Jo Ann’s dark brown eyes sparkled. “I’d adore it!”
“I, too,” put in Peggy, who had come out in time to hear Florence’s words.
Florence pointed to the open door on the right. “This is the sitting room, but Mother and I stay in the office with Dad more than in here. Come on and I’ll show you the office.” She led the two girls across the hall, but stopped a moment later, saying, “The office door’s closed—Dad probably has a patient—but I can show you the other rooms. The kitchen is the most interesting room in the house, I think.”
She took them into the dining room and on to the end of the long hall, then turned into an immense room having three large windows all heavily barred.
“My goodness, you could ’most put our whole house into this one room!” exclaimed Peggy. “I’ve never seen such a huge kitchen before in a private residence. Why do you suppose they built it so large?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. It’s the strangest house I’ve ever seen. Just look at that fireplace, for instance.” Florence motioned toward one side of the room, which was entirely taken up by a huge fireplace set back in a broad arched recess. “It’s large enough to belong to some big hotel—and yet we’ve only two bedrooms in the house.”
“But why did they build the fireplace in three sections? All the fireplaces I’ve ever seen were built on a level with the floor. This one reminds me of the ‘Three Bears.’ This section belongs to the great big bear; and this one——”
Florence broke into a peal of laughter at Peggy’s whimsical idea. “No one but you would have thought of that,” she said.
Juana glanced up from her preparations for lunch, smiling to herself. She had not seen her Florencita happy for months—not since her mother had been taken ill and had been sent to a sanitarium for a several weeks’ stay.
As their laughter died away, Florence went on to explain, “You see, the lowest section—in the middle—was where they built their fire to cook the food; this section here, of medium height, was where they made their tortillas. It’s just the right height for the metate, the stone on which corn is rubbed or ground into a paste. There’s room here for several women to work at the same time.”