Tonio shut his mouth so quickly that he bit his tongue, and then Pablo and Tita saw the Maestro and stopped singing too, and they all three ran as fast as they could go to the other side of the square and lost themselves in the crowd.
[p 105]
They stayed away for quite a long time. They were in the crowd by a baker’s shop when a great big Judas which hung high overhead exploded and showered cakes over them. They each picked up a cake and then ran back to show their goodies to their mothers. They could hardly get near the booth at first, because there was quite a little crowd around it, but they squirmed under the elbows of the grown people, and right beside the brasero eating a piece of candied sweet potato, and talking to Doña Teresa, whom should they see but the Señor Maestro?
Tonio wished he hadn’t come. He turned round and tried to dive back into the crowd again, but the Señor Maestro reached out and caught him by the collar and pulled him back. Tonio was very much frightened. He thought surely the Maestro had told his mother about “Pop goes the Maestro,” and that very unpleasant things were likely to happen.
“Any way, there aren’t any willow trees [p 106] in the plaza,” he said to himself. “That’s one good thing.”
But what really happened was this. The Maestro took three pennies out of his pocket, and said to Pedro’s wife, “Please give me three pieces of your nice sweet potatoes for my three friends here!”
Pedro’s wife was so busy with her cooking that she did not look up to see who his three friends were until she had taken the pennies and handed out the sweet potatoes. Then she saw Pablo and Tonio and Tita all three standing in a row looking very foolish.
She was quite overcome at the honor the Maestro had done her in buying sweet potatoes to give to her son, and Doña Teresa thought to herself, “They really must be very good and clean children to have the Maestro think so much of them as that.” She thanked him, and Tonio and Tita and Pablo all thanked him.
After that there was a wonderful concert by a band all dressed in green and white [p 107] uniforms with red braid, and at the end of the concert, it was four o’clock. Pedro’s wife had sold all her sweet potatoes by that time and Pedro had sold all his reeds. Pancho had come back, the baby was sleepy, and every one was tired and ready to go home. So the whole party returned to the boat, this time without any heavy bundles except the baby to carry, and sailed away across the lake toward the hacienda.
Pancho and Doña Teresa and the Twins reached their little adobe hut just as the red rooster and the five hens and the turkey were flying up to their roost in the fig tree.
