Pablo’s great moment had arrived.  Lowly peon that he was, he knew himself at this moment to be a most important personage; death would have been preferable to the weakness of having failed to take advantage of it.

“Why I know, Senor Parker?” Pablo laughed briefly, lightly, mirthlessly, his cacchination carefully designed to convey the impression that he considered the question extremely superfluous.  With exasperating deliberation he drew forth his little bag of tobacco and a brown cigarette paper; he smiled as he dusted into the cigarette paper the requisite amount of tobacco.  With one hand he rolled the cigarette; while wetting the flap with his garrulous tongue, he gazed out upon the San Gregorio as one who looks beyond a lifted veil.

He answered his own question.  “Well, senor—­and you, senora!  I tell you. Por nada—­forgeeve; please, I speak the Spanish—­for notheeng, those boy he poke weeth hee’s thumb the rib of me.”

“No?” cried John Parker, feigning profound amazement.

“Es verdad.  Eet ees true, senor.  Those boy hee’s happy, no?  Eh?”

“Apparently.”

“You bet you my life.  Well, las’ night those boy hee’s peench weeth his thumb an’ theese fingair—­what you suppose?”

“I give it up, Pablo.”

Pablo wiped away with a saddle-colored paw a benignant and paternal smile.  He wagged his head and scuffed his heel in the dirt.  He feasted his soul on the sensation that was his.

“Those boy hee’s peench—­” a dramatic pause.  Then: 

“Eef you tell to Don Miguel those things I tol’ you—­Santa Marias—­Hees cut my throat.”

“We will respect your confidence, Pablo,” Mrs. Parker hastened to assure the traitor.

“All right.  Then I tol’ to you what those boy peench—­weeth hees thumb an’ thees fingair. Mira.  Like thees.”

“Cut out the pantomime and disgorge the information, for the love of heaven,” Parker pleaded.

“He peench”—­Pablo’s voice rose to a pseudo-feminine screech—­“the cheek of”—­he whirled upon Mrs. Parker and transfixed her with a tobacco-stained index finger—­“Senorita Parker, so help me, by Jimmy, eef I tell you some lies I hope I die pretty queeck.”

Both the Parkers stared at the old man blankly.  He continued: 

“He peench—­queeck—­like that.  He don’ know hee’s goin’ for peench—­hees all time queeck like that—­he don’ theenk.  But after those boy hee’s peench the cheen of those girl, hee’s got red in the face like black-bird’s weeng.  ‘Oh,’ he say, ‘I am sky-blue eedete-ot,’ an’ he run away queeck before he forget heemself an’ peench those girl some more.”

John Parker turned gravely to his wife.  “Old hon,” he murmured softly, “Don Mike Farrel is a pinch-bug.  He pinched Kay’s chin during a mental lapse; then he remembered he was still under my thumb and he cursed himself for a sky-blue idiot.”