made her uncomfortable for hours.

"Have we not feet, too?" I replied sharply.

But I knew what she meant. Bare feet are not pleasant to the eye
now-a-days, whatever they may have been in the days of the ancient
Greeks; and Felipa's little brown insteps were half the time torn or
bruised by the thorns of the chapparal. Besides, there was always the
disagreeable idea that she might step upon something cold and squirming
when she prowled through the thickets knee-deep in the matted grasses.
Snakes abounded, although we never saw them; but Felipa went up to their
very doors, as it were, and rang the bell defiantly.

One day old Grandfather Bartolo took the child with him down to the
coast: she was always wild to go to the beach, where she could gather
shells and sea-beans, and chase the little ocean-birds that ran along
close to the waves with that swift gliding motion of theirs, and where
she could listen to the roar of the breakers. We were several miles up
the river, and to go down to the ocean was quite a voyage to Felipa. She
bade us good-bye joyously; then ran back to hug Christine a second time,
then to the boat again; then back.

"I thought you wanted to go, child?" I said, a little impatiently, for I
was reading aloud, and these small irruptions were disturbing.

"Yes," said Felipa, "I want to go; and still--Perhaps if the gracious
senora would kiss me again--"

Christine only patted her cheek and told her to run away: she obeyed,
but there was a wistful look in her eyes, and even after the boat had
started her face, watching us from the stern, haunted me.

"Now that the little monkey has gone, I may be able at last to catch and
fix a likeness of her," I said: "in this case a recollection is better
than the changing quicksilver reality."

"You take it as a study of ugliness, I suppose?"

"Do not be so hard upon the child, Christine."

"Hard? Why, she adores me," said my friend, going off to her hammock
under the tree.

Several days passed, and the boat returned not. I accomplished a fine
amount of work, and Christine a fine amount of swinging in the hammock
and dreaming. At length one afternoon I gave my final touch, and carried
my sketch over to the pre-Raphaelite lady for criticism. "What do you
see?" I said.

"I see a wild-looking child with yellow eyes, a mat of curly black hair,
a lank little bodice, her two thin brown arms embracing a gaunt old dog
with crooked legs, big feet and turned-in toe