In Sunny Spain with Pilarica and Rafael

“Why not let her romp a while with the other children?” suggested Rodrigo, looking over to where a dozen happy tatterdemalions were skipping songfully about in one of their favorite circle-dances. “There are no gypsies among them this morning, and it is to the gypsies that Tia Marta most objects.”

“Very well,” assented Don Carlos, relieved to see the grieved face brighten. “You may play with them this forenoon, if you like. But don’t follow tourists into the Alhambra.”

“And scamper home if the children get rude,” warned Big Brother.

“And don’t go near the Gypsy King,” put in Rafael.

Uncrushed by all this weight of masculine authority, Pilarica threw kisses to her three guardians as long as they were in sight and then flashed into the midst of the dancing circle, where she was welcomed with a gleeful shout. Carmencita clamored, as always, for Little White Pigeons, and so the children divided into two opposite rows, each line in turn clasping hands and lifting arms while the other danced under, as the song indicates:

“Little white pigeons
Are dreaming of Seville,
Sun in the palm tree,
Roses and revel.
Lift up the arches,
Gold as the weather.
Little white pigeons
Come flying together.

“Little white pigeons
Dream of Granada,
Glistening snows on
Sierra Nevada.
Lift up the arches,
Silver as fountains.
Little white pigeons
Fly to the mountains.”

Then they played Hide-and-Seek in their own special fashion. The first seeker was Pepito, who sat doubled over, with his chubby palms pressed tight against his eyes, while the others slipped softly into their hiding-places, all except Pilarica, who, as the Mother, stood by and gave Pepito his signal for the start by singing:

“My nightingales of the Alhambra
Forth from the cage are flown.
My nightingales of the Alhambra
Have left me all alone.”

After they were tired of this, Isabelita called for Butterfly Tag and was chosen, because of her pink frock – torn though it was, – to be the Butterfly. Forming in a close circle about her, the children lifted her dress-skirt by the border and held it outspread, while Pilarica, on the outside, danced round and round the ring, fluting like a bird:

“Who are these chatterers?
Oh, such a number!
Nor by day nor by night
Do they let me slumber.
They’re daughters of the Moorish king
Who search the garden-close
For lovely Lady Ana,
The sweetest thing that grows.
She’s opening the jasmine
And shutting up the rose.”

Then the children all at once lifted the pink frock and wrapped it about Isabella’s head, while Pilarica, dancing faster than ever, led them in singing seven times over:

“Butterfly, butterfly,
Dressed in rose-petals!
Is it on candle-flame
Butterfly settles?
How many shirts
Have you woven of rain?
Weave me another
Ere I call you again.”

Suddenly they varied the song:

“Now that Lady Ana
Walks in garden sweet,
Gathering the roses
Whose dew is on her feet,
Butterfly, butterfly,
Can you catch us? Try it, try!”

In an instant the circle had broken and scattered, while the Butterfly, blinded and half smothered in the folds of the skirt, dashed about as best she could, trying to catch one or another of her teasing playmates.

Then followed Washerwoman, and Chicken-Market, Rose and Pink, and Golden Earrings, and when, at noon, Don Carlos and Rafael came back, the children were all absorbed in the circle-dance of Mambrú. Don Carlos remembered the song from his own childhood in Saragossa and hummed the pathetic couplets under his breath, as he stood watching.

“Mambrú is gone to serve the king,
And comes no more by fall or spring.

“We’ve looked until our eyes are dim.
Will no one give us word of him?

“You’d know him for his mother’s son
By peasant dress of Aragon.

“You’d know him for my husband dear
By broidered kerchief on his spear.

“The one I broider now is wet.
Oh, may I see him wear it yet!”

With the last word of the song all the little figures in the circle flung themselves face downward on the ground, so impetuously that Carmencita and Pepito bumped their heads together and set up such a duet of stormy weeping that, for dramatic close, there was nothing left to be desired.

Don Carlos swung Pilarica, hotter and more weary than Rafael himself, to her feet, and as she smiled up into his face, she saw in it, for all its gravity, a great relief.

Tia Marta, too, who met them at the garden gate, was quick to read his look.

“Your heart has been taking a bath of roses,” she said.

And Don Carlos, in the same breath, was telling her his good tidings.

“Rodrigo drew a lucky number. There is weeping in other homes to-day, but not in ours.”

“Other people’s troubles are easily borne,” scoffed Tia Marta, but the dry, walnut face was twitching so strangely that the children wished it had been polite to laugh.