The Twins stopped to speak to José, and [p 65] just then on a stone right beside the gate Tonio saw a little green lizard taking a sun bath. He was about six inches long and he looked like a tiny alligator.
Tonio crept up behind him very quietly and as quick as a flash caught him by the tail. Just then the teacher rang the bell, and the Twins ran along to join the other children at the schoolhouse door, but not one of them, not even Tita herself, knew that Tonio had that green lizard in his pocket!
Tonio didn’t wear any clothes except a thin white cotton suit, and he could feel the lizard squirming round in his pocket. Tonio didn’t like tickling, and the lizard tickled like everything.
As they came into the schoolroom, the boys took off their hats and said, “God give you good day,” to the Señor Maestro[11]—that is what they called the teacher.
Then they hung their hats on nails in the wall, while the girls curtsied to the teacher and went to their seats.
[p 66]
When they were all in their places and quiet, the Señor Maestro stood up in front of the school, and raised his hand. At once all the children knelt down beside their seats. The Maestro knelt too, put his hands together, bowed his head, and said a prayer. He was right in the middle of the prayer when the lizard tickled so awfully in Tonio’s pocket that Tonio,—I really hate to have to tell it, but facts are facts,—Tonio laughed—aloud!
Then he was so scared, and so afraid he would laugh again if the lizard kept on tickling, that he put his hand in his pocket and took it out. Kneeling in front of Tonio was a boy named Pablo, and the bare soles of his feet were turned up in such a way that Tonio just couldn’t help dropping the lizard on to them.
The lizard ran right up Pablo’s leg, inside his cotton trousers, and Pablo let out a yell like a wild Indian on the warpath, and began to act as if he had gone crazy.
He jumped up and danced about clutching [p 67] his clothes, and screaming! The Señor Maestro and the children were perfectly amazed. They couldn’t think what ailed Pablo until, all of a sudden, the green lizard dropped on the floor out of his sleeve and scuttled as fast as it could toward the girls’ side of the room. Then the girls screamed and stood on their seats until the lizard got out of sight.