to Don Abrahan, who worked on payment of the never-ending, and never-to-be-ended, family debt.
Cecilia had a stiff knee from a fall over a cliff in the early darkness of a winter day when Liseta was nine years old. Since that time Liseta had gone with the goats alone, becoming notable in her calling from San Gabriel to the sea. Yet there was no offer from the young men to marry Liseta, on account of her mother's debt to the patron, for many of them had hope that they might at length come clear of their own inherited obligations to Don Abrahan and walk away to shape their lives in other places.
This failure of Liseta to marry, although she was little more than a child in years, had added to the bitterness of Cecilia's heart and the sharpness of her tongue. When she could no longer go with the goats to the hills in winter and early spring, to the wide valley in summer, on account of her stiff knee, Don Abrahan had provided her a spinningwheel and set one of the ancient women who knew the art to teach her.
Cecilia never had become deft in spinning, due to her natural stubbornness and determination not to make herself over into a new value to her tyrannous patron in the days when a woman ought to take the sun in peace outside her door, with knees drawn up, eyes half closed upon her dreams. Owing to this, Don Abrahan declared her debt to him was growing instead of diminishing. That being so, Cecilia reasoned, there was no sense in
