“By the holy fires, no trick this! Say on, girl. He is a Chalcan, you said.”
“A countryman of yours,”—and her tears fell fast. “A hut is standing where the causeway leads from Chalco to Iztapalapan; it is my father’s. He was happy under its roof; for, though blind and poor, he could hear my mother’s voice, which was the kindliest thing on earth to him. But Our Mother called her on the coming of a bright morning, and since then he has asked for bread, when I had not a tuna[32] to give him. O Xoli! did you but know what it is to ask for bread, when there is none! I am his child, and can think of but one way to quiet his cry.” And she paused, looking in his face for encouragement.
“Tell me your name, girl; tell me your name, then go on,” he said, with a trembling lip, for his soul was clever.
At that instant the old man moaned querulously, “Yeteve, Yeteve!”
She went, and clasped his neck, and spoke to him soothingly. Xoli’s eyes became humid; down in the depths of his heart an emotion grew strangely warm.
“Yeteve, Yeteve!” he repeated, musingly, thinking the syllables soft and pretty. “Come; stand here again, Yeteve,” said he, aloud, when the dotard was pacified. “He wants bread, you say: how would you supply him?”
“You are rich. You want many slaves; and the law permits the poor to sell themselves.[33] I would be your slave,—asking no price, except that you give the beggar bread.”
“A slave! Sell yourself!” he cried, in dismay. “A slave! Why, you are beautiful, Yeteve, and have not bethought yourself that some day the gods may want you for a victim.”
She was silent.
“What can you do? Dance? Sing? Can you weave soft veils and embroider golden flowers, like ladies in the palaces? If you can, no slave in Anahuac will be so peerless; the lords will bid more cocoa than you can carry; you will be rich.”