Tonio and Tita can tell pretty well by the way they go to school. During the very hot dry weather of April and May there is vacation. In June, when the rainy season begins, school opens again. Then, though the rain pours down during some part of every day or night, in between times the sky is so blue, and the sunshine so bright, and the air so sweet, that the Twins like the rainy season really better than the dry.
If you should pass the open door of their school some day when it is in session, you [p 60] would hear a perfect Babel of voices all talking at once and saying such things as this,—only they would say them in Spanish instead of English,—
“The cat sees the rat. Run, rat, run. Two times six is thirteen, two times seven is fifteen” (I hope you’d know at once that that was wrong). “Mexico is bounded on the north by the United States of America, on the east by the Gulf of Mexico, on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the … Cortez conquered Mexico in 1519 and brought the holy Catholic religion to Mexico. The Church is …”
Then perhaps you would clap your hands on your ears and think the whole school had gone crazy, but it would only mean that in Mexico the children all study aloud. The sixth grade is as high as any one ever goes, and most of them stop at the fourth.
Señor Fernandez thinks that is learning enough for any peon, and as it is his school, and his teacher, and his land, of course things have to be as he says.
[p 61]
Pancho asked the priest about it one day. He said: “I should like to have Tonio get as much learning as he can. Learning must be a great thing. All the rich and powerful people seem to have it. Perhaps that is what makes them rich and powerful.”
But the priest shook his head and said, “Tonio needs only to know how to be good, and obey the Church, and to read and write and count a little. More knowledge than that would make him unhappy and discontented with his lot. You do not wish to make him unhappy. Contentment with godliness is great gain. Is it not so, my son?”
The priest called everybody, even Señor Fernandez himself, “my son,” unless he was speaking to a girl or a woman, and then he said, “my daughter.”
Pancho scratched his head as if he were very much puzzled by a good many things in this world, but he only said, “Yes, little father,” very humbly, and went away to mend the gate of the calves’ corral.