“Needs training,” he said harshly. “Needs discipline. All boys do. I set him sums to work out in his head every day now as we ride.”
“Ay, and put him to figuring after supper, when he can hardly keep two eyes open,” grunted Tenorio. “You’ll wear out the youngster’s brains, Don Manuel.”
“The feet of the gardener never hurt the garden,” replied the master-carrier, who prided himself on the practical education that he was giving his nephew.
As the animals came in sight of the cascading stream, they brayed with joy. The donkeys and the riding mules plunged at once into the water, and the carriers speedily released the pack-mules so that these, too, might cool their legs in the pleasant swash of the current.
“Ah!” sighed Hilario, looking up from the bank where he had thrown himself down at full length to drink. “A brook of Galicia is better than a river of Castile.”
“It’s wetter, any way,” growled Bastiano, who had gone some distance up the stream to fill a leather bottle with the pure flow of the cascade. “The rivers of Castile are dry half the year and without water the other half.”
“What is the thing—can’t you tell me yet?—
That falls into the water and doesn’t get wet?”
hummed Grandfather, while his eyes followed the play of a sunbeam in the waves.
“Did you ever hear,” asked Pedrillo of the children, as they watched Shags and Don Quixote revelling in the rill, “of that peasant called Swallow-Sun?”
“What a funny name!” exclaimed the little girl. “A thousand thanks, Don Bastiano.”