Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 133: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SUB ROSA fine piece of thread work with a big outline of the devil in it. When he de- stroyed it, he paid for the thread; but she was never repaid for the time and pains she had spent, and although her husband happened to die next day, which softened the padre’s heart toward her, and should have softened hers toward him, she became an atheist, in the hope of hurting his feelings. It did, but he was wise enough not to show it; and Inés, not having been struck dead as she had greatly feared she would be, enjoyed atheism very much, save that the padre did not seem so impressed as she had expected. The devil having successfully proved his cunning upon Amarilis and Inés, the padre began to fear fo. his orphans, and with reason, for Tito, his youngest and tenderest, ran away wi.. a mari- onette from the magician’s booth; and no sooner was the festival over than José, who had been so bad that the padre had threatened to return him to the almshouse in Barcelona, but who had always’ been brave and truthful about his crimes, was found out to be also a liar. He told Tito that a cow, lowing for assistance when it needed to be milked, did not make the noise with its mouth, but with its horn. And Tito believed it, and corrected the padre in the natural-history lesson. For all these reasons, it was with some brightness of heart that he turned his thoughts to a smaller and religious festival, that should have its gayety apart from wines. Down in the padre’s poppy fields, from where Terassa’s hill looks like a girl’s green skirt with a small Spanish flag sewed at the hem, there is a statue of Santo Miguel. It is not the one that used to stand there, but it is quite splendid, made out of stone as bold and pretty as marble, and as lifelike as any- thing in the cemetery at Barcelona. The padre never looked toward it as he had done toward the old wooden one;. but his eyes gave admiration to replace af- fection, and the other rises safe in a votive niche in his church in the chasm road, secure from rain and wayfaring kisses. 123 There were many stories about the o'd statue, for Santo Miguel was Teras- sa’s patron saint. Some people said tnat it had been there before any one was born in Terassa; and others that it was found there on the eighth of May after the first few citizens were born, to mark the apparition of St. Michael, and still others, even more devout, said that it was not an apparition, but a trans- figuration. If this was true, St. Michael was, indeed, transformed, for he had only half a wing, and the upper part of his spear had vanished, carrying the thumb with it; but when this condition was ridiculed by strangers, the padre re- ferred them to a well-known house of curios in Paris, where, he maintained. there was a highly prized figure no whit better off. The master of the poppy fields, To- ninio, loved it, too, and knew it to be so close to the padre’s heart that, from the goodness of his own, and, perhaps, from a state of conscience at his par- ticipation in the love spells, he suggested that the remainder of the little boys’ money be used for a new statue. There was little enough; but Violeta made a reply to this by going about among the prosperous Terassans and acquiring more. So loved was the padre that the poor contributed, too, and Amarillis gave a coin. Rosa said it could not be called giving, for she said nothing about it, but Violeta found her standing, at hottest noon, against the highway wall, with the coin on her outstretched palm. When it was taken from her, she nodded her head, and wept, and went home. This coin completed a very fair sum, and the padre decided to go forth for a statue, and to give Rosa a holiday by taking her with him. At first she was ungrateful, accusing him of extravagance and some nefari- ous purpose; but such was his knowl- edge of her character that her climbing into his cart at the last inconvenient moment did not put him about, and he smiled with pleasure at her company and its possibilities of good advice in selecting the statue, for though her tongue was fuller of venom than any Gomichbooks (E@