symbol. Would the patrons buy it for five centavos. La Juana only gives four centavos. All right? Where is Juana?
Juana appears from the plaza with more purchases. The egg! The four centavos! The account of the spendings. Entonces! Entonces! Luego! Luego! Ah, Niña, no tengo memoria! Juana could not read nor write. She scuffled off to the market with her pesos, bought endless little things at one or two centavos each, every morning. And every morning there was a reckoning up. Ah! Ah! Where are we? I have no memory. Well then—ah—yes—I bought ocote for three centavos! How much? How much, Niña? How much is it now?
It was a game which thrilled Juana to the marrow, reckoning up the centavos to get it just right. If she was a centavo short in the change, she was paralysed. Time after time she would re-appear. There is a centavo short, Niña? Ah, how stupid I am? But I will give you one of mine!
“Don’t bother,” said Kate. “Don’t think of it any more.”
“But yes. But yes!” and away she limped in distraction.
Till an hour later, loud cry from the far end of the house. Juana waving a scrap of greenery.
“Mire! Niña! Compré perjil a un centavo—I bought parsley for one cent. Is it right?”
“It is right,” said Kate.
And life could proceed once more.
There were two kitchens, the one next the dining-room, belonging to Kate, and the narrow little shed under the banana trees, belonging to the servants. From her verandah Kate looked away down to Juana’s kitchen shed. It had a black window hole.