Part 16 (1/2)

As well as he could, Comale replaced the cocoanut-husk material, so that it might be a defense as before. Then he went softly around within the house, hunting for any possible hiding-place where the enemy he dreaded might be concealed.

”Comale,” said his mother, ”what are you doing?” And Comale did not dare to hunt any more.

He was dreadfully miserable as he lay that night in the darkness. He could not sleep. He listened for any outcry. To think that he might have let an enemy into his own home! Comale rose upon his elbow to listen. The walls of Cingalese houses are not carried up to the roof, and, because of this, an outcry or conversation in one room can be heard all over the house. Comale listened. Sometimes he fancied he heard the sound of something slipping over the matting on the floor. So worried was he that when he slept it was only by short naps from which he woke with a start, and resumed his listening.

Toward morning, when light began to come, Comale crept from his place. He looked toward where his little brothers slept. Hanging above one of the little boys was a slender dark line. It was alive!

It swayed to and fro in the shadows, and seemed to slip a little lower toward the sleeping child. Comale started. He sprang forward with a cry, and caught the swaying thing. But it was no living creature that Comale brought with him to the floor. It was only a long, thin strip of bamboo with which Comale's father had intended to bind cinnamon bark! The strip had been hung up out of the way, and had swung a little in the current of air between the top of the wall and the roof. As the bamboo strip swayed, it had gradually slipped lower and lower toward the sleeping little boy below.

Comale's outcry had aroused the household; and without reserve the penitent lad told to the family the story of his misdeed. His dark-faced father smiled slightly and showed his teeth through his beard.

He understood now the mistakes Comale had made in the cinnamon work the previous day.

”A wrong heart makes corundoo peeling go ill, Comale,” he said gravely.

”Corundoo” is the native word for cinnamon.

”A wrong heart makes rice-cooking go ill, too,” softly confessed Pidura. ”I am sorry for yesterday's rice! It was I who made Comale's heart angry.”

The father looked from one child to the other.

”Little children, love one another,” he said.

AT THE PANADERIA.

The door of the ”panaderia” opened. Americans would have called the place a bakery, but the sign said ”Panaderia,” which might be interpreted ”breadery” or bake-house. All California does not read English, and it behooves shop-keepers sometimes to word their signs for the customers desired. In like manner the ”Restaurante Mexicana,” across the street, on a sign advertised ”comidas,” or meals, at twenty-five and fifty cents.

Through the panaderia doorway came a girl and a boy. They walked along by the ”zanja,” or irrigation ditch, that here bordered the road. The fern-leaved pepper trees beside the zanja were dotted with cl.u.s.ters of small, bright red berries.

”Rosa,” said the boy, when the two had walked a little way, ”I saw in that big yard many purple and green grapes, spread out drying for raisins.”

Rosa did not answer. She trudged on, carrying her basket of bread.

The brother carried a loaf in brown paper. He and she lived at the panaderia, and had set forth to carry the bread to the two regular customers.

”Rosa,” stated the boy again, after a pause, ”all the little oranges on the trees over there are green.”

Rosa did not even look toward the oranges.

”Rosa,” affirmed the boy emphatically, when a few minutes had gone by, ”the Chinese doctor is measuring a window in his house! See! He has some little teacups and a teapot in his front room! I saw them just now.”

Rosa looked absently toward the old building, inside a window of which was visible the head of the Chinese doctor, who wore black goggles, and who was indeed measuring his window for some reason.

Rosa had small hope of the Chinese doctor as a future customer. She had seen him eating his rice with chop-sticks, and he never came to buy a sc.r.a.p of bread or anything else. Rosa sighed to think what would become of the panaderia, if all the world had the same opinion as the Chinese doctor, in regard to eating. In these days Rosa was in danger of looking upon the world from a strictly calculating standpoint, and of regarding only those people as worthy of her interest who either were or might become customers of the panaderia.

Still indeed customers were needed, for the receipts had been slight, lately, and Rosa's grandmother's parrot, Papagayo, a bird of such understanding that he had learned to screech, ”Pan por dinero,”

(bread for money) had recently seen more of the former than of the latter in the shop.

Rosa and her brother still kept by the zanja, even when it turned away from the road. They went on till they reached the orange orchard of the Zanjero of the town. The Zanjero is the man who has the oversight of the irrigation system, and he has deputies under him. Rosa and her brother Joseph thought the Zanjero a great man, and stood much in awe of the irrigation laws concerning stealing water, or raising a gate to waste water, or giving water to persons outside the district.

The two bread-carriers went through the orange orchard, which was not being irrigated at this hour, for the Zanjero was particular himself to keep the hour that he paid for, as other men should be.