"What's come to Juan Can to be so good-natured to-day?" saucily
asked Margarita, the youngest and prettiest of the maids, popping
her head out of a window, and twitching Juan's hair. He was so
gray and wrinkled that the maids all felt at ease with him. He
seemed to them as old as Methuselah; but he was not really so old
as they thought, nor they so safe in their tricks. The old man had
hot blood in his veins yet, as the under-shepherds could testify.
"The sight of your pretty face, Senorita Margarita," answered Juan
quickly, cocking his eye at her, rising to his feet, and making a
mock bow towards the window.
"He! he! Senorita, indeed!" chuckled Margarita's mother, old
Marda the cook. "Senor Juan Canito is pleased to be merry at the
doors of his betters;" and she flung a copper saucepan full of not
over-clean water so deftly past Juan's head, that not a drop touched
him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At
which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old,
babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle,
and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a
volley of bird-shot.
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