FullReads

Evidently the woman supposed that the Zanjero was still the principal regular customer of the panaderia. Rosa and her grandmother had never told about his ceasing to buy bread, and the neighbor thought that he was still considered their very chief customer.

That evening Rosa and Joseph took the long-unused path to the Zanjero’s house. His wife came to the door.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s the two little bread-bringers! No, I don’t want any bread. Are you trying to get orders?”

“May I see the Zanjero?” asked Rosa gravely.

The Zanjero’s wife, whose name in plain English was Mrs. Craig, led the two children into her husband’s presence. Rosa, very pale with the thought of being in the presence of so great a man, told her story in trembling tones, and held out the key.

The Zanjero took it, and looked at it curiously.

“Will you forgive?” asked Rosa timorously. “The poor, sick woman asks you to forgive. She says it was the mescal that made her husband do it.”

“I presume so,” returned the man grimly. “They’re all thieves.”

But the Zanjero’s wife was wiser than her husband. She dropped into a chair and put an arm around Rosa.

“You have not told all the story yet, or else I do not understand,” she said gently. “What makes this woman so much your friend that she comes and tells your grandmother about the key?”

So the whole story came out at last–about the long, sad winter at the panaderia; the grandmother’s attempts at sewing; her failing eyes; the lack of customers, yet the daily giving of bread to the poor neighbor and her three children; the trust that the Lord knew about the panaderia and its occupants.

The Zanjero’s wife understood it all now. She looked up at her husband. There were tears in her eyes as she said:

“While you are forgiving that man, you’d better think how much forgiveness I need for having stopped taking bread of the panaderia in the heart of winter, when they needed the money so badly! To think of their struggling along, and yet giving bread every day to a woman and three babies! If the panaderia folks had not done this, you’d never have found out about this plan to rob the zanja! That woman would simply have kept the story and the key to herself, and those dishonest men would have found somebody else to open the gates at night for them. It was only because she thought that you were a noted customer of the panaderia that she sent you word of this plan to steal the water.”

The great Zanjero turned and looked at Rosa.

“Tell that sick woman,” he said gravely, “that I forgive her husband for opening the gate, though I don’t know how much water he helped steal that night. Tell her, though, that he must never do such a thing again. I am coming to see him myself, and I shall tell him he is forgiven. But he must stop drinking mescal.”

“And tell your grandmother,” broke in the Zanjero’s wife, “that I want three loaves of bread to-morrow morning, and I want bread every day. Here’s the money for the three loaves. And I’m going to get you a lot of regular customers! I have friends enough. They’ll take bread of you, if I ask them. You poor children! Why didn’t you come and tell me about things, long ago?”

So it was that the mercy which the old grandmother showed to the sick neighbor and her children returned in blessing on the panaderia. For the Zanjero’s wife rested not till she had fulfilled her promise. Customers became many and well-paying, and the old grandmother, happy in the prosperity, said to Rosa and to Joseph:

“See you, my children? Did I not tell you that the Lord knew about the panaderia? It is he who sends all this good to us who deserve it not.”