"That afternoon, after a big long siesta, what'd I find in the
kitchen, just as much at home as if she belonged there, but that
blamed Indian girl. And old Paloma was squatting at the girl's
feet and rubbing the girl's knees and legs like for rheumatism,
which I knew the girl didn't have from the way I'd sized up the
walk of her, and keeping time to the rubbing with a funny sort of
gibberish chant. And I let loose right there and then. As Sarah
knows, I never could a-bear women around the house--young,
unmarried women, I mean. But it was no go! Old Paloma sided with
the girl, and said if the girl went she went, too. Also, she
called me more kinds of a fool than the English language has
accommodation for. You'd like the Spanish lingo, Sarah, for
expressing yourself in such ways, and you'd have liked old Paloma,
too. She was a good woman, though she didn't have any teeth and
her face could kill a strong man's appetite in the cradle.

"I gave in. I had to. Except for the excuse that she needed
Vahna's help around the house (which she didn't at all), old Paloma
never said why she stuck up for the girl. Anyway, Vahna was a
quiet thing, never in the way. And she never gadded. Just sat in-
doors jabbering with Paloma and helping with the chores. But I
wasn't long in getting on to that she was afraid of something. She
would look up, that anxious it hurt, whenever anybody called, like
some of the boys to have a gas or a game of pedro. I tried to worm
it out of Paloma what was worrying the girl, but all the old woman
did was to look solemn and shake her head like all the devils in
hell was liable to precipitate a visit on us.

"And then one day Vahna had a visitor. I'd just come in from a run