“It was not an echo,” cried the little girls, “it was Don Frederico, who whistled in a reed pierced with holes.”
Marisalada then quietly entered the chamber of Stein, and began to listen with the greatest attention, her body bent forward, a smile on her lips, and her soul in her eyes.
Within this instant the rude ferocity of the fisherman’s daughter was changed, and her regard for Stein induced a certain confidence and docility which caused the greatest surprise to all the family.
Maria advised Stein to profit by the ascendency he obtained day by day over the mind of Marisalada, to engage her to be instructed and employ her time in learning the law of God, and to try and become a good Christian; a woman of sense and reason; a good manager.
The grandmother added, that to obtain the end proposed, to bend the entire character of Marisalada, and to make her abandon her bad habits, the best thing would be to pray the Señora Rosita, the mistress of the school, to be so good as to take charge of her, because she was a very honest woman, fearing God, and very expert in all her handy-work.
Stein much approved of this idea, and obtained the consent of Marisalada. He promised, in return, to go and see her every day, and play airs on the flute to divert her.
The disposition of the young girl awakened in her an extraordinary taste for the study of music, and the first impulse was given her by the ability of Stein.
When Momo found that Marisalada had put herself under the tuition of Rosa Mistica, to learn there to sew, to sweep, to cook, and above all, as he said, to have judgment; when he knew that it was the doctor who had decided this, he declared he believed what Don Frederico had recounted respecting his country, where there were certain men whom all the mice followed when they heard a whistle.
Since the death of her mother, Señorita Rosa had established a school for little girls. School is the name which they give in villages; but the school in cities bears a more pompous title, and it is called an academy. The little village children attend school from the morning until midday; all the information is composed of Christian doctrine and of sewing. In cities they learn to read, to write, to embroider, and to sketch. It is true that these schools cannot create the wells of science, nor become the nurseries of artists, or produce models of an education equal to that of a mujer emancipada; but in return they produce ordinarily good workers and excellent mothers of families, which is still better.
The invalid perfectly cured. Stein urged upon her father that he would confide his daughter for some time, to the honest woman who would replace the mother she had been deprived of, and who would instruct her in the duties of her sex.