Up to this time Pancho had not said a single word. He had brought sticks for the fire and had listened silently to the stories; but now he spoke.
“When the peons get enough learning, they will learn not to be peons at all,” he said.
“But whatever will they be then?” gasped Doña Teresa. “Surely they must be whatever the good God made them, and if they are born peons—”
She stopped and looked a little alarmed, as if she thought perhaps after all it might be as well for Tonio and Tita to be like most of the people she knew—quite unable to read or write.
[p 54]
She crossed herself, and snatched Tita to her breast.
“You shall not learn enough to make you fly away from the nest, my bird!” she said.
Then Pancho spoke again. “With girls it does not matter,” he said. “Girls do not need to know any thing but how to grind corn and make tortillas, and mind the babies—that is what girls are for. But boys—boys will be men and—” But here it seemed to occur to him that perhaps he was saying too much, and he became silent again.
José had listened thoughtfully, and when Pancho finished he sighed a little and made a soft little “ting-ting-a-ting-ting” on his guitar-strings. Then he jumped up and began to sing and dance, playing the guitar all the while. It was a song about the little dwarfs, and the children loved it.
“Oh, how pretty are the dwarfs,
The little ones, the Mexicans!