A Little Girl in Old San Francisco. Douglas Amanda M.
on the Asian side of the world."
"Oh, dear, how much there is for me to learn," and she drew a long breath. "And they thought I was real smart in our little old school. But I could spell almost everything."
"There are years in which you can learn it," he said encouragingly.
"And you have been almost everywhere." There was a note of admiration in her voice. "The stories were so wonderful when you told them on shipboard. I didn't half understand them then because I didn't think the world could be such a great place, so you must tell them over to me."
"Yes. And some day you may go the rest of the way round the world. You've been nearly half round it and you are still in America."
They paused at the little cottage. Bruno, the great dog, lay on the doorstep, but he rose and shook himself, and put his nose in the little girl's hand.
She had been rather afraid of him at first. Even now when he gave a low growl at some tramp prowling round it sent a shiver down her spine. But he was a very peaceable fellow and now devoted to his new mistress.
Miss Holmes prepared the supper. She had a fondness for housekeeping, and this life seemed idyllic to her. The old weariness of heart and brain had vanished. Miss Gaines told her she looked five years younger and that it would not take her long to go back to twenty. Miss Gaines had made some charming new friends and did not always spend Sunday with them.
Laverne wiped the dishes for Miss Holmes. Jason Chadsey lighted his pipe, and strolled uptown.
"I wish you would read all about Noah's ark to me," Laverne said, and Miss Holmes sat down by the lamp.
The child had many new thoughts about it at this time.
"People must have been very wicked then if there were not ten good ones. There are more than that now," confidently.
"But the world will never be drowned again. We have that promise."
"Only it is to be burned up. And that will be dreadful, too. Do you suppose – the people will be – burned?" hesitating awesomely.
"Oh, no, no! Don't think of that, child."
"I wonder why they saved so many horrid animals? Did you ever see a tiger and a lion?"
"Oh, yes, at a menagerie."
"Tell me about it."
She had an insatiable desire for stories, this little girl, and picked up much knowledge that way. Miss Holmes taught her, for there was no nearby school.
She made friends with the Estenega girls, though at first their mother, with true Spanish reticence and pride held aloof, but interest in her children's welfare and a half fear of the Americanos, beside the frankness of the little girl induced her to walk in their direction one day, and in a shaded nook she found Miss Holmes and her charge. Perhaps the truth was that Señora Estenega had many lonely hours. Friends and relatives were dead or had gone away, for there had been no little friction when California was added to the grasping "States." When she could sell her old homestead she meant to remove to Monterey, which at this period was not quite so overrun with Americanos. But she had been born here, and her happy childhood was connected with so many favorite haunts. Here she had been wedded, her children born, in the closed room where there was a little altar her husband had died, and she kept commemorative services on anniversaries. And then no one had offered to buy the place – it was out of the business part, and though the town might stretch down there, it had shown no symptoms as yet.
Miss Holmes was reading and Laverne sewing. She had taken a decided fancy to this feminine branch of learning, and was hemming ruffles for a white apron. Her mother had taught her long ago, when it had been a very tiresome process. But the Estenega girls made lace and embroidered.
Laverne sprang up. "It is Carmen's mother," she said. Then she glanced up at the visitor, with her lace mantilla thrown over her high comb, her black hair in precise little curls, each side of her face, and her eyes rather severe but not really unpleasant.
"I do not know how you say it," and she flushed with embarrassment. "It is not Madame or Mrs. – "
"Señora," answered the Spanish woman, her face softening under the appealing eyes of the child.
Then Laverne performed the introduction with an ease hardly expected in a child. Miss Holmes rose.
"I am very glad to meet you. I was deciding to come to ask about the children. Laverne is often lonely and would like playmates. And she is picking up many Spanish words. You understand English."
"Somewhat. It is of necessity. These new people have possessed our country and you cannot always trust servants to interpret. Yes, the children. I have a little fear. They are Catholics. Carmencita will go to the convent next year for her education. And I should not want their faith tampered with."
"Oh, no," Miss Holmes responded cheerfully. "You know we have different kinds of faith and yet agree as friends." And glancing at Laverne she almost smiled. These Spanish children would be much more likely to convert her to their faith. Would her uncle mind, she wondered? He seemed to think they all stood on the same foundation.
"You have not been here long?" and there was more assertion than inquiry in the tone.
"No," returned the younger woman. And then she told a part of her story, how she had come from the east, the Atlantic coast, and that she was governess to the child, and housekeeper. "Did the Señora know a family by the name of Vanegas?"
"Ah, yes, they were old friends. Two daughters, admirable girls, devoted to their mother, who had suffered much and whose husband had made away with most of the estates. There was an American lady in her house, she rented two rooms."
"A friend of mine. She came from the same place, and we have known each other from girlhood."
Then the ice was broken, and Miss Holmes in a certain manner was vouched for, which rather amused her, yet she accepted the Spanish woman's pride. Many of them felt as if they had been banished from their own land by these usurpers. Others accepted the new order of things, and joined heart and soul in the advancement of the place, the advancement of their own fortunes also. But these were mostly men. The prejudice of the women died harder.
The children were in a group at one of the little hillocks, much amused it would seem by their laughter. And the two women patched up a bit of friendship which they both needed, seeing they were near neighbors, and interested in the education of young people, Miss Holmes listened to what the elder woman said and did not contradict or call the ideas old-fashioned. After all it was very like some of her old grandmother's strictures, and she was a staunch Puritan. What would she have said to women who had not yet reached middle life, and had planned to go to a strange land to seek their fortunes!
The Señora was so well satisfied that she asked Miss Holmes to come and take coffee and sweetmeats with her the next afternoon.
Oh, how lovely the hills and vales were as they wandered homeward. For now it was the time of growth and bloom and such sweetness in the air that Marian Holmes thought of the gales of Araby the blest. Truly it was an enchanted land. The birds were filling the air with melody, here and there a farmer or gardener, for there was fine cultivated lands about the foothills, and even higher up there were great patches of green where some one would reap a harvest, garden stuff waving or running about rich with melon blooms, here the blue of the wild forget-me-nots and the lupines. And further on flocks of sheep nibbling the tufts of grass or alfalfa. Some one was singing a song, a rich, young voice:
"Oh, Susanna, don't you cry for me,
I'm goin' to California with my banjo on my knee."
Here and there in a clump of trees was a dark shadow, and the long slant rays betokened the coming of evening. It gave one a luxurious emotion, as if here was the true flavor of life.
Miss Holmes was feeling a little sorry for those swept off of their own land, as it were.
"What have they been doing with it these hundreds of years?" asked Jason Chadsey. "Even the Indians they have pretended to educate are little better off for their civilization. And think how the gold lay untouched in the hills! Spain still has the Philippines