“Good-day, sir,” said Pilarica, who knew no reason why one should not be as polite to a goatherd as to a grandee.
Scared peasant though he was, he had Castilian manners.
“Will your Grace eat?” he stammered, offering his humble fare.
Pilarica declined with a courteous gesture of her little hand, now almost as brown as his own, and the customary Spanish phrase:
“May it do you good!”
He started again at the sound of her voice, but gulped down the rest of his bread, corked the cow’s-horn, thrust it into his rough leather wallet and then went to his flock, soon returning with warm milk in a bottle. Not daring, apparently, to reach across Pilarica, he pointed to the baby.
“Oh, may I!” exclaimed the little girl in ecstasy and, gathering that kid-skin bundle into her lap, she administered the milk as best she could, singing meanwhile, over and over, one of Grandfather’s lullabies:
“Recotín, recotón!
The bells of Saint John!
There’s a festival on!
Recotín, recotín, recotón!”
The goatherd, to whom Pilarica’s sweet treble had an unearthly sound, crossed himself and backed still further away.
“What is the darling’s name?” she asked, too much engrossed in her new, delightful occupation to notice the peasant’s fright.