"Have you been sick, Elvira? You do not look like yourself."
"Now she will be better," exclaimed Pedro, in whom joy had awakened some of the old festive teasing humor. "Your absence, Ventura, and not hearing from you, nothing less, has brought her to this. Why, in heaven's name, did you not send us a letter, to tell us where you were?"
"Why, our sergeant wrote at least six for me," replied Ventura, "and besides, I have been in France, I have been a prisoner. All that is long to tell--But how well you look, Rita," he said, regarding the latter, who, from the moment he entered, had not taken her eyes from the gallant youth, whom the moustache, the uniform, and the military bearing became so well. "Bless me! but you have become a fine woman! The good care Perico takes of you--and you Perico, always digging? Are these your children? How handsome they are! God bless them! Hey! come here, I am not a Frenchman nor a bluebeard."
Ventura sat down to caress the children. Maria, coming behind him at this moment, caught his head in her hands, and covered his face with tears and kisses--Ventura in the mean while saying, "Maria, how much you have prayed for me! I suppose you have made a hundred novenas, and more than a thousand promises."
"Yes, my son, and to-morrow I shall sell my best hen, to have said in Saint Anna's chapel the thanksgiving mass I have promised."
"Aunt Anna is the one who has nothing to say," observed Ventura. "Are you not glad to see me, madam?"
"Yes my son, yes; I was minding my Elvira. God knows," she continued, observing the pallid countenance of her child, "how glad I am of your return, and what thanks I give him for it, if it is for the best."
"And why not," exclaimed Pedro, "for the best? for all except my kids and your fowls, which are going to give up the ghost within a month, the time it will take to publish the bans."
"Don't be so hasty," answered Anna, smiling, "a wedding, neighbor, is not a fritter to be turned, tossed, and fried in a moment."
"Well, 'every owl to his own olive,'" said Pedro after a while. "Good people, there is a wicket in the street that is tired of being solitary."