I am not going to tell you very much about the Twins’ school, because the Twins didn’t care so very much about it themselves.
But I am going to tell you about one particular day, because that day a great deal happened to Tonio. Some of it wasn’t at all pleasant, but you will not be surprised at that when I explain the reason why.
A good many months had passed by since San Ramon’s Day, and it was a bright beautiful spring morning, when the Twins left their little adobe hut to go to school.
They had to be there at half past eight, and as the schoolhouse was some distance down the road and there were a great many interesting things on the way, they started rather early.
Doña Teresa gave them two tortillas apiece, rolled up with beans inside, to eat at recess, and Tonio wrapped them in a cloth and carried them in his hat just the way Pancho carried his lunch, only there was no [p 63] chile sauce, this time. Doña Teresa waved good-bye to them from the trough where she was grinding her corn.
The air was full of the sweet odor of honeysuckle blossoms, and the roadsides were gay with flowers, as the Twins walked along. The birds were flying about getting material for their nests, and singing as if they would split their little throats.
Sheep were grazing peacefully in a pasture beside the road, with their lambs gamboling about them. In a field beyond, the goats were leaping up in the air and butting playfully at each other, as if the lovely day made them feel lively too. Calves were bleating in the corrals, and away off on the distant hillside the children could see cows moving about, and an occasional flash of red when a vaquero rode along, his bright serape flying in the sun.
Farther away there were blue, blue mountain-peaks crowned with glistening snow, and from one of them a faint streak of white smoke rose against the blue of the sky. It [p 64] was a beautiful morning in a beautiful world where it seemed as if every one was meant to be happy and good.
The school was not far from the gate where José, the gate-keeper, sat all day, waiting to open and close the gate for cowboys as they drove the cattle through.