For Bastiano, who was never surly with Pilarica, had brought his bottle to her before he drank himself.
“He was called so,” continued Pedrillo, “because one day, when his donkey was drinking out of a stream in which the sun was reflected, the sky suddenly clouded over, and the peasant cried out in dismay: ‘Saint James defend us! My donkey has drunk up the sun.’ ”
It was so pleasant by the rivulet, under the shade of the great locusts, that Uncle Manuel permitted an hour’s rest.
“Don’t let us overrun the time,” he said to his nephew, and the men exchanged winks as Rafael, with an air of vast importance, consulted his watch.
Everybody welcomed Uncle Manuel’s decision. Shags and Don Quixote trotted off to a velvet patch of grass and rolled in the height of donkey happiness, their hoofs merrily beating the air. Pedrillo gathered twigs and made a bit of a fire on a broad grey rock, so that Tia Marta might heat the milk for Baby Bunting, who lay kicking on his kid-skin beside her, in the little soft shirt she had knit for him.
“This is not Castile, where I had to dig up the roots of dead bushes for fuel,” said Pedrillo, his face more comical than ever as he puffed out his cheeks to blow the flame.
“It is good to be among trees again,” admitted Tia Marta, “though the pine forests of Galicia are not beautiful like the orange-groves of Andalusia.”
“A bad year to all the grumblers in the world!” exclaimed Hilario in loyal indignation.
“No heaven was ever invented
That pleased the discontented,”
muttered Bastiano.