"The sight of your pretty face, Senorita Margarita," answered Juan
quickly, cocking his eye at her, rising to his feet, and making a
mock bow towards the window.

"He! he! Senorita, indeed!" chuckled Margarita's mother, old
Marda the cook. "Senor Juan Canito is pleased to be merry at the
doors of his betters;" and she flung a copper saucepan full of not
over-clean water so deftly past Juan's head, that not a drop touched
him, and yet he had the appearance of having been ducked. At
which bit of sleight-of-hand the whole court-yard, young and old,
babies, cocks, hens, and turkeys, all set up a shout and a cackle,
and dispersed to the four corners of the yard as if scattered by a
volley of bird-shot. Hearing the racket, the rest of the maids came
running,-- Anita and Maria, the twins, women forty years old, born
on the place the year after General Moreno brought home his
handsome young bride; their two daughters, Rosa and Anita the
Little, as she was still called, though she outweighed her mother;
old Juanita, the oldest woman in the household, of whom even the
Senora was said not to know the exact age or history; and she, poor
thing, could tell nothing, having been silly for ten years or more,
good for nothing except to shell beans: that she did as fast and well
as ever, and was never happy except she was at it. Luckily for her,
beans are the one crop never omitted or stinted on a Mexican
estate; and for sake of old Juanita they stored every year in the
Moreno house, rooms full of beans in the pod (tons of them, one
would think), enough to feed an army. But then, it was like a little
army even now, the Senora's household; nobody ever knew exactly
how many women were in the kitchen, or how many men in the
fields. There were always women cousins, or brother's wives or
widows or daughters, who had come to stay, or men cousins, or