My father wanted me to read to him after dinner the last number of The Day. When I had finished, he went to his room, and I sought the parlor. Juan came up to me, and leaned his head upon my knees.
“Aren’t you going to sleep tonight?” I asked him, with a caress.
“I want you to put me to sleep.”
“And why not María?”
“I am angry with her.”
“With her? Why, what have you done to her?”
“Well, she does not love me tonight.”
“Tell me why not.”
“I asked her to tell me the story of Caperuza, and she did not want to. I asked her to kiss me, and she paid no attention.”
Juan’s complaints made me fear that María’s sadness had continued.
“And if you have bad dreams tonight,” said I to the child, “she will not get up to stay with you.”
“Then in the morning I will not help her pick flowers for your room, and I will not carry her combs for her to the bath.”
“Don’t say that; she loves you very much. Run and ask her for a kiss and for a story to put you to sleep.”
“No,” he said, getting up, “I will go and bring her here for you to scold her.”
“For me to scold her?”
“I am going to bring her.” Saying this, he went in search of her. Soon he reappeared, pretending to lead her back by force. She was smiling, and asking him, “Where are you taking me?”
“Here,” replied Juan, making her sit down by my side.
I told María of the child’s gossip. She took his head between her hands, and putting her forehead against his, said, “Ah, unkind one! You will have to sleep with him, then.”
Juan began to cry, holding out his little arms for me to take him.
“No, no, my little man,” said she, “it is only a joke of your Mimiya.” And she kissed him.
But the child insisted that I should take him.
“Is this the way you treat me, Juan?” continued María, complainingly. “Very well. He is a big man now. I’ll have them take his bed to his brother’s room tonight. He doesn’t need me any more. I shall be all alone, and shall cry because he does not love me any longer.”
She covered her face with her hands to make him think she was crying. Juan waited a moment; but as she kept on pretending to cry, he slowly slipped down from my knees and went up to her to try to uncover her face. Finding María’s lips smiling, and her eyes loving, he burst out laughing, put his arms about her waist, and laid his head in her lap, saying: “I love you a heap, I love you with all my heart. I won’t be angry or silly any more. Tonight I am going to pray that you may make me some new trousers.”
“Show me the trousers you have on,” I said. Juan stood up on the sofa, between María and me, to make me admire his first trousers.
“How fine!” I exclaimed, embracing him. “If you love me a great deal and are good, I will have them make you a great many pairs; and I will buy you a saddle and leggings and spurs …”
“And a little black horse?” he interrupted.
“Yes.”
He gave me a long kiss, and clinging to María’s neck, forced her to receive a similar favor. Then he dropped on his knees, and putting his hands together, said his evening prayer, leaning sleepily against María’s skirt.
I noticed that María’s left hand was playing with something on the boy’s head, while a mischievous smile was flitting about her lips. With a swift glance she showed me the curl she had promised me. I leaned forward to take it, but she drew it back, and said, “And where is mine? Perhaps I ought not to ask it.”
“A lock of my hair?” I asked.
She nodded, adding, “Won’t it go well in the same locket where I have my mother’s?”
XXXI
The next day I had to exert myself not to let my father see how disagreeable it was for me to have to go with him to his farms in the valley. As was his custom whenever he was about to undertake a journey, no matter how short it might be, he supervised the arrangement of everything, though it was not necessary. We had to take along some delicacies for the week we were to be away, of a kind my father liked very much, and he laughed as he saw what Emma and María were preparing in the dining-room, and putting into the saddlebags.
“Heaven help me! daughters. Will all that go in?”
“Yes, Señor,” answered María.
“Why, there is enough for a bishop! I see you are taking great pains that we shall lack nothing.”
María, who was kneeling down and packing away the provisions, and whose back was towards my father, said to him, timidly, just as I came in, “Well, as you are going to be away so many days …”
“Not many, child,” he replied, laughing. “I say nothing of myself; I thank you for it all; but this boy will be so discontented down there. Look,” he added, speaking to me.
“At what?”
“Why, at all they are putting in. With such a supply I may conclude to stay two weeks.”
“But it was mamma who ordered it,” remarked María.
“Don’t you be troubled, little one, everything is very good; but I do not see any of the last purchase of wine, and there is none to be had down there; we must take some.”
“It won’t go in,” said María.
“We shall see.”
He went himself to the wine-cellar for the wine he spoke of, and when he came back, with Juan Ángel loaded, in addition, with some cans of salmon, he repeated, “Now we shall see.”
“That too!” exclaimed she, seeing the cans.
As my father set about taking out of the saddlebag a box already packed, María said to him in alarm:
“Can’t that stay?”
“Why, my daughter?”
“It’s the tarts that you like
