The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (best reads .TXT) 📕

script, with highly ornamental capitals. Presently he looked up. “This-a song not exactly Mexican,” he said thoughtfully. “It come from farther down; Brazil, Venezuela, may-bee. I learn it from some fellow down there, and he learn it from another fellow. It is-a most like Mexican, but not quite.” Thea did not release him, but pointed to the paper. There were three verses of the song in all, and when Johnny had written them down, he sat looking at them meditatively, his head on one side. “I don’ think for a high voice, señorita,” he objected with polite persistence. “How you accompany with piano?”

“Oh, that will be easy enough.”

“For you, may-bee!” Johnny smiled and drummed on the table with the tips of his agile brown fingers. “You know something? Listen, I tell you.” He rose and sat down on the table beside her, putting his foot on the chair. He loved to talk at the hour of noon. “When you was a little girl, no bigger than that, you come to my house one day ’bout noon, like this, and I was in the door, playing guitar. You was barehead, barefoot; you run away from home. You stand there and make a frown at me an’ listen. By ’n by you say for me to sing. I sing some lil’ ting, and then I say for you to sing with me. You don’ know no words, of course, but you take the air and you sing it just-a beauti‑ful! I never see a child do that, outside Mexico. You was, oh, I do’ know⁠—seven year, may-bee. By ’n by the preacher come look for you and begin for scold. I say, ‘Don’ scold, Meester Kronborg. She come for hear guitar. She gotta some music in her, that child. Where she get?’ Then he tell me ’bout your gran’papa play oboe in the old country. I never forgetta that time.” Johnny chuckled softly.

Thea nodded. “I remember that day, too. I liked your music better than the church music. When are you going to have a dance over there, Johnny?”

Johnny tilted his head. “Well, Saturday night the Spanish boys have a lil’ party, some danza. You know Miguel Ramas? He have some young cousins, two boys, very nice-a, come from Torreon. They going to Salt Lake for some job-a, and stay off with him two-three days, and he mus’ have a party. You like to come?”

That was how Thea came to go to the Mexican ball. Mexican Town had been increased by half a dozen new families during the last few years, and the Mexicans had put up an adobe dance-hall, that looked exactly like one of their own dwellings, except that it was a little longer, and was so unpretentious that nobody in Moonstone knew of its existence. The “Spanish boys” are reticent about their own affairs. Ray Kennedy used to know about all their little doings, but since his death there was no one whom the Mexicans considered simpatico.

On Saturday evening after supper Thea told her mother that she was going over to Mrs. Tellamantez’s to watch the Mexicans dance for a while, and that Johnny would bring her home.

Mrs. Kronborg smiled. She noticed that Thea had put on a white dress and had done her hair up with unusual care, and that she carried her best blue scarf. “Maybe you’ll take a turn yourself, eh? I wouldn’t mind watching them Mexicans. They’re lovely dancers.”

Thea made a feeble suggestion that her mother might go with her, but Mrs. Kronborg was too wise for that. She knew that Thea would have a better time if she went alone, and she watched her daughter go out of the gate and down the sidewalk that led to the depot.

Thea walked slowly. It was a soft, rosy evening. The sand hills were lavender. The sun had gone down a glowing copper disk, and the fleecy clouds in the east were a burning rose-color, flecked with gold. Thea passed the cottonwood grove and then the depot, where she left the sidewalk and took the sandy path toward Mexican Town. She could hear the scraping of violins being tuned, the tinkle of mandolins, and the growl of a double bass. Where had they got a double bass? She did not know there was one in Moonstone. She found later that it was the property of one of Ramas’s young cousins, who was taking it to Utah with him to cheer him at his “job-a.”

The Mexicans never wait until it is dark to begin to dance, and Thea had no difficulty in finding the new hall, because every other house in the town was deserted. Even the babies had gone to the ball; a neighbor was always willing to hold the baby while the mother danced. Mrs. Tellamantez came out to meet Thea and led her in. Johnny bowed to her from the platform at the end of the room, where he was playing the mandolin along with two fiddles and the bass. The hall was a long low room, with whitewashed walls, a fairly tight plank floor, wooden benches along the sides, and a few bracket lamps screwed to the frame timbers. There must have been fifty people there, counting the children. The Mexican dances were very much family affairs. The fathers always danced again and again with their little daughters, as well as with their wives. One of the girls came up to greet Thea, her dark cheeks glowing with pleasure and cordiality, and introduced her brother, with whom she had just been dancing. “You better take him every time he asks you,” she whispered. “He’s the best dancer here, except Johnny.”

Thea soon decided that the poorest dancer was herself. Even Mrs. Tellamantez, who always held her shoulders so stiffly, danced better than she did. The musicians did not remain long at their post. When one of them felt like dancing, he called some other boy to take his instrument, put on his coat, and went down on the floor. Johnny,