"Oh, you dear old thing!" she said. She was fondling and kissing the bony creature, who stood aghast before her, who in turn was crying and begging the saints to have mercy upon her.
"And for the good God's sake, tell me how you got here, Señorita, and will the Señor allow me to sit down? My Sunday shoes have killed me, nearly. Is there anything that I could wear instead—" Ana stopped abashed at the sight of so fine a man as Silencio.
"How did the Señor rescue you, my Sweet? Is the Señor Escobeda dead, then?" Ana looked about her as if she expected to see the bodies of Escobeda and his followers over there on the edge of the trocha.
"I have been shipwrecked, Ana," said Raquel, smiling down upon the old woman.
"Ship—the holy saints pres—and you are not even wet—and where, then, is the Señor Escobe—"
"You seem very much worried about the Señor Escobeda, Ana," said Don Gil, who at once made Raquel's friend his own. "Do you not hear him off there now, cursing as usual?"
Ana listened. She heard distant cries, and the sound of the water as it churned underneath the propeller blades.
Ana shrank to the size of an ant as she answered, her face blanching: "Indeed! yes, I do hear the Señor, Señor. I have heard the Señor like that, Señor, many a time. And does the Señor think that the Señor can come here to the casa of Palmacristi?"
"Not for some time, I think, Ana," said Don Gil, smiling, though a faint wrinkle was discernible on his brow.