“Nay, Juan Canito,” replied Alessandro, kindly. “It is not so. My father is many years older than you are, and he rules our people to-day as firmly as ever. I myself obey him, as if I were a lad still.”
“What else, then, but a lad do you call yourself, I wonder?” thought Juan; but he answered, “It is not so with us. The old are not held in such reverence.”
“That is not well,” replied Alessandro. “We have been taught differently. There is an old man in our village who is many, many years older than my father. He helped to carry the mortar at the building of the San Diego Mission, I do not know how many years ago. He is long past a hundred years of age. He is blind and childish, and cannot walk; but he is cared for by every one. And we bring him in our arms to every council, and set him by my father's side. He talks very foolishly sometimes, but my father will not let him be interrupted. He says it brings bad luck to affront the aged. We will presently be aged ourselves.”
“Ay, ay!” said Juan, sadly. “We must all come to it. It is beginning to look not so far off to me!”
Alessandro stared, no less astonished at Juan Can's unconscious revelation of his standard of measurement of years than Juan had been at his. “Faith, old man, what name dost give to yourself to-day!” he thought; but went on with the topic of the raw-hide bed. “I may not so soon get speech with Senor Felipe,” he said. “It is usually when he is sleepy that I go to play for him or to sing. But it makes my heart heavy to see him thus languishing day by day, and all for lack of the air and the sun, I do believe, indeed, Juan.”
“Ask the Senorita, then,” said Juan. “She has his ear at all times.”
Alessandro made no answer. Why was it that it did not please him,—this suggestion of speaking to Ramona of his plan for Felipe's welfare? He could not have told; but he did not wish to speak of it to her.
“I will speak to the Senora,” he said; and as luck would have it, at that moment the Senora stood in the doorway, come to ask after Juan Can's health.
The suggestion of the raw-hide bed struck her favorably. She herself had, in her youth, heard much of their virtues, and slept on them. “Yes,” she said, “they are good. We will try it. It was only yesterday that Senor Felipe was complaining of the bed he lies on; and when he was well, he thought nothing could be so good; he brought it here, at a great price, for me, but I could not lie on it. It seemed as if it would throw me off as soon as I lay down; it is a cheating device, like all these innovations the Americans have brought into the country. But Senor Felipe till now thought it a luxury; now he tosses on it, and says it is throwing him all the time.”
Alessandro smiled, in spite of his reverence for the Senora. “I once lay down on one myself, Senora,” he said, “and that was what I said to my father. It was like a wild horse under me, making himself ready to buck. I thought perhaps the invention was of the saints, that men should not sleep too long.”