appreciation of her
humors was his.

* * * * *

While they sat thus, in one of their comfortable hours, the guests
were come. The Morses appeared first. He was a pleasant,
hollow-chested little man; his delicacy of lung gave him his excuse
for playing gentleman farmer. She, half-Spanish, carried bulk for the
family and carried it well. The Andalusian showed in her coy yet open
air, in her small, broad hand and foot, in a languorous liquidity of
eye. Their son, a well-behaved and pretty youth of twelve, and their
daughter, two years older, rode behind them on the back seat. The
daughter bore one of those mosaic names with which the mixed race has
sprinkled California--Teresa del Vinal Morse. A pretty, delicate
tea-rose thing, she stood at an age of divided appreciations. In the
informal society of the Santa Lucia colony, she was listening half the
time to her elders, taking a shadowy interest in their sayings and
opinions; for the rest, she was turning on Theodore, that childish
brother, an illuminated understanding.

The Goodyears arrived with a little flourish. Their trap, which she
drove herself and which was perhaps a little too English to be useful
or appropriate on a Californian road, the straight, tailor lines of
her suit--all displayed that kind of quiet, refined ostentation which,
very possibly, shrieks as loud to God as the diamond rings on a soiled
finger. Mrs. Tiffany, who had met the Morses on the lawn, tripped
clear across the rose-border to meet the Goodyears; did it with entire
unconsciousness of drawing any distinction. As by right, Mrs. Goodyear
appropriated the great green arm-chair under the oak tree, from which
throne she radiated a delicate patronage upon the company.

The others followed by twos and threes. Montgomery Lee, fresh-faced
English University man, raising prunes on his patrimony of a younger
son; the Roach girls, plump Californian old maids, and their pleasant
little Yankee mother; the Ruggleses, a young married couple. Careless
farmers, Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles; but they had the good nature which is
the virtue of that defect. This, and the common interest in their
three plump, mischievous babies, gave them general popularity in the
colony.

Within five minutes, the company had followed the law of such
middle-aged groups of familiars, and separated by sexes. The men
drifted over to the piazza, lit cigars, hoisted their knees, and
talked, first