y. "That is one of the many things I
am grateful for. It must be so humiliating to have been spanked."

"Who can tell what futures may lie in a slipper?" replied Rose, who had
a reputation for being clever. "I am sure that my slipperings, for
instance, generated a tendency for epigram; something swift and sharp.
It destroyed the tendency to bawl continuously,--the equivalent of the
great national habit of monologue."

"Rose, you are quite too frightfully clever," said Tiny, with an
assumption of languor. "You will be writing a book next."

"I will make 'Lena the heroine," retorted Rose, with a keen glance, "and
call it 'The Sphinx of Menlo Park.'"

"Fancy 'Lena being called a sphinx," said Ila, who was looking very
bored. "Are you coming, 'Lena, or not? I suppose you don't want to be
kept standing in the sun."

"Oh, we're all used to that," said Rose. "I have three new freckles that
I owe to Mrs. Washington and Caro Folsom. They called yesterday and kept
me standing in the sun exactly three quarters of an hour before they
made up their minds to come in and stay ten minutes."

"I'd like to go--"

Mrs. Cartright returned, shaking her head.

"Don Roberto does not want to be left alone," she said. "I fortunately
thought of a most wonderful remedy for colds, and I have also been
telling him about a terrible cold General Lee had once when he was
staying with us. He did look so funny, dear great man, with his head
tied up in one of old Aunt Sally's bandannas--"

"Please excuse me for interrupting you, dear Mrs. Cartright," said Tiny,
firmly; "but I think we had better get out and talk to Don Roberto, and
go to the hills another day when 'Lena can go with us. Don't you think
that would be best?" she murmured to the other girls. "We might help to
amuse him a little."

"It will be vastly to our credit," said Rose, "for he certainly won't
amuse us."

"Has anyone ever been amused here?" asked Ila, looking at Magdalena, who
was politely listening to Mrs. Cartright's anecdote. "Fancy having the
biggest house in the smartest county in California and making no more of
it than if it were a cottage. The rest of the houses are so cut up; but
fancy what dances we could have here."

"I have been thinking over a plan," said Tiny, "and that is to try to
manage Don Roberto. 'Lena can't, but I think the rest of us could, and
Mrs. Yorba likes to give parties."

"I am told that in early days there was an extra burst of lawlessness