Page 16 - ramona-text

8 RAMONA
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, how-
ever; and nothing could have astonished Felipe Moreno so