“Please, Felipe,” added Peggy quickly. She was not particularly interested in going down that back street, but it was so pleasant to be out at this time of the evening that she disliked the idea of going back into the gloomy house.
“He says he’ll take us if we insist,” translated Florence a moment later, after talking to Felipe again. “But really, girls, I feel that we shouldn’t go now. It’ll be better to go some morning.”
“I can’t see what difference it’d make when we go. Come on.” Jo Ann could not understand the Mexican’s way of putting off till tomorrow anything he did not care about doing. When she made up her mind to do a thing, she wanted to do it right now. “It’s silly to make so much fuss about such a simple thing,” she thought. “Why can’t you drive down a street when you want to?”
“Well—all right,” Florence reluctantly agreed at last.
Dusk was falling as they turned into the cobblestoned street back of the house. Slowly they made their way over the stones—century-old stones, worn smooth by the tread of many feet.
The farther they drove the more thickly populated the street became. Jo Ann and Peggy were shocked by the utter wretchedness and abject poverty which they saw on all sides. Dirty, half-clad peons with their empty baskets or trays were shuffling homeward after their day’s labor in the city; old crippled men and women, who had begged all day on the streets, were wearily dragging themselves to a place of shelter for the night. The small windowless adobe huts which lined each side of the street seemed overflowing with people. Women with babies in their arms squatted in the narrow doorways, while dogs, pigs, and goats wandered in and out of the houses at will, as much at home as the children. As for children, they were everywhere—dirty, naked, half-starved looking.
“I never imagined anything could be so terrible,” shuddered Peggy. “Did you, Jo?”
Jo Ann shook her head soberly. “I didn’t realize there was such poverty anywhere.”
A shout rose down the street: “Americanas! Americanas!”
Children appeared from every direction. They crowded around the car. Some of the larger ones climbed up on the running board and the fenders.