begin the booths next week. A plague on that Luigo for not being
back here. He's the best hand I have to cut the willow boughs for
the roofs. He knows the difference between one year's growth and
another's; I'll say that much for him, spite of the silly dreaming
head he's got on his shoulders."

Juan was so pleased with his clearing up in his mind as to Senor
Felipe's purpose about the time of the sheep-shearing, that it put
him in good humor for the day,-- good humor with everybody, and
himself most of all. As he sat on the low bench, his head leaning
back against the whitewashed wall, his long legs stretched out
nearly across the whole width of the veranda, his pipe firm wedged
in the extreme left corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets,
he was the picture of placid content. The troop of youngsters
which still swarmed around the kitchen quarters of Senora
Moreno's house, almost as numerous and inexplicable as in the
grand old days of the General's time, ran back and forth across
Juan's legs, fell down between them, and picked themselves up by
help of clutches at his leather trousers, all unreproved by Juan,
though loudly scolded and warned by their respective mothers
from the kitchen.

"What's come to Juan Can to be so good-natured to-day?" saucily
asked Margarita, the youngest and prettiest of the maids, popping
her head out of a window, and twitching Juan's hair. He was so
gray and wrinkled that the maids all felt at ease with him. He
seemed to them as old as Methuselah; but he was not really so old
as they thought, nor they so safe in their tricks. The old man had
hot blood in his veins yet, as the under-shepherds could testify.