I stood up to read the service to a most attentive congregation, and when at last I had to stop short in the middle of a sentence I jogged the Niña Chica’s arm according to arrangement, and the old lady put up her head and positively howled out a chant, which gave me a chance of escape from the stifling atmosphere of the overcrowded hut and of finishing my supper.
A few days later I had another conversation on religious subjects, this time with a girl about fifteen years old, a niece of the Niña Chica, whom I had been doctoring for troubles which seemed to me to come solely from want of good food and consequent poorness of blood. She was a bright-eyed and sharp girl, and I knew that she had been away for some time to a neighbouring town, and might probably have received some education. However, she knew no more than her aunt about the household saint, so I asked her if she knew who Christ was. “Yes,” she replied, “He is Nuestro Señor.”
“And who was His Mother?”
She answered promptly, “La Santissima Virgen.”
At least, I said to myself, the rising generation have been taught something, so I went on with my catechism. “Who was his Father?”
“His Father? Oh! Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas.”
“But,” I said, “Our Lord of Esquipulas is the Christ too.”
“Yes,” she replied, “there are numbers of them, Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas, and Nuestro Señor of this and that,—”; and she rattled through all the names of the shrines for leagues around.
“Was He ever alive on earth?” I asked her.