“At last, on the ninth day, they were so weary that they took shelter in a stable with the cattle, and there on that night our Blessed Saviour was born. They were poorer than you, my children, for they had no place to lay their heads, and the Queen of Heaven had only a manger in which to cradle her newborn son. It is to commemorate their wanderings that you make your Pasada.”
When the priest had finished the story the people all marched away carrying their [p 164] candles and singing. Each night they marched and sang in this way until at last it was Christmas Eve.
Doña Teresa and the twins went to bed early that night because there was to be high mass in the little chapel at midnight. Doña Teresa slept with one eye open, fearing she might be late, and a few minutes before twelve she was up again.
She washed the Twins’ faces to wake them, and then they all three walked in the starlight to the little chapel near the Big House. The altar was blazing with lights, and the floor was covered with the dark figures of kneeling men and women, as the mother and children went in out of the darkness and found a place for themselves in a corner near the door.
When the service was over, Doña Teresa hurried home to set the house in order and to prepare the Christmas dinner for the Twins. She had made up her mind that the red rooster must surely be caught and cooked, because she wanted to keep the [p 165] turkey until Pancho should be at home to share in the feast.
She had planned it all carefully. “It will be quite easy to creep up under the fig tree while the red rooster is asleep and seize him by the legs,” she said to the Twins as they walked home from the chapel. “Only you must be very quiet indeed or he will wake up and crow. You know he is a light sleeper!”
They slipped through the gate and into the yard as quietly as they could. They reached the fig tree without making a single sound and Doña Teresa peered cautiously into the dark branches.
She saw a large shadow at the end of the limb where the red rooster always slept and, stretching her hand very stealthily up through the branches, she suddenly grabbed him by the legs—or she thought she did.
But the owner of the legs gobbled loud enough to wake every one in the village, if they hadn’t been awake already!
“It’s the turkey, after all,” gasped Doña Teresa. Just then there was a loud crow [p 166] from the roof, and they saw the silhouette of the red rooster making all haste to reach the ridge-pole and fly down on the other side.