ints had heard her
prayers.

In the kitchen all was bustle and stir. The coming of any guest into the
house was a signal for unwonted activities there,--even the coming of
Father Salvierderra, who never knew whether the soup had force-meat
balls in it or not, old Marda said; and that was to her the last extreme
of indifference to good things of the flesh. "But if he will not eat,
he can see," she said; and her pride for herself and for the house was
enlisted in setting forth as goodly an array of viands as her larder
afforded, She grew suddenly fastidious over the size and color of the
cabbages to go into the beef-pot, and threw away one whole saucepan full
of rice, because Margarita had put only one onion in instead of two.

"Have I not told you again and again that for the Father it is always
two onions?" she exclaimed. "It is the dish he most favors of all; and
it is a pity too, old as he is. It makes him no blood. It is good beef
he should take now."

The dining-room was on the opposite side of the courtyard from the
kitchen, and there was a perpetual procession of small messengers going
back and forth between the rooms. It was the highest ambition of each
child to be allowed to fetch and carry dishes in the preparation of
the meals at all times; but when by so doing they could perchance get a
glimpse through the dining-room door, open on the veranda, of strangers
and guests, their restless rivalry became unmanageable. Poor Margarita,
between her own private anxieties and her multiplied duties of helping
in the kitchen, and setting the table, restraining and overseeing her
army of infant volunteers, was nearly distraught; not so distraught,
however, but that she remembered and found time to seize a lighted
candle in the kitchen, run and set it before the statue of Saint Francis
of Paula in her bedroom, hurriedly whispering a prayer that the lace
might be made whole like new. Several times before the afternoon had
waned she snatched a moment to fling herself down at the statue's feet
and pray her foolish little prayer over again. We think we are quite
sure that it is a foolish little prayer, when people pray to have torn
lace made whole. But it would be hard to show the odds between asking
that, and asking that it may rain, or that the sick may get well. As the
grand old Russian says, what men usually ask for, when they pray to God,
is, that two and two may not make four. All the same he is to be pitied
who prays