“Girls ask so many questions!”
“And boys answer so few! You know that there’s only one place in all Refugio that can be locked. Our father never turned a key on his possessions. I’ve heard him say that. I’ve heard him say the whole world was free to use what he used except—our mother’s rooms. The key to those he took away. I saw him put it in his pocket and he kissed me when he did it. Carlos Manuel, would you put ‘enemies’ in our mother’s rooms?”
Carlos evaded her piercing gaze, but answered, firmly:
“It would be worse to keep them outside, where they could hurt our father and us, than to put them into places which nobody uses and where they could hurt nobody till they promised to be good and go away.”
“Down in the inside of you, Carlos, you know that locking them up there would be the worstest thing could be. Don’t you?”
“Yes, I s’pose so. I wish there was some other place.”
“So do I. But, first, let’s go to our mother’s grave and think about it there. Maybe we’ll guess just what to do, and if we should be gone a long, long time— If we should never come back at all—”
She began to cry but the lad exclaimed:
“We’ll never get anywhere if you cry all the time. I never did see anybody cry as much as you do. I wouldn’t be a girl for all New Mexico!”
They turned Benoni toward the flower-decked mound and the pair knelt there for a little time, each praying after his and her own habit, and feeling vastly comforted by the peaceful beauty of that sacred spot. Then Carlos rose and went away, and Carlota called to him: