"Comes Marta! Comes Marta!" cried Encarnacion from her point of vantage.
There was a general scurrying to place. When the matrona came out the silence was too intense to be sincere. She went from loom to loom.
"Your work is short by many inches of what it should be. If your chili con carne and meal were to be as short to-day you would go hungry, and deserve it too. I have a mind to tell the padre how shiftless you all are, and that unless I stand over you, not one of you will work."
"She's willing enough for us to stop work if she has some tale to tell us about what Modesto heard; but if we stop a minute to breathe, at any other time, it's different," whispered one to her nearest companion, when Marta's face was in another direction.
The noon Angelus commenced ringing.
The looms were at once deserted.
In the neophyte house lived over two hundred Indian girls who were taught to read Spanish, together with such housecraft as a peona should know, while the music of the church occupied no small part in the daily curriculum. In addition, the neophytes were instructed in weaving, in embroidery, drawn work, lace-making; and from among them came the seamstresses who made elaborate gowns for the ladies of the Spanish gentry.
Talking was not allowed during meals. A book, generally the life of some saint, was read aloud by a matrona, or by some girl who was capable. To-day the book had been finished early. There was not time to begin another, so the rule of silence was dispensed with during the remainder of dinner. The girls proceeded to enjoy the unwonted privilege, their zest for eating, however, in no wise diminished.
Suddenly, pandemonium burst over the place. Indian warwhoops were mingled with the crash of musket-firing. Yelling and shouting were punctuated with pistol shots. The tawny mastiffs, night guardians of the patio, now confined in a rear yard, howled a vicious protest against this noonday interruption of their sleep.
Indian horsemen hurled themselves down the hills. Indian forms arose from the ground where they had hidden in shelter of vineyard and olive grove, and avalanched on the Mission.