Then, like a child, she bound them and sewed them and nailed them
to substances particularly susceptible to their constricting
power. She choked the necks of green gourds, she indented the
tender bark of cottonwood shoots, she expended an apparently
exhaustless ingenuity on the fabrication of mechanical devices
whose principle answered to the pulling of the drying rawhide.
And always along the adobe fence could be seen a long row of
potatoes bound in skin, some of them fresh and smooth and round;
some sweating in the agony of squeezing; some wrinkled and dry
and little, the last drops of life tortured out of them. Senor
Johnson laughed good-humouredly at these toys, puzzled to explain
their fascination for his wife.
"They're sure an amusing enough contraption honey," said he, "but
what makes you stand out there in the hot sun staring at them
that way? It's cooler on the porch."
"I don't know," said Estrella, helplessly, turning her slow,
vacant gaze on him. Suddenly she shivered in a strong physical
revulsion. "I don't know!" she cried with passion.
After they had been married about a month Senor Johnson found it
necessary to drive into Willets.
"How would you like to go, too, and buy some duds?" he asked
Estrella.
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