sing and promised a magnificent
morning, the breeze was delightfully cool, the stars were paling
in the east, and the cocks were crowing as if to see who could crow
best and loudest. That had been too much to ask--it were much easier
to request the Virgin to send the two hundred and fifty pesos. What
would it cost the Mother of the Lord to give them? But underneath the
image she found only the letter of her father asking for the ransom of
five hundred pesos. There was nothing to do but go, so, seeing that
her grandfather was not stirring, she thought him asleep and began
to prepare breakfast. Strange, she was calm, she even had a desire
to laugh! What had she had last night to afflict her so? She was not
going very far, she could come every second day to visit the house,
her grandfather could see her, and as for Basilio, he had known for
some time the bad turn her father's affairs had taken, since he had
often said to her, "When I'm a physician and we are married, your
father won't need his fields."

"What a fool I was to cry so much," she said to herself as she packed
her _tampipi._ Her fingers struck against the locket and she pressed
it to her lips, but immediately wiped them from fear of contagion, for
that locket set with diamonds and emeralds had come from a leper. Ah,
then, if she should catch that disease she could not get married.

As it became lighter, she could see her grandfather seated in a
corner, following all her movements with his eyes, so she caught up her
_tampipi_ of clothes and approached him smilingly to kiss his hand. The
old man blessed her silently, while she tried to appear merry. "When
father comes back, tell him that I have at last gone to college--my
mistress talks Spanish. It's the cheapest college I could find."

Seeing the old man's eyes fill with tears, she placed the _tampipi_
on her head and hastily went downstairs, her slippers slapping merrily
on the wooden steps. But when she turned her head to look again at
the house, the house wherein had faded her childhood dreams and her
maiden illusions, when she saw it sad, lonely, deserted, with the
windows half closed, vacant and dark like a dead man's eyes, when
she heard the low rustling of the bamboos, and saw them nodding in
the fresh morning breeze as though bidding her farewell, then her
vivacity disappeared; she stopped, her eyes filled with tears, and
letting herself fall in a sitting posture on a log by the wayside
she broke out