“Ay, that she was,” chimed in the old man, speaking with unwonted animation. “I can see her now in her yellow skirt spangled all over with furbelows, wearing her wreath of red poppies with the best, while her little feet would twinkle to the clicking of the castanets.”
“But how did she happen to grow so old and ugly?” asked Rafael.
“Oh, Rafael!” exclaimed Pilarica, shocked by such unmannerly frankness.
“Very nobly,” answered Don Carlos, stroking his little daughter’s hair. “By love and by service. When her father, the bell-ringer, died, and a stranger took his rooms in the Giralda, Marta came down into the city and entered the home of your grandfather and sainted grandmother—”
“May God rejoice her soul with the light of Paradise!” murmured Grandfather devoutly.
“There Marta was nurse-maid for your mother, then a little witch two or three years old,” continued Don Carlos. “And she grew so fond of her charge that she never left her, not even when your mother had the infinite goodness to marry me, and we moved to Cadiz, my naval station then. And now Tia Marta, for your mother’s blessed sake, spends all her strength and devotion upon you. We must never forget what we owe her, and we must always treat her with respect and affection.”
Rodrigo, who was pacing the tiled walks near by, trying to puzzle out a mathematical problem, turned to say:
“I’ll bring her a cherry ribbon from Granada to-morrow.”
“And she may wash my ears as hard as she likes,” magnanimously declared Rafael.
But Pilarica slipped from within the circle of her father’s arm and ran into the house to surprise Tia Marta with a sudden squeeze and shower of kisses.