“Without an s I would weep,
Instead of making the hall
Ready for guests who’ll keep
Holiday one and all,
Feasting on frosted cake
Full of citron and plums,
While after they’re gone I take
Only a supper of crumbs.”
Meanwhile Pedrillo had come to grief. Setting his foot against the flank of the mule he was loading, he pulled so vigorously on the cords that cinched the pack as to burst two buttons off his trousers. As this garment boasted only four, the dilemma was serious.
The dumpy little fellow held up those two iron buttons to Tia Marta with a comical look, croaking:
“They are round as moons
And wear pantaloons.”
“But I’ve lost my scissors,” wailed the old woman. “They slipped out of my hand just now when I was gathering up—ay de mi!—the last things from the chest, and that room in there is darker than Jonah’s chamber in the whale.”
“Hunt up a candle and look for them, can’t you?” begged Pedrillo of the children.
It was Pilarica who found, under the bench, a stray inch of tallow-dip, but it was Rafael who carried it through the house, holding it close to the floor, while Grandfather quavered:
“In a little corner
Sits a little old man;
He wears his shirt inside his flesh;
That’s a queer plan;
And eats his shirt and eats his flesh
Fast as he can.”
When the scissors turned up, Pedrillo hailed them with a joyous couplet:
“Two friends out walking quite of a mind,
Their feet before and their eyes behind.”