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On arriving at the door of the Lunas the girl seemed to wake up, and drew quickly back with a look of terror, as though inside the "habitation" some great danger was awaiting her. "Go in, woman, go in," said the aunt; "it is your home. You had to come back some time or other." And she pushed her till she was through the door.
"Brother, it is well," he said despairingly; "you are stronger than I am, let your will be accomplished. Let her remain, as you wish it, but do not let me see her! remain, both of you. It is I that will go." The sewing machine clicked from early morning till night in the house of the Lunas.
All the inherent love of the Lunas for the giantess who was their eternal mother surged up in him, but he did not love it blindly as all his belongings did. He wished to know the why and the wherefore of things, comparing in his books the vague old stories that he had heard from his father, that seemed more akin to legends than to historical facts.
"Here, as you see him," proceeded Esteban, speaking to his brother, and pointing to his nephew, "he is the worst lot in the Cathedral. The Señor Obrero would more than once have turned him out into the street, were it not for respect to the memory of his father and grandfather, and also to the name he bears, for everybody knows the Lunas are as ancient in the Cathedral as the stones in its walls.
Having related their proficiency in domestic duties, I must add that they are splendid horsewomen, one of them an excellent shot, and the other has enough practical knowledge of seamanship, as well as navigation, to enable her to take a ship round the world! It is a busy life, owing to the large number of natives daily employed, and the necessity of looking after the native lunas, or overseers.
They entered into the house of the Lunas, which was one of the best in the Claverias. By the door two rows of flower vases in the shape of a clock-case fastened to the walls were filled with hanging plants; inside, in the sitting room, Gabriel found everything the same as during his father's lifetime.
There is small question if Luna pupae be alive, for on touching the cocoons they squirm and twist so vigorously that they can be heard plainly. There is so little difference in the size of male and female Lunas, that I am not sure of telling them apart in the cocoon, as I am certain I can Cecropia. Cocoon gathering in the fall is one of the most delightful occupations imaginable.
Gabriel was just eighteen when he lost his father. The old gardener died quietly, happy in seeing all his family in the service of the Cathedral and the good old tradition of the Lunas continued without interruption.
On the exterior of the church the chapel of the Lunas raised its battlemented towers, forming an isolated fortress inside the Cathedral. In spite of his family considering this chapel as their own, the seminarist felt himself more attracted by that of Saint Ildefonso close by, which contained the tomb of the Cardinal Albornoz.
In the evenings Gabriel would often go up to the little room inhabited by the Chapel-master, on the tipper floor of the Lunas' house; the room contained all the priest's fortune a little iron bed, which had belonged formerly to the seminarist, two plaster busts of Beethoven and Mozart, and an enormous pile of bundles of music, bound scores, loose sheets of ruled paper, so big and so piled up and disorderly that every now and then a pile would slip down, covering the floor of the little room with white sheets to its furthest corner.
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