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“What do you suppose made him call it such a sad name, Uncle Hank?” Hilda wanted to know. “Do you suppose he had them—three sorrows?”

“He did so, Pettie—in his three daughters. Michaela, his oldest, she took smallpox from a family of Arkansas movers that came driftin’ through these pastures two weeks before she was to have been married. Her looks was ruined. She went into a convent up in Santy Fe. Lola, the next one, was killed in a train wreck. And Guadeloupe, the third, his baby, and the prettiest of the bunch, ran away with Lee Marchbanks, which is Fayte’s and Maybelle’s pa. He said neither of them should ever step foot on his land while he lived. Old Romero’s wife was dead, and he never had no sons. He took the trouble about his daughters hard. He drank up all his property—” Hilda had a moment of wondering how he could do that—“and then drank himself to death.”

“Maybelle says her mother is dead, too,” said Hilda. “They had the sorrow, didn’t they, Uncle Hank? Maybelle and Fayte, I mean.”