The Mexican Twins

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The boy is named Antonio for Saint Antonio and Francisco for his father, and the girl is named Margarita for Saint Margarita and Teresa for her mother.
But nobody ever thinks of calling the Twins by all these names. They are called just Tonio and Tita, to save time.
Pancho is a vaquero, or cowboy.
There are hundreds of cows and oxen and sheep and goats on Señor Fernandez’s hacienda, and all day long, every day, Pancho rides about on his horse Pinto, rounding up cattle, driving the cows to pasture after milking, or getting the oxen together for the plowing.
The Twins think it is a fine thing to be a vaquero and ride horseback all the time.
Tonio means to be one when he grows up. He practices riding on Tonto, the donkey, now, and he has had his own lasso since he was six.
Tonio is looking out from the shed at the end of the hut. Tita’s cat is on the roof. She is almost always on the roof when Jasmin is about.
Back of the hut there is a tiny garden with bee-hives, and beyond that there is a path through the woods that leads down to a little river. It was in this very path, just where the stepping-stones cross the river, that Tonio met—But there! it tells all about that in the story and you can read it for yourselves.
One summer morning the red rooster on his perch in the fig tree woke up and took a look at the sky.
He was a very responsible rooster. He was always the first one up in the morning, and I really think he believed that if it were not for him the sun himself would forget to rise.