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“Why, it is that wretched little foundling of Pedro’s!” cried Doña Rita, indignantly, as she wiped Rosario’s streaming cheeks. “Get you gone, you fierce little tigress! Chata, let go her hand; she will scratch you, she may bite you next.”

“Oh, no,” cooed Chata, quite in the ear of the ragged little fury beside her; while Doña Feliz, who had been silent, placed her fingers under the chin of the little waif, and lifted her face to her gaze. “Be not angry at a children’s quarrel,” she said; “they will be all the better friends for it later.”

“But I don’t wish them to be friends,” cried Doña Rita,—though the absolute separation of classes rendered intimate association possible and common between them which neither detracted from the dignity of the one caste, nor was likely to arouse emulation in the other. “What a wild, savage little fox! No, no, my lamb, she shall not come near thee again!”

But the mother’s lamb was of another mind, for suddenly she stopped crying, pulled the new-comer’s ragged skirt, and said, “Come along, I’ll show you my little fishes;” and in another moment, to Doña Rita’s amazement and Doña Feliz’s quiet amusement, the three children were leaning together, chatting and laughing, over the edge of the stone basin in the centre of the court.