“‘I have only one eye, like the beggar who sits In the great church porch at Cadiz; My temper is sharp, and yet I am A favorite with the ladies.’
Will this do?” he asked. “For there is another, and I see that just now the needle is no favorite at all with my little lady here.”
“I would like, please, to hear the other,” replied Pilarica promptly, for surely one could not know too many riddles, especially about anything so vexatious as a needle.
And Grandfather, after letting his fingers wander for a minute over the strings of the guitar to refresh his memory, chanted this other:
“‘I’m little, but do me no wrong, For my temper is sharp and spry; I’m not a man, but my beard is long, And it grows right out of my eye. I’m as small as a spear of wheat in spring, And yet it is I who dress the King.’”
“One more, dear Grandfather, if you will do me the favor,” coaxed the child.
“One more,” assented Grandfather, lightly kissing the red carnation which Pilarica, like a true little Andalusian, had tucked into her rippling mass of soft dark hair. “One more, but not about the needle this time.
“‘O bright long paths to Fairytown! What shining paths do I mean? They are not gray, nor black, nor brown, Nor blue, nor white, nor green.’”
Dear me! What paths _did_ he mean? Pilarica sprang to her feet and looked about her on a scene of wonderful beauty. For the two gloomy rooms in which the family ate and slept were all that remained of an old Moorish palace, once as dazzling in its strange and delicate splendor as if it had been carven out of moonlight and jeweled by the frost. Time had destroyed those silvery walls and towers, those airy arches and columns, but it had dealt gently with the lordly pleasure-garden, which only grew lovelier and lovelier through the centuries of neglect. When the Christian armies, long ago, drove the grave, dark-faced, turbaned Moors down from the Alhambra hill, out of Spain, and back over the narrow strip of sea to the north coast of Africa, the household that had to flee from this fair home must have turned at the garden gate and sighed as they looked their last on their lost Eden. Now the roses clambered over the broken marble basins of the seven fountains, but the sparkling jets of water were as limpid as ever and, when they were all playing, Pilarica could bathe under the spray of a different fountain every day in the week.