Diego suddenly stopped talking. He had the instinctive good sense not to talk too much about himself.
“Go on,” cried Don Felipe, “I want to know every word about your father, everything that happened, so when I am an old man I shall be able to tell people about the great Admiral.”
Diego’s eyes shone, and he kept on.
“All the seafaring men in Palos, especially the great ship-owners the Pinzons and the pilot Rodriguez, were called to the monastery by the Prior, and they all listened to my father and wondered and admired, and told the Prior my father was right and by sailing to the westward he would discover land. So, then, the Prior wrote a letter to the great Queen Isabella, whom he knew, and sent it to her by Rodriguez the pilot. Rodriguez came back saying the Queen commanded my father to come to her at Cordova. He went to Cordova, and took me along. I was sorry to leave Brother Lawrence and the boys I played with every day. I do not recollect much about Cordova, I was such a little lad. I thought I should see the great Queen Isabella with her crown on and King Ferdinand with his scepter, and how surprised I was when I saw only a gentle lady, very simply dressed, sitting with the King in a small room. They were, however, on a dais, and I sat down on the steps. Presently I fell asleep, and when I waked up my head was on the Queen’s knee, and she was looking down at me with smiling eyes. I do not remember my own mother; but when I looked into the eyes of Queen Isabella I knew what a mother’s eyes were like. She was ever kind to me later, in all the many times that my father wearily went to court and followed the King and Queen about, even when encamped with their soldiers.”
“When will your father return?” asked Don Felipe.
“I do not know; but it will be soon, I think.”
As Diego spoke there was a sound of clattering hoofs on the stones of the courtyard.
“That is my father!” said Diego.
At that moment Fray Piña turned from the parapet and entered the room. Instantly both lads bent over their books as if they had no thought but study. Fray Piña smiled slightly; they had not looked at a book since their tutor had been out of the room.