Don Carlos, who had his own reasons for wishing to see what Don Quixote was able to do, placed both the children on the white donkey’s back, leaving Shags for Grandfather to ride, and Don Quixote acquitted himself so well that he, with his double burden, was the first to arrive at the garden gate. Shags, trotting for sheer surprise, was close behind, but it was half an hour later before Don Carlos and Rodrigo came slowly up the road, the father’s arm thrown lightly over the lad’s shoulders.
IX
CHOSEN FOR THE KING
THE next morning, as Don Carlos was starting off, as usual, with Rodrigo, Rafael clung to his father’s hand.
The officer who, since that first unhappy night, seemed to have a complete understanding of the boy, hesitated.
“But I may walk all the way into Granada with your brother to-day and may not come back until afternoon. You know how tired you were yesterday by the time we reached the Gate of the Pomegranates.”
Rafael’s black eyes looked wistfully into his father’s.
“I would rather go with you and be tired than not go with you and not be tired,” he said.
Don Carlos smiled so tenderly that Rafael had a queer feeling as if his heart were growing too big for his jacket.
“You may come, my son,” decided the father, and then his glance fell doubtfully on Pilarica. “No, the city will be in tumult; no place for a little girl. But you may walk a bit of the way with us, Sweetheart.”
It seemed such a very wee bit that, when her father kissed her and bade her run back, the tears stood in Pilarica’s eyes like dew on pansies.