“Oh no, it is only her doll,” replied Christine.

I tried several times to paint Felipa during these first weeks, but those eyes of hers always evaded me.  They were, as I have said before, yellow—­that is, they were brown with yellow lights—­and they stared at you with the most inflexible openness.  The child had the full-curved, half-open mouth of the tropics, and a low Greek forehead.  “Why isn’t she pretty?” I said.

“She is hideous,” replied Christine:  “look at her elbows.”

Now, Felipa’s arms were unpleasant; they were brown and lean, scratched and stained, and they terminated in a pair of determined little paws that could hold on like grim Death.  I shall never forget coming upon a tableau one day out on the barren—­a little Florida cow and Felipa, she holding on by the horns, and the beast with its small fore feet stubbornly set in the sand; girl pulling one way, cow the other; both silent and determined.  It was a hard contest, but the girl won.

“And if you pass over her elbows, there are her feet,” continued Christine languidly.  For she was a sybaritic lover of the fine linens of life, that friend of mine—­a pre-Raphaelite lady with clinging draperies and a mediaeval clasp on her belt.  Her whole being rebelled against ugliness, and the mere sight of a sharp-nosed, light-eyed woman on a cold day made her uncomfortable for hours.

“Have we not feet, too?” I replied sharply.

But I knew what she meant.  Bare feet are not pleasant to the eye now-a-days, whatever they may have been in the days of the ancient Greeks; and Felipa’s little brown insteps were half the time torn or bruised by the thorns of the chapparal.  Besides, there was always the disagreeable idea that she might step upon something cold and squirming when she prowled through the thickets knee-deep in the matted grasses.  Snakes abounded, although we never saw them; but Felipa went up to their very doors, as it were, and rang the bell defiantly.

One day old Grandfather Bartolo took the child with him down to the coast:  she was always wild to go to the beach, where she could gather shells and sea-beans, and chase the little ocean-birds that ran along close to the waves with that swift gliding motion of theirs, and where she could listen to the roar of the breakers.  We were several miles up the river, and to go down to the ocean was quite a voyage to Felipa.  She bade us good-bye joyously; then ran back to hug Christine a second time, then to the boat again; then back.

“I thought you wanted to go, child?” I said, a little impatiently, for I was reading aloud, and these small irruptions were disturbing.

“Yes,” said Felipa, “I want to go; and still—­Perhaps if the gracious senora would kiss me again—­”

Christine only patted her cheek and told her to run away:  she obeyed, but there was a wistful look in her eyes, and even after the boat had started her face, watching us from the stern, haunted me.