There followed dark, chill weeks when all the tiles took to crying:
“Ladies sitting on a roof; it is rainy weather;
Still the ladies sit there, weeping all together.”
And since the new conscription had taken the Vigo sailor-lad away to the war, Dolores, too, wept and wept until her girlish face had lost its dimples and its rosy color.
But Pilarica and Rafael, though they did their childish best to comfort Dolores, laughed the winter through. They searched the woods for flowers, bringing home violets in January and narcissus in March, while Dolores, whom they would coax out with them, bore back on her erect young head a burden of fragrant brush for the evening fire.
Then came Easter, with its springtide joys, and festal summer, bringing new troops of pilgrims to the shrine of Santiago.
“A tree with twelve branches;
Four nests on a bough;
In each nest seven thrushes;
Unriddle me now.”
So sang Aunt Barbara, and Pilarica, lifting her radiant little face for one more kiss, made answer:
“The months are the branches;
A week is a nest;
The days are the thrushes;
Each song is the best.”