evening. I don’t want to be a sacristan.”
“What?”
“Listen, mama. The son of Don Rafael came home from Spain to-day; he should be as kind as his father. Well, to-morrow I find Crispin, get my pay, and say I’m not going to be a sacristan. Then I’ll go see Don Crisóstomo and ask him to make me a buffalo-keeper. Crispin could go on studying with old Tasio. Tasio’s better than the curate thinks; I’ve often seen him praying in the church when no one else was there. What shall I lose in not being a sacristan? One earns little and loses it all in fines. I’ll be a herdsman, mama, and take good care of the cows and carabaos, and make my master love me; then perhaps he’ll let us have a cow to milk: Crispin loves milk. And I could fish in the rivers and go hunting when I get big. And by and by perhaps I could have a little land and sow sugar-cane. We could all live together, then. And old Tasio says Crispin is very bright. By and by we would send him to study at Manila, and I would work for him. Shall we, mama? He might be a doctor; what do you say?”
“What can I say, except that you are right,” answered Sisa, kissing her son.
Basilio went on with his projects, talking with the confidence of a child. Sisa said yes to everything. But little by little sleep came back to the child’s lids, and this time he did not cry in his dreams: that Ole-Luk-Oie, of whom Andersen tells us, unfurled over his head the umbrella with its lining of gay pictures. But the mother, past the age of careless slumbers, did not sleep.