Page:The plumed serpent - 1926.djvu/154

live in squalor. The earth was the great garbage bowl. Everything discarded was flung on the earth and they did not care. Almost they liked to live in a milieu of fleas and old rags, bits of paper, banana skins and mango stones. Here’s a piece torn off my dress! Earth, take it. Here’s the combings of my hair! Earth, take them!

But Kate could not bear it. She cared. And immediately, the family was quite glad, thrilled that she cared. They swept the patio with the twig broom till they swept `the very surface of the earth away. Fun! The Niña had feelings about it.

She was a source of wonder and amusement to them. But she was never a class superior. She was a helf-incomprehensible, half-amusing wonder-being.

The Niña wanted the aquador to bring two botes of hot water, qulck from the hot springs, to wash herself all over every morning. Fun! Go, Maria, tell the aquador to run with the Niña’s water.

Then they almost resented it that she shut herself off have her bath. She was a sort of goddess to them, to provide them with fun and wonder; but she ought always to be accessible. And a god who is forever accessible to human beings has an unenviable time of it, Kate soon discovered.

No, it was no sinecure, being a Niña. At dawn began the scrape-scrape of the twig broom outside. Kate stayed on in bed, doors fastened but shutters open. Flutter outside! Somebody wanted to sell two eggs. Where is the Niña. She is sleeping! The visitor does not go. Continual flutter outside.

The aquador! Ah, the water for the Niña’s bath! She is sleeping, she is sleeping. “No!” called Kate, slipping into a dressing-gown and unbolting the door. In come the children with the bath tub, in comes the aquador with the two square kerosene cans full of hot water. Twelve centavos! Twelve centavos for the aquador! No hay! We haven’t got twelve centavos. Later! Later! Away trots the aquador, pole over his shoulder. Kate shuts her doors and shutters and starts her bath.

“Niña? Niña?”

“What do you want?”

“Eggs boiled or fried or rancheros? Which do you want?”