"Yes, mother, and you will see Antonio, whom I like best of all the boys at school," said Fernando, and he hastened away to make ready for the great treat. A drive with his mother in school hours was a pleasure seldom indulged in, and a visit to the great hill which crowns Granada was treat enough, but to take Juanita,—these were things so pleasant that he said to himself, "I think my guardian angel must have whispered in my mother's ear to give me all this pleasure."
It was about two o'clock as they drove through the narrow streets of the city up the steep and hilly way which led to the outskirts of the town.
"You are going to see the nicest boy in Granada, and the most wonderful castle in Spain, niña," said Fernando to Juanita, and the two children chattered merrily as the carriage went slowly up the hill.
"Here is a riddle I heard at school, niña, see if you can guess it,—
"'Guarded in a prison strait,
Ivory gaolers round her wait,
Venomous snake of sanguine hue,
Mother of all the lies that brew!'"
"I do not know," said his little sister, wonderingly. She thought all that Fernando said and did was perfection. "What is it, Nando?"
"Why, the tongue, of course," he said, pleased to have given a riddle which she could not guess; and his mother said: