If Uncle Adan knew the truth, he made no sign. The lax state of morals in the country had always been the same. In reality he saw no harm in it. Besides which, had he wished to, what change could he make--he, a simple manager and farming man, against the owner of the hacienda, a rich and powerful Señor from Adan's point of view.
Suddenly Agueda remembered that she had not seen Aneta for a long time. She would go now, this very minute, and pay the visit so long overdue. She arose at once. With characteristic carelessness she dropped the sheet upon which she had been engaged on the floor, took from its peg the old straw hat, and clapped it over her boyish curls. The hat was yellow, it had a peaked crown, and twisted round the crown was a handkerchief of pale blue. Agueda made no toilet; she hardly looked at her smiling image in the glass. From the corner of the room she took a time-worn umbrella, which had once been white, and started towards the door. A backward glance showed her the confusion of the room. For herself she did not care, but the Señor might come in perhaps before her return. He had gone to the mail-station across the bay; the post-office and the bank were both there. He was bringing home some bags of pesos with which to pay his men. Possibly he would bring a letter or two from the fruit agents, or the merchant to whom he sold the little coffee that he raised; but the pesos were more of a certainty than the letters. If he returned home before her, the sitting-room would have a disorderly appearance, and he disliked disorder. His mother, the Doña Maria, had been a very neat old lady.
There are some persons to whom order and neatness are inborn. With a touch of a deft finger here or there, an apartment becomes at once a place where the most critical may enter. To others it is a labor to make a room appear well cared for. It may be immaculate in all that pertains to dust or the thorough cleanliness of linen or woodwork, but the power to so impress the beholder is lacking. Agueda was one of these. She sighed as she gazed at the unkempt appearance of the room. There was not much the matter, and yet she did not know how to remedy it. She re-entered the room and picked up the sheet from the floor, together with a pillow-slip whose starched glossiness had caused it to slide down to keep the sheet company. Folding these, not any too precisely, she laid them upon the chair where she had lately sat. Then she glanced around the room again. Its careless air still offended her, but time was flying, and she had a long walk before her. Suddenly she put her hand to her ear and took from behind it the rose that had been there since early morning. It was the first that she had struggled to raise, and it had repaid her efforts, in that hot section of the country, by dwining and dwindling like a puny child. Still, it was a rose. She laid it on the badly folded sheet; it gave an air of habitation to the room. She smiled down at this, her messenger. She gave the linen a final pat and went out, closing the door softly. It was as if a young mother had left her sleeping child to be awakened by its father, should he be the first to return.