_Juanito_: Oooh! It must have been a rare fine key. When I’m a man, may I have such a key?
_Sister Pilar_: I sadly fear, Juanito, that ’tis only to saints that such keys are given. Think you, you’ll be a saint some day?
_Juanito_: Not I! They live on lentils and dried peas. I’ll be a tumbler at the fairs. Already I can stand on my head ... (_catching Pepita’s eye_) nearly.
_Pepita_: Pooh! Any babe could stand on their head if some one held their legs.
_Juanito_ (_crestfallen and anxious to change the subject_): Could St. Ferdinand stand on his head?
_Pepita_ (_much shocked_): For shame, Juanito! Sister Pilar has told us he was a great saint!
_Sister Pilar_: Well, he had a great devotion for Our Lady and the Eucharist. He founded many convents and monasteries....
_Sister Pilar_: It was founded during his reign.
_Sister Pilar_: More than a hundred years ... when your great-great-grandfather was living.
_Pepita_: There must have been many a nun lived here since then!
_Sister Pilar_: Nay, not quite a million.
_Juanito_: Think you, they’d like to be alive again?
_Sister Pilar_: Because either they are in Paradise or will go there soon.
_JUANITO is silent for a second or two, then he begins to laugh._
_Juanito_: All those nuns, and when they die new ones coming! Why, it’s like Don Juan Tenorio springing up again in our game!
_Pepita_ (_extremely shocked_): Oh, Juanito!
_Juanito_: Well, and so it is! And old Domingo says that his ghost tries o’ nights to steal the live nuns, but the dead ones beat him back.
_Pepita_: Yes, and it’s Don Juan that makes the flowers and the corn grow, and that’s what the game is that Domingo taught us.
_Sister Pilar_: Children! Children! This is all foolish and evil talk. It is God, as you know well, that makes the corn grow. You should not listen to old Domingo.
_Juanito_: Oh, but he tells us fine tales of Roland and Belermo and the Moorish king that rode on a zebra.... I like them better than the lives of the Saints. Come, Pepita, let’s go and play.
_They pick up their balls and run off and begin tossing them against one of the walls of the court._
_Sister Pilar_ (_musing_): They too ... they too ... pretty flowers and butterflies upon the margin of the hours that catch one’s eye and fancy.... Pretty brats of darkness ... and yet Juanito is only five and is floating still, a little Moses, on the waters of Baptism. Soft wax ... but where is the impress of the seal of the King of Kings? He is a pigmy sinner, and albeit the vanities pursued by him are tiny things—balls and sweetmeats and pagan stories—still are they vanities, and with his growth will they grow. Jesus! My nightmare vision! Sin, sin, sin everywhere! Babes turn hideous. Dead birds caught by the fowler and turned into his deadliest snares. The fiends of hell shrink to their stature and ape their innocence and serious eyes; and how many virgins that the love of no man could have lured, have, through longing for children, been caught in concupiscence? Oh, sin and works of darkness, I am so weary of you!