. . of whom he had no longer anything to ask. As he went out
he stopped in the doorway long enough to rub his back against a corner
of the wall and to strike a match. Then, almost inaudibly humming the
mandolin air, he slouched out into the burning street.
For twenty years he had striven with the weeds in the Mission garden,
and no man during that time dared say which had had the best of it,
Ignacio Chavez or the interloping alfileria and purslane. In the
matters of a vast leisureliness and tumbling along the easiest way they
resembled each other, these two avowed enemies. For twenty years he
had looked upon the bells as his own, had filled his eye with them day
after day, had thought the first thing in the morning to see that they
were there, regarding them as solicitously in the rare rainy weather as
his old mother regarded her few mongrel chicks. Twenty full years, and
yet Ignacio Chavez was not more than thirty years old, or thirty-five,
perhaps. He did not know, no one cared.
He was on his way to attack with his bare brown hands some of the weeds
which were spilling over into the walk which led through the garden and
to the priest's house. As a matter of fact he had awakened with this
purpose in mind, had gone his lazy way all day fully purposing to give
it his attention, and had at last arrived upon the scene.
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