Autumn came with its harvesting and all the joys of the vintage. Pedrillo, like his neighbors, made his own wine, and Rafael and Pilarica had glorious times stamping, in the lightest of attire, on the grapes in the vat and singing:
“Green I slept in my cradle;
Red at the ball danced I;
But now I’m purple you like me best
And laugh to see me die.”
The autumn found Dolores more than ever fond of finery. She would don her best cream-colored kerchief, starred with gold, only to visit her father’s sheep out in the heather. One early October evening, when the girl, with shining eyes, had slipped away to join one of the groups of leaping dancers that dotted the fields, Doña Barbara smiled and sighed, and sighed and smiled, saying as if to herself:
“There is no sun without its clouds and no lass without her lovers.”
“I heard that handsome sailor-lad of Vigo tell Dolores that she is so sweet the roses are envious of her,” piped up Pilarica.
“No sailor-lad shall ever enter my door,” growled Uncle Manuel, just back from another trip.
“No door can keep out love and death,” answered Aunt Barbara softly.
Pilarica began to wonder about love and death. People spoke those words in such strange, beautiful tones. And night after night she lay awake beside Dolores to hear a boyish voice, with the hoarse Galician note, singing under the window. At first the coplas were light and playful.
“The stars of heaven
Are a thousand and seven.
Those eyes of thine
Make a thousand and nine.”
“Tiny and dainty, you please me well,
Down to my heart’s true pith.
You look to me like a little bell
Made by a silversmith.”