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So time passed on until the children were four years old. The little Chinita made her home at the gateway rather than at the hut with Florencia, who by this time had married and had children of her own, and indeed felt no slight jealousy at the open preference her uncle showed for his foundling. For Pedro was a man of no vices, and his food and clothing cost him little; so in some by-corner a goodly hoard of sixpences and dollars was accumulating, doubtless, for the ultimate benefit of the tiny witch who clambered on his knees, pulled his hair, and ate the choicest bits from his basin unreproved; who thrust out her foot or her tongue at any of the rancheros who spoke to her, or with equally little reason fondled and kissed them; and who at the sight of the administrador or clerk or Doña Feliz, shrank beneath Pedro’s striped blanket, peeping out from its folds with half-terrified, half-defiant eyes, which softened into admiration as Doña Rita and her children passed by.

They also in their turn used to look at her with wonder, she was so different from the score or more of half-naked, brown little figures that lolled on the sand or in the doorways of the huts, or crept in to Mass to stare at them with wide-opened black eyes. They used to pass these very conscious of their stiffly-starched pink skirts, their shining rebosos, and thin little slippers of colored satin. But though this wild little elf crouching by Pedro’s side was as dirty and as unkempt as the other ranchero children, they vaguely felt that she was a creature to talk to, to play with, not to dazzle with Sunday finery,—for even so young do minds begin to reason.