II

"Where did you learn so many beautiful stories, Jose?" asked Tonio when
he had finished the last one. "Did you read them out of a book?" (You
see Tonio and Tita and some of the older children went to school and
were beginning to read a little.)

Jose shook his head. "No," he said, "I didn't read them out of books. I
never had a chance to go to school when I was a boy. I tell you these
stories just as they were told to me by my mother when I was as small as
you are. And she couldn't read either, so somebody must have told them
to her. Not everything comes from books, you see."

"Yes," said Dona Teresa. "I heard them from my mother when I was a
child, and she couldn't read any more than Pancho and I can. But with
these children here it will be different. They can get stories from you,
and out of the books too. It is a great thing to have learning, though a
peon can get along with very little of it, praise God."

Up to this time Pancho had not said a single word. He had brought sticks
for the fire and had listened silently to the stories; but now he spoke.

"When the peons get enough learning, they will learn not to be peons at
all," he said.

"But whatever will they be then?" gasped Dona Teresa. "Surely they must
be whatever the good God made them, and if they are born peons--"

She stopped and looked a little alarmed, as if she thought perhaps after
all it might be as well for Tonio and Tita to be like most of the people
she knew--quite unable to read or write.

She crossed herself, and snatched Tita to her breast.

"You shall not learn enough to make you fly away from the nest, my
bird!" she said.

Then Pancho spoke again. "With girls it does not matter," he said.
"Girls do not need to know any thing but how to grind corn and make
tortillas, and mind the babies--that is what girls are for. But
boys--boys will be men and--" But here it seemed to occur to him that
perhaps he was saying too much, and he became silent again.

Jose had listened thoughtfully, and when Pancho finished he sighed a
little and made a soft little "ting-ting-a-ting-ting" on his
guitar-strings. Then he jumped up and began to sing and dance, playing
the guitar all the while. It was a song about the little dwarfs, and the
children loved it.

"Oh, how pretty are the dwarfs,
The little ones, the Mexicans!
Out comes the pretty one,
Out comes the ugly one,
Out comes the dwarf with his jacket of skin."

Jose sang,--and every