“I don’t know.”
The girl hid the paper where billows of a not overclean chemise escaped at long gaps between buttons, and returned to her labor, but the apparently trifling incident had taken a certain hold on her listless, stunted intelligence. Recklessly, she pushed a handful of corn off the end of the metate and edged about on her knees as if to pick it up, in order to study the document with her back to her mother. The unlettered brain, not accustomed to flat symbols for the appearance of things, was slow to find any significance in the lines. Very gradually did she achieve recognition of a railway train and the human figures, male and female.
As her stepfather pulled himself into a sitting posture she thrust the paper back into her bosom, trembling lest he had seen it, and still more lest he beat her for the unground corn.
“Caramba!” he growled. “May the roof fall upon the Labor Union.”
Mother and daughter exchanged glances of relief that, so far, the object of his wrath was remote and intangible.
“They told me in Mexico,” he continued, “of a fine thing here in America called the Labor Union that pays a man when he does not work, that throws stones at him if he is such a fool as to desire work, and calls him—calls him—a pest overtake their speech that is hard as rocks in the mouth—”
“Scabe, padre,” supplied Teodota, timidly.
“I come here with my innocent family. I seek out this Labor Union and say, ‘Here am I, Juan Garcia, who is no—no—’”
“Scabe, padre,” ventured the girl again.