“He is only fifty years old to-day,” he said, “but it is high time for our nooning. We’ll not squeeze the orange till the juice is bitter. Eh, señora?”
And Tia Marta replied quite affably: “You are right, Don Pedrillo. Fifty years is not old.”
“It is the very cream of the milk,” gallantly assented the muleteer, helping down first Tia Marta and then Grandfather, for their muscles were yet stiff, however young their spirits might have grown.
How glad the mules and donkeys were to browse in the shade! And how briskly Tia Marta sliced into her best earthenware bowl, the drab one with dull blue bands, whatever was brought her for the salad in addition to her own contribution of a crisp little cabbage! Pedrillo produced from one of his striped saddle-bags a handful of onions, so fresh and delicate that a Spanish taste could fancy them even uncooked, and lifting one between finger and thumb, croaked the copla:
“This lady has many petticoats,
But she has little pride,
For the coarsest of her petticoats
She wears on the outside.”
Then Grandfather, not to be outdone, held up to general view a scarlet pepper full of seeds, reciting:
“The church where the tiny people
Pray all the week is not
Cold marble and soaring steeple,
It is round and little and hot;
And red it is as a ruby crown,
This queer little church of Fairytown.”
Pilarica, meanwhile, to whose guardianship Tia Marta had entrusted three hard-boiled eggs that morning, brought them safely forth from the satchel, where they had been hobnobbing with the doll, the fan and the castanets, and passed them over one at a time, to prolong the game. She herself remembered a rhyme to the purpose and sang it very sweetly to a tune of her own, dancing as she sang:
“A little white box
All can open, but
Once it is open,
None can shut.”
Pedrillo made sport for them, when the second egg appeared, by trying to follow Pilarica’s example, but it was an uncouth dance that his short legs accomplished in time to the copla: