Juanita could speak no word more for tears. In silence she placed her father’s hand on her glittering hair, and in sadness guided his weak footsteps back to their poor shelter.
Hard work it had been to provide subsistence for them both, and to make a little extra to have something to offer to the lone widow, who had taken them in—but how hope ever to make up 500 maravedis? If in the first days of their arrival she had wasted some precious hours over her old favourite pastime of arranging her luxuriant tresses, and had taken pleasure when people called out in admiration—all that was gone by now. She sat at her little loom, work, work, work!—she never took her hands off, never lifted her eyes, never even saw that the barber who lived opposite was constantly gazing upon her. The only thing to cheer her was the placid voice of Juan, who would continually bid her be of good comfort and put her trust in God.
One day, in the midst of her toil, there came a messenger from the Corregidor of the city. His aunt had died that day, and as she died unmarried, a procession of girls equal in number to the years of her life must follow her to the grave, draped in white. She numbered eighty years, and Juanita was required to make up the eightieth attendant. Juanita could not say “Nay,” even though it cost her such precious hours.
When she came into the hall where the mourners were assembled she found to her no slight disgust that the dress she had to wear consisted in part of a great white hood. It was hard, on the only day she suffered herself to part from her work, to have to cover up her glorious hair! At all events, till the procession began to move she would throw it back. She did so, and it made her look the picture of an angel, as it fell in rich curls over the white dress. At the same moment the Corregidor’s wife passed through the hall. Though younger than her defunct sister-in-law she had arrived at that age when nature sometimes thinks it right to withdraw her gift of hair, and sorely did she lament the loss. For a long time past she had left an order with a clever barber of the city to manufacture her a wig which should make good the defect, and he was to swear it was no dead person’s hair. She had a superstition that in wearing the hair of a dead person, you assumed the responsibility of all their sins, and, the good lady being sufficiently satisfied with her own position in the scale of grace, had no desire to run the risk of getting a worse one, even for the sake of the coveted wig. But a wig made of the hair of a living person was not an order easy to execute. The moment her eyes fell on Juanita’s magnificent cabellera (head of hair) she determined that it should not be long before it should decorate her own head.
Accordingly, she hastened to call the Corregidor aside and assure him he must procure it for her. The Corregidor knowing the attachment a maiden was likely to have for such an adornment, endeavoured to convince her of the impossibility of the task. All was of no use, save to render her more resolute. The Corregidor knew that in disputes with his wife he always had to give in at last, and so, to pacify her, promised he would do his best, and to satisfy her that he did so the interview was arranged to take place in her presence.
The funeral was no sooner over than the Corregidor beckoned Juanita to follow him into his wife’s room.
Poor little Juanita never thought of resisting an order from so great a functionary, but tripped along lightly behind him.
What was her surprise to find herself severely chid for wasting the time she might spend in working for her father in the vanity of decking out her hair! Juanita did not grow angry, or deny her fault, but could not forbear asking, with great simplicity, “Was it her fault if God had given her a great mass of hair to comb out?”
“Not your fault at all, my dear child,” said the Corregidor, much relieved to find she took his admonitions so meekly. “Not your fault at all, so long as you keep it on your head; but you might cut it all off.”
“Cut it off!” repeated poor Juanita, mechanically; “what would be the use of that?”