With a gesture of his hands, after saluting us with great dignity, Don Sanchez bade us take our places at the table and with never a word of question as to our decision; but that was scarce necessary, for it needed no subtle observation to perceive that we would accept any conditions to get our share of that roast pig.  This supper differed not greatly from the former, save that our Moll was taken with a kind of tickling at the throat which presently attracted our notice.

“What ails you, Molly, my dear?” asks Jack.  “Has a bit of crackling gone down the wrong way?”

She put it off as if she would have us take no notice of it, but it grew worse and worse towards the end of the meal, and became a most horrid, tearing cough, which she did so natural as to deceive us all and put us in great concern, and especially Don Sanchez, who declared she must have taken a cold by being exposed all day to the damp weather.

“If I have,” says she, very prettily, after wiping the tears from her eyes upon another fit, “’tis surely a most ungrateful return for the kindness with which you sheltered me last night, Senor.”

“I shall take better care to shelter you in the future, my poor child,” replies the Don, ringing the bell.  Then, the maid coming, he bids her warm a bed and prepare a hot posset against Moll was tucked up in the blankets.  “And,” says he, turning to Moll, “you shall not rise till noon, my dear; your breakfast shall be brought to you in your room, where a fire shall be made, and such treatment shown you as if you were my own child.”

“Oh! what have I done that you should be so gentle to me?” exclaims Moll, smothering another cough.  And with that she reaches out her leg under the table and fetches me a kick of the shin, looking all the while as pitiful and innocent as any painted picture.  “Would it be well to fetch in a doctor?” says Don Sanchez, when Moll was gone barking upstairs.  “The child looks delicate, though she eats with a fairly good appetite.”

“’Tis nothing serious,” replies Jack, who had doubtless received the same hint from Moll she had given me.  “I warrant she will be mended in a day or so, with proper care.  ’Tis a kind of family complaint.  I am taken that way at times,” and with that he rasps his throat as a hint that he would be none the worse for sleeping a night between sheets.

This was carrying the matter too far, and I thought it had certainly undone us; for stopping short, with a start, in crossing the room, he turns and looks first at Dawson, then at me, with anything but a pleasant look in his eyes as finding his dignity hurt, to be thus bustled by a mere child.  Then his dark eyebrows unbending with the reflection, maybe, that it was so much the better to his purpose that Moll could so act as to deceive him, he seats himself gravely, and replies to Jack: 

“Your family wit may get you a night’s lodging, but I doubt if you will ever merit it so well as your daughter.”