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The two lads were quite oblivious of all this, and even of the nearness of their instructor, Fray Piña, the young ecclesiastic who had charge of them, and who was at that moment leaning over the parapet outside the open door. Fray Piña glanced within the room; he could not hear what Diego and Don Felipe were saying, but it was evident from their attitudes—both leaning eagerly across the rough table, strewn with writing implements and the manuscript books of the period—that they were deeply interested in each other.

“They are making acquaintance very fast,” thought Fray Piña to himself. “It is best to leave them alone. Don Felipe needs the companionship of just such a boy as Diego, and Diego needs the companionship of just such a boy as Don Felipe.”

It was this very point which the boys were discussing.

“And so,” Don Felipe was saying, “my mother, Doña Christina, who is obliged to be much at court, because she is a lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabella, said the court was not a good place in which a youth should be wholly brought up, especially a faithless youth like me. Nor does my mother think it well to have my sister, Doña Luisita, at court yet, as she is but fourteen; so Luisita remains with her governess at the castle of Langara when my mother attends the Queen. And my mother asked Fray Piña to take charge of me for a year, with another youth of my age, and without rank; and we should be schooled together, and dress plainly, and be disciplined.”