Some of the ruder gypsy children scampered alongside, jeering at Pedrillo’s ugliness and Tia Marta’s plight, but at last even the fleet-footed Leandro had dropped back and the prolonged sound of Pepito’s bellow of affectionate lament came but faintly on the breeze. Then Grandfather, lifting his eyes to the dazzling mountain peaks from which the sunrise glow had vanished, began to sing in fuller voice than usual:
“The hood of Lady Blanche
—You’re free to guess it, if you will—
It does not fit the restless sea,
But how it suits the hill!”
“Did you ever see the ocean, Grandfather?” asked Rafael, with a longing in his uplifted eyes that the old man understood.
“Ay, laddie, and so have you, for the first four years of your life were lived in Cadiz. Don’t you remember how the great billows used to break against the foot of the sea-wall? But I like better the waves that play on the shore at Malaga.”
And again Grandfather sang gaily, for it made the blood laugh in his old veins to feel the strong motion of a mule beneath him once more:
“How shall we feed these choir-boys,
Drest in white and blue,
Always coming and always going?
Sandwiches must do.”
“I don’t remember the sea as well as the ships,” said Rafael.
“Ah, the ships!” responded Grandfather.
“It is a sight the saints peep down from the windows of heaven to see—a ship under full sail.
“ ‘Curtsies like a lady,
Rocks like a gammer,
Cuts without scissors,
Tacks without a hammer.’ ”