II
While Tonio was making Tonto beautiful, Tita swept the ground under the fig tree and sprinkled it with water, and washed and put away the few dishes they had used.
Her mother was very busy meanwhile, grinding the corn for tortillas. You see, every single meal they had tortillas. It was their bread, and their meat too, most of the time, so it would never do to miss getting the corn ground, not even if it were the greatest feast day of the whole year.
When Tita had finished putting things in order, her mother said to her, “Now, my pigeon, see if you can’t catch the little white hen, and the red rooster, and the turkey. The red rooster crows so sweetly I shall miss him when he is put in the pot, but he is not long for this world! He is so greedy [p 24] there’s no satisfying him with food. He has no usefulness at all, except to wake us in the morning.
“But the little white hen now! There is the useful one! She has already begun to lay. She must surely go to the priest. And as for the turkey, he needs to go for the sake of his temper! I hope the padrecito will lay a spell on him to stop his gobbling from morning till night. It will be no grief to me when he is put on to boil.”
The red rooster, the hen, and the turkey were all wandering round in the little patch of garden behind the house, when Tita came out, rattling some corn in a dish.
The red rooster began to run the moment he heard corn rattle, and he called to the hens to come too. He seemed to think they wouldn’t know enough even to eat corn unless he advised them to.
They swarmed around Tita’s feet, pecking at each other and snatching greedily at each kernel as it fell.
“You all need to go to the priest for your [p 25] manners,” Tita said to them severely. “You behave like the pigs.”
She set the dish down on the ground, and when they all tried to get their heads into it at once, she picked out the legs of the red rooster and seized them with one hand, and those of the little white hen with the other, and before they could guess what in the world was happening to them she had them safely in the house, where she tied them to the legs of the table.