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“Well, did I not tell you I came to the beanfield,—what should I do but go through it?” remonstrated Chinita; “and then I walked under the willows. Ah, if you could only once walk under the willows, niña! it is like heaven in the green shade by the clear water, and there are great brakes of rushes, with the birds skimming over them. I saw among them a stork standing on one leg, and he had in his mouth a little striped snake, yellow and scarlet and black, which so wriggled and twisted! Ah, and I saw, besides, little fish in the shallow water, and—”

Chata sighed. She had unconsciously sunk upon the mud floor; her eyes opened wide, as if in imagination she saw all those things of which, though she was set in the very heart of Nature, her bodily eyes had caught no glimpse. How in her heart of hearts the sheltered, cloistered daughter of the administrador envied the wild foster-child of the gate-keeper, who was so free, and from whom the woods and fields could keep no secrets! “Go on!” she whispered, and Chinita said, in a sort of recitative,—