“But hates work like the very devil. Do they embrace me? Do they put money in my hand? Ah-h-h!”
His memory of the rest of that painful interview, when a muscular labor leader chose to consider that he was being trifled with, vented itself in a shrill howl of rage.
Teodota caught up a brown earthen pitcher, and slipping out as though to bring water from the hydrant, hid herself behind a scrubby red geranium in the angle between the last tenement and the high board fence. At first she crouched in wretched fear of being dragged forth to receive a beating, or witness one bestowed upon her mother, but the minutes slipped by without pursuit.
It was not because she needed to exercise her reposeful wits during this period of hiding that she fell to studying the paper again, but rather on account of a pleasant stir in some rudimentary faculty that under happier circumstances might have been imagination. Man, boy, woman, train, mules, she identified with growing ease and satisfaction. For her, it was a notable mental achievement when she perceived relations among the members of the groups of objects.
That man was kissing the hand of the maiden with a water-jar on her shoulder. Even so had Pablo kissed her hand under the portales that last morning, and when she inquired saucily if she were his grandmother, he snatched her to him and kissed both cheeks and called her queridita. In the next square the same girl was being flogged. Even so had she been used by her stepfather, who wished her to have no lover, but to continue making tamales for his support. Her beloved had left for the United States in just such a train.
This was a communication from Pablo! That supreme illumination in her dim intellect was a blessed miracle of love. She kissed the picture-letter and rocked back and forth, hugging it, while her heart nearly leaped out of her joy. Then she fell to studying it anew. The square showing forth a man driving a team of mules hitched to a scraper was beyond her comprehension, as she was unfamiliar with grading camps.
At the bottom of the sheet the boy with the shirt-waist and simulated fur cap was receiving a letter, running with it, and in the last square, delivering it to the maiden. Dear Pablo evidently believed that this boy was the messenger between them, whereas it must have been the angels or the saints, for had she not seen the boy looking as innocent and indifferent as you please?
When Teodota returned to the squalid room her stepfather had a more immediate grievance.
“You impudent, lazy hussy! You sin verguenza! I’ll teach you to leave your work and gad about the court!”