The Codex Mendoza gives a pictographic sketch of the training of children that parallels the text of the Florentine Codex. Girls began their training as children about four years old. Dressed in little huipiles , small-scale versions of their mother's blouses, they were instructed in spinning and began to practice producing thread from cotton and maguey fiber. By the time they turned age twelve, they were weaving with as much as skill as they could, and already wore clothing of their own manufacture. At about this age, girls adopted a distinctive hair style that differentiated them from both older and younger women. It was probably girls of this age who took part in the dances described for many feasts, when young women ornamented their bodies with bright feathers and wore garlands of flowers. It was surely women of this age who taunted boys during the month of Hue Tozoztontli. No wonder the families of newly married girls felt the need to indulge in so much indoctrination in the weight of responsibility the young girl had accepted. Coming on the heels of her experience of competence in craftwork, physical beauty, and verbal play with her peers, the prospect of entry into the controlled status of young bride must have led many young women to rebel. Some young women may never have become brides, either as a result of resistance to arranged marriages, or because their families couldn't afford the costs of a match, or simply because they were indispensable in their parents' house. Here, unlike their married peers, young women would have carried the expectations of only one family, the one they grew up with and understood. Or else the young woman might enter the service of one of the gods, living in the temple precinct apart from any family but the sisterhood that served the divinity. On the young bride, both families urged a responsibility not only for the menial work of the house, but for the continuation of their lineage. To the newly married girl, this role was presented as the counterpart to young men's capture of enemy bodies in warfare. The shaping of a new generation for the families was described as if the young girl were to follow the steps of the mother of Huitzilopochtli, and conceive through miraculous intervention while sweeping the house at night. But the young wife, so thoroughly lectured by her elders, had at least the company in that uncomfortable liminal state of powerless adulthood of her new husband. The Codex Mendoza shows the young couple as hosts for a feast given to the husband's former companions in the young men's house. Hosting her peers, perhaps the young wife began to see possibilities for herself when--and if--she was head of her own house compound. Perhaps she saw her own advantage in the birth of children who would someday relieve her of her working burden, as she had come to relieve the older women of her husband's house. In the meantime, she could make the best use of her skills. More possibilities were open to women of the common people: they could sell what they made in the marketplace to strangers, and gain a little advantage that way. Not only cloth and foods of various kinds, but many other goods were traded by women, and some women were skilled healers and diviners. Going out to practice these skills and trade in the marketplace let women enter the life of the city, hear the news from other quarters and other lands, and take note of the first signs of relationships contracted between neighbors and kin. The great marketplace of Tenochtitlan, although larger in scale, would be less interesting than the market in a woman's own quarter of the city, where local intrigue would develop. Noble women, their movements tightly controlled because of the political significance of their relationships, would have had to rely on servants to carry this kind of information to them as they worked inside their house compounds, weaving extraordinary cloths that would enhance their own reputations and those of their families. With the passing of time, the young women, married and unmarried, noble and commoner, in service in the temple or working in the household, would assume the place previously occupied by their own mothers and aunts as elder women of the household or temple. Recognized for their achievements, supported by children and, with time, the wives of their sons, they in turn became the admonitory voices. But they still took part in the ceremonies, carried their children to the temples during Quecholli, held the young children for whom they were ritual aunts as their ears were pierced in Izcalli, still danced, ornamented with feathers, during Toxcatl and Huetecuilhuitl and Ochpaniztli, and some of them were among the lucky women who carried the litters with the sacred dough images during the feast of the mountains, Tepeilhuitl, and for the festival of Huitzilopochtli celebrated in Toxcatl. In time, a woman could expect to become a revered elder of her household, anilama, supervisor and manager of the house likened to the storage bin where the all-important maize was kept near the house compound entry, and for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the source of their own line of descent.