aw-making. I have to catch the
six-o'clock train to San Francisco this evening, and have already lost
the time I hoped to spend with Miss Yerba by missing her at the
convent. Let me stroll on here, if you like, and if I venture to
monopolize the attention of this young lady for half an hour, you, my
dear Mr. Mayor, who have more frequent access to her, I know, will not
begrudge it to me."

He placed himself beside Yerba and Milly, and began an entertaining,
although, I fear, slightly exaggerated, account of his reception by the
Lady Superior, and her evident doubts of his identity with the trustee
mentioned in Pendleton's letter of introduction. "I confess she
frightened me," he continued, "when she remarked that, according to my
statement, I could have been only eighteen years old when I became your
guardian, and as much in want of one as you were. I think that only
her belief that Mr. Woods and the Mayor would detect me as an impostor
provoked her at last to tell me your whereabouts."

"But why DID they ever make you a trustee, for goodness' sake?" said
Milly, naively. "Was there no one grown up at that time that they
could have called upon?"

"Those were the EARLY days of California," responded Paul, with great
gravity, although he was conscious that Yerba was regarding him
narrowly, "and I probably looked older and more intelligent than I
really was. For, candidly," with the consciousness of Yerba's eyes
still upon him, "I remember very little about it. I dare say I was
selected, as you kindly suggest, 'for goodness' sake.'"

"After all," said the volatile Milly, who seemed inclined, as
chaperone, to direct the conversation, "there was something pretty and
romantic about it. You two poor young things taking care of each
other, for of course there were no women here in those days."

"Of course there WERE women here" interrupted Yerba, quickly, with a
half-meaning, half-interrogative glance at Paul that made him
instinctively uneasy. "You later comers"--to Milly--"always seem to
think that there was nothing here before you!" She paused, and then
added, with a naive mixture of reproach and coquetry that was as
charming as it was unexpected, "As to taking care of each other, Mr.
Hathaway very quickly got rid of me, I believe."

"But I left you in better hands, Miss Yerba; and let me thank you now,"
he added in a lower tone, "for recognizing it as you did a moment ago.
I'm glad that you instinctively lik