The red rooster soon found that out for himself. He was so afraid that somebody would get his morsel away from him that he swallowed it whole, boiling hot syrup and all! He thought it was worse than the red pepper and the gold paint he had taken that morning.
He opened his bill wide and squawked with pain, and his eyes looked wild. The children rolled on the ground with laughter. [p 51] The last they saw of the red rooster he was running to the back of the house, where a dish of water was kept for the chickens; and it is perfectly true that for three days after that he could hardly crow at all!
Doña Teresa was dreadfully ashamed of the red rooster. She apologized and gave José another piece of sweet potato at once, and then she passed out more pieces to the children, and said:—
“Now mind you don’t behave like the rooster! You see what he got for being greedy.”
[p 52]
The children sucked their pieces slowly, so as to make them last a long time, and while they got themselves all sticky with syrup, José told them the story of Cinderella and her glass slippers and her pumpkin coach, and two ghost stories.
III
“Where did you learn so many beautiful stories, José?” asked Tonio when he had finished the last one. “Did you read them out of a book?” (You see Tonio and Tita and some of the older children went to school and were beginning to read a little.)
José shook his head. “No,” he said, “I didn’t read them out of books. I never had a chance to go to school when I was a boy. I tell you these stories just as they were told to me by my mother when I was as small as you are. And she couldn’t read either, so somebody must have told them to her. Not everything comes from books, you see.”
“Yes,” said Doña Teresa. “I heard them [p 53] from my mother when I was a child, and she couldn’t read any more than Pancho and I can. But with these children here it will be different. They can get stories from you, and out of the books too. It is a great thing to have learning, though a peon can get along with very little of it, praise God.”