III
“Where did you learn so many beautiful stories, José?” asked Tonio when he had finished the last one. “Did you read them out of a book?” (You see Tonio and Tita and some of the older children went to school and were beginning to read a little.)
José shook his head. “No,” he said, “I didn’t read them out of books. I never had a chance to go to school when I was a boy. I tell you these stories just as they were told to me by my mother when I was as small as you are. And she couldn’t read either, so somebody must have told them to her. Not everything comes from books, you see.”
“Yes,” said Doña Teresa. “I heard them [p 53] from my mother when I was a child, and she couldn’t read any more than Pancho and I can. But with these children here it will be different. They can get stories from you, and out of the books too. It is a great thing to have learning, though a peon can get along with very little of it, praise God.”
Up to this time Pancho had not said a single word. He had brought sticks for the fire and had listened silently to the stories; but now he spoke.
“When the peons get enough learning, they will learn not to be peons at all,” he said.
“But whatever will they be then?” gasped Doña Teresa. “Surely they must be whatever the good God made them, and if they are born peons—”
She stopped and looked a little alarmed, as if she thought perhaps after all it might be as well for Tonio and Tita to be like most of the people she knew—quite unable to read or write.
[p 54]
She crossed herself, and snatched Tita to her breast.
“You shall not learn enough to make you fly away from the nest, my bird!” she said.
Then Pancho spoke again. “With girls it does not matter,” he said. “Girls do not need to know any thing but how to grind corn and make tortillas, and mind the babies—that is what girls are for. But boys—boys will be men and—” But here it seemed to occur to him that perhaps he was saying too much, and he became silent again.
José had listened thoughtfully, and when Pancho finished he sighed a little and made a soft little “ting-ting-a-ting-ting” on his guitar-strings. Then he jumped up and began to sing and dance, playing the guitar all the while. It was a song about the little dwarfs, and the children loved it.
“Oh, how pretty are the dwarfs,
The little ones, the Mexicans!
Out comes the pretty one,
Out comes the ugly one,
Out comes the dwarf with his jacket of skin.”
[p 55]
José sang,—and every time he came to the words,—
“Out comes the little one,
Out comes the pretty one,”
he stooped down as he danced and made himself look as much like a dwarf as he possibly could.
When he had finished the Dwarf Song, José tucked his guitar under his arm, and bowed politely to Doña Teresa and Pancho.
“Adios!” he said. “May you rest well.”
“Adios, adios!” shouted all the children.
And Pancho and Doña Teresa and the Twins replied: “Adios! God give you sweet sleep.”
Then José and the children went away, and the tinkle of the guitar grew fainter and fainter in the distance. When they could no longer hear it, Doña Teresa went into the cabin, unrolled the mats, and laid out the pillows, and soon the Twins and their father and mother were all sound asleep on their hard beds.
[p 56]
When at last everything was quiet, the red rooster came stepping round from behind the house, and looked at the dying coals of the fire as if he wondered whether they were good to eat. He seemed to think it best not to risk it, however, for he flew up into the fig tree once more and settled himself for the night.
[p 57]
IV
TONIO’S BAD DAY
