lithe and wild, shy yet fearless--not unlike one of the little brown
deer that bounded through the open reaches of the pine barren behind the
house. She did not come to us--we came to her: we loomed into her life
like genii from another world, and she was partly afraid and partly
proud of us. For were we not her guests?--proud thought!--and, better
still, were we not women? "I have only seen three women in all my life,"
said Felipa, inspecting us gravely, "and I like women. I am a woman too,
although these clothes of the son of Pedro make me appear as a boy: I
wear them on account of the boat and the hauling in of the fish. The son
of Pedro being dead at a convenient age, and his clothes fitting me,
what would you have? It was manifestly a chance not to be despised. But
when I am grown I shall wear robes long and beautiful like the
señora's." The little creature was dressed in a boy's suit of dark-blue
linen, much the worse for wear, and torn.

"If you are a girl, why do you not mend your clothes?" I said.

"Do you mend, señora?"

"Certainly: all women sew and mend."

"The other lady?"

Christine laughed as she lay at ease upon the brown carpet of pine
needles, warm and aromatic after the tropic day's sunshine. "The child
has divined me already, Catherine," she said.

Christine was a tall, lissome maid, with an unusually long stretch of
arm, long sloping shoulders and a long fair throat: her straight hair
fell to her knees when unbound, and its clear flaxen hue had not one