thing, could
tell nothing, having been silly for ten years or more, good for nothing
except to shell beans: that she did as fast and well as ever, and was
never happy except she was at it. Luckily for her, beans are the one
crop never omitted or stinted on a Mexican estate; and for sake of old
Juanita they stored every year in the Moreno house, rooms full of beans
in the pod (tons of them, one would think), enough to feed an army. But
then, it was like a little army even now, the Senora's household; nobody
ever knew exactly how many women were in the kitchen, or how many men
in the fields. There were always women cousins, or brother's wives or
widows or daughters, who had come to stay, or men cousins, or sister's
husbands or sons, who were stopping on their way up or down the valley.
When it came to the pay-roll, Senor Felipe knew to whom he paid wages;
but who were fed and lodged under his roof, that was quite another
thing. It could not enter into the head of a Mexican gentleman to make
either count or account of that. It would be a disgraceful niggardly
thought.

To the Senora it seemed as if there were no longer any people about the
place. A beggarly handful, she would have said, hardly enough to do the
work of the house, or of the estate, sadly as the latter had dwindled.
In the General's day, it had been a free-handed boast of his that never
less than fifty persons, men, women and children, were fed within his
gates each day; how many more, he did not care, nor know. But that time
had indeed gone, gone forever; and though a stranger, seeing the sudden
rush and muster at door and window, which followed on old Marda's
letting fly the water at Juan's head, would have thought, "Good heavens,
do all those women, children, and babies belong in that one house!" the
Senora's sole thought, as she at that moment went past the gate, was,
"Poor things! how few there are left of them! I am afraid old Marda has
to work too hard. I must spare Margarita more from the house to help
her." And she sighed deeply, and unconsciously held her rosary nearer to
her heart, as she went into the house and entered her son's bedroom. The
picture she saw there was one to thrill any mother's heart; and as it
met her eye, she paused on the threshold for a second,--only a second,
however; and nothing could have astonished Felipe Moreno so much as to
have been told that at the very moment when his mother's calm voice was
saying to him, "Good morni