“What nice names!” observed Pilarica, fearlessly patting one of the gaunt beasts. Uncle Manuel frowned. This was no place, no errand, for a girl. He had left her behind with Tia Marta. But that grumpy Bastiano, who could refuse the child nothing, had set her on Shags and—it served him right—had had that reluctant donkey to drag up the rough ascent.
“Ay, my little lady,” the shepherd was saying to Pilarica. “All our dogs have these names, for such were the names of the sheepdogs of Bethlehem who went with their masters to see the Holy Child in the stable.”
Pilarica smiled up into the wind-worn face of the speaker with happy confidence. She had noticed him from the road as he stood upon the summit, a majestic figure against the sky, and had thought in her childishness that he looked like God, keeping watch over the world.
“And when the shepherds met the other wise men at the door,” she asked, “did the dogs bark at the camels?”
“Has the girl no heart,” thought Uncle Manuel, “to be talking of such far-off things, when her brother may be—”
But not even in his silent thought could Uncle Manuel finish the sentence. Lobina was sniffing at a fresh red stain upon a stone.
Pilarica saw her uncle’s distress and wondered at it. She did not understand distress. Her soul was still pure sunshine that marvelled at the shadow. But she slipped, for love and pity, her slender hand into his hard grip. In a moment he pushed her, not ungently, from him.
“Take the child back,” he ordered Bastiano. “You should not have brought her.”
“She thought she could help,” growled the muleteer.
“Help! Of what possible help could a girl be here? This is man’s work.”