Again the women murmured pleasure, but the old woman spoke
not. "And say that you will be her son," added Ramona.
Alessandro said it. It was perhaps for this that the old woman had
waited. Lifting up her arm, like a sibyl, she said: "It is well; I am
your mother. The winds of the valley shall love you, and the grass
shall dance when you come. The daughter looks on her mother's
face each day. I will go;" and making a sign to her bearers, she was
lifted, and carried to her house.
The scene affected Ramona deeply. The simplest acts of these
people seemed to her marvellously profound in their meanings.
She was not herself sufficiently educated or versed in life to know
why she was so moved,-- to know that such utterances, such
symbolisms as these, among primitive peoples, are thus impressive
because they are truly and grandly dramatic; but she was none the
less stirred by them, because she could not analyze or explain
them.
"I will go and see her every day," she said; "she shall be like my
mother, whom I never saw."
"We must both go each day," said Alessandro.
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