sea to sea. I was an artist, poor and painstaking: Christine was my kind
friend. She had brought me South because my cough was troublesome, and
here because Edward Bowne recommended the place. He and three
fellow-sportsmen were down at the Madre Lagoon, farther south; I thought
it probable we should see him, without his three fellow-sportsmen,
before very long.

"Who were the three women you have seen, Felipa?" said Christine.

"The grandmother, an Indian woman of the Seminoles who comes sometimes
with baskets, and the wife of Miguel of the island. But they are all
old, and their skins are curled: I like better the silver skin of the
señora."

Poor little Felipa lived on the edge of the great salt marsh alone with
her grand-parents, for her mother was dead. The yellow old couple were
slow-witted Minorcans, part pagan, part Catholic, and wholly ignorant:
their minds rarely rose above the level of their orange trees and their
fish-nets. Felipa's father was a Spanish sailor, and as he had died only
the year before, the child's Spanish was fairly correct, and we could
converse with her readily, although we were slow to comprehend the
patois of the old people, which seemed to borrow as much from the
Italian tongue and the Greek as from its mother Spanish. "I know a great
deal," Felipa remarked confidently, "for my father taught me. He had
sailed on the ocean out of sight of land, and he knew many things. These
he taught to me. Do the gracious ladies think there is anything else to
know?"

One of the gracious ladies thought not, decidedly: in answer to my
remonstrance, expressed in English, she said, "Teach a child like that,