found Doña Teresa there washing out some clothes. When she saw them coming she stopped rubbing and looked at them. She was perfectly astonished. She supposed, of course, that Tonio was in school.
“Here, Doña Teresa, is a very bad boy,” Señor Fernandez said to her. “He has been chasing my goat all around the pasture and lassoing it, and he left the bars down and they are broken besides, and no one knows where the goat is by this time. I’ll leave him to you, but I want you to make a thorough job of It.”
He didn’t say just what she should make a thorough job of, but Tonio hadn’t the smallest doubt about what he meant. Doña Teresa seemed to understand too.
Señor Fernandez rode on and left Tonio with his mother while he took the other two boys to their homes. What happened there I do not know, but when she and Tonio were alone I do know that Doña Teresa said sternly, “Go bring me a strong switch from the willow tree,” and that Tonio thought, as [p 82] he went for it, that there were more willow trees in the world than were really needed.
And I know that when Doña Teresa had done “IT”—whatever it was that Señor Fernandez had asked her to do thoroughly—Tonio ffelt that it would be a very long time before he took any interest in either lizards or goats again.
That evening Pancho went out with Pinto and hunted up the goat and put him back in the pasture and brought home Tonio’s lasso, and when he hung it up on the nail he said to Tonio, “I think you’re too young to be trusted with a lasso. Let that alone for two weeks.”
That was the very worst of all. To be told that he was too young! Tonio went out and sat down under the fig tree and thought perhaps he’d better run away.
But pretty soon Tita came out and sat down beside him and told him she was sure he never meant any harm about the lizard, and his mother washed his skinned hands and put oil on then, and brought him some [p 83] molasses to eat on his tortillas just as if she still loved him in spite of everything.
So Tonio went to bed quite comforted, and that was the end of the day.
