a. The son of Don Rafael came home from Spain to-day;
he should be as kind as his father. Well, to-morrow I find Crispin,
get my pay, and say I'm not going to be a sacristan. Then I'll go
see Don Crisostomo and ask him to make me a buffalo-keeper. Crispin
could go on studying with old Tasio. Tasio's better than the curate
thinks; I've often seen him praying in the church when no one else was
there. What shall I lose in not being a sacristan? One earns little and
loses it all in fines. I'll be a herdsman, mama, and take good care of
the cows and carabaos, and make my master love me; then perhaps he'll
let us have a cow to milk: Crispin loves milk. And I could fish in the
rivers and go hunting when I get big. And by and by perhaps I could
have a little land and sow sugar-cane. We could all live together,
then. And old Tasio says Crispin is very bright. By and by we would
send him to study at Manila, and I would work for him. Shall we,
mama? He might be a doctor; what do you say?"

"What can I say, except that you are right," answered Sisa, kissing
her son.

Basilio went on with his projects, talking with the confidence of a
child. Sisa said yes to everything. But little by little sleep came
back to the child's lids, and this time he did not cry in his dreams:
that Ole-Luk-Oie, of whom Andersen tells us, unfurled over his head
the umbrella with its lining of gay pictures. But the mother, past
the age of careless slumbers, did not sleep.

XVI.

AT THE MANSE.

It was seven o'clock when Brother Salvi finished his last mass. He
took off his priestly robes without a word to any one.

"Look out!" whispered the sacristans; "it is going to rain fines! And
all for the fault of those children!"

The father came out of the sacristy and crossed to the manse. On the
porch six or seven women sat waiting for him, and a man was walking
to and fro. The woman rose, and one bent to kiss his hand, but the
priest made such a gesture of impatience that she stopped short.

"He must have lost a real miser," she cried mockingly, when he had
passed. "This is something unheard of: refuse his hand to the zealous
Sister Rufa?"

"He was not in the confessional this morning," said a toothless
old woman, Sister Sipa. "I wanted to confess, so as to get some
indulgences."

"I have gained three plenary indulgences," said a young woman of
pleasing face, "and applied them all to the soul of my husband."

"You have done wrong," said Si