She was going to say "wash the clothes," but she stopped in time and said
instead, "wash her spaniel and her pony"--her face was flushed again with
shame, for to lie about one's mother is a sickening thing, and her mother
never had a spaniel or a pony--" the women on the shore wringing their
clothes, used to beg her to sing. To the hum of the river she would make
the music which they loved--"

"La Manola and such?" interjected Jean Jacques eagerly. "That's a fine
song as you sing it."

"Not La Manola, but others of a different sort--The Love of Isabella, The
Flight of Bobadil, Saragosse, My Little Banderillero, and so on, and all
so sweet that the women used to cry. Always, always she was singing till
the time when my father became a rebel. Then she used to cry too; and
she would sing no more; and when my father was put against a wall to be
shot, and fell in the dust when the rifles rang out, she came at the
moment, and seeing him lying there, she threw up her hands, and fell down
beside him dead--"

"The poor little senora, dead too--"

"Not dead too--that was the pity of it. You see my father was not dead.
The officer"--she did not say sergeant--"who commanded the firing squad,
he was what is called a compadre of my father--"

"Yes, I understand--a made-brother, sealed with an oath, which binds
closer than a blood-brother. It is that, is it not?"

"So--like that. Well, the compadre had put blank cartridges in their
rifles, and my father pretended to fall dead; and the soldiers were