ear enough. She broke
off another piece of the bread and took down the little wooden-handled
pail, which was half-full of warm milk. This she held up to Pen, and
signed to him to drink; but he shook his head and pointed to Punch.
This produced a quick, decisive nod of the head, as the girl wrinkled up
her forehead and signed in an insistent way that Pen should drink first.

He obeyed, and then the girl seated herself upon the bed and began to
sop pieces of the bread and hold them to Punch's lips.

"Thenkye," he said faintly, and for the first time for many days the boy
showed his white teeth, as he smiled up in their visitor's face. "'Tis
good," he said, and his lips parted to receive another fragment of the
milk-softened bread, which was given in company with a bright girlish
smile and a few more words.

"I say," said Punch, slowly turning his head from side to side, "I
suppose you can't understand plain English, can you?"

The girl's voice sounded very pleasant, as she laughingly replied.

"Ah," said Punch, "and I can't understand plain Spanish. But I know
what you mean, and I will try to eat.--'Tis good. Give us a bit more."

For the next ten minutes or so the peasant-girl remained seated upon the
bedside attending to the wounded boy, breaking off the softer portions
of the cake, soaking them in the warm milk, and placing them to the
sufferer's lips, and more than once handing portions of the cake to Pen
and giving him the clean wood vessel so that he might drink, while the
sun lit up the interior of the hut and lent a peculiar brightness to the
intently gazing eyes of its three occupants, till the rustic breakfast
came to an end, this being when Punch kept his lips closed, gazed up
straight in the girl's face, and smiled and shook his head.

"Good!" said the girl in her native tongue, and she nodded and laughed
in satisfaction before playfully making believe to close the boy's eyes,
and ending by keeping her hand across the lids so that he might
understand that he was now to sleep.

To this Punch responded by taking the girl's hand in his and holding it
for a few moments against his cheek before it was withdrawn, when the
poor wounded lad turned his face away so that no one should see that a
weak tear was stealing down his sun-browned cheek.

But the girl saw it, and her own eyes were wet as she turned quickly to
Pen, pointed to the bread and milk, signed to him that he should go on
eating, and then hu