Out of the Triangle: A Story of the Far EastBamford, Mary E. (Mary Ellen)
Religion
Out of the Triangle: A Story of the Far East
Bamford, Mary E. (Mary Ellen)
Christian fiction; Christianity, Conversion to -- Fiction; Short stories
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 scrap 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.
Up to the Zanjero's house Rosa now carried the bread, and his wife
herself paid for it. Rosa tied the coins carefully in one corner of
the black shawl that she wore over her head.
"Rosa," anticipated Joseph aloud, as they went away through the
orange orchard again, "when I am grown up, I shall be a Zanjero, and
we will not have to keep the panaderia!"
But Rosa looked unbelieving. "It is not granted every man to be the
Zanjero," returned she gravely, "and I love the panaderia."
It was true. She did love it, even to the castor-oil plants that
grew like weeds in neglected places in the yard, and down to the
south wall that was hung with a thick veil of red peppers that her
grandmother was drying in the sun. It was only because the panaderia
had not enough customers that Rosa looked so grave to-day. Besides,
the grandmother's birthday was near, and where was money for a
present?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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