such a squeeze as a loving mother gives her
son.

Yet, under even this mood, her laughter lay close to the surface, and
nothing tapped its merry flow quicker than Paul's Spanish. Picking up
the language haphazard, he had somehow learned to apply the verb
_tumblar_ to describe the pouring out of coffee, and he clung to it
after correction with a persistence that surely inhered in his dogged
German blood. "_Tumbarlo el cafe_!" he would say, and she would repeat
it, faithfully mimicking his accent.

"Tumble out the coffee!" following it with peals of laughter. Or,
turning up a saucy face, she would ask, "Shall I tumble out more
coffee?" and again the laughter which came as readily at her own misfit
attempts at English.

These, few and simple, were learned of Bachelder's woman, and sprung on
Paul as surprises on his return from visiting the mining properties,
which required his frequent presence. For instance, slipping to his knee
on one such occasion, with the great heart of her pulsing against him,
she sighed: "I love thee, lovest thou me?"

A lesson from Bachelder pleased him less. Knowing Paul's pride in his
German ancestry, and having been present when, in seasons of swollen
pride, he had reflected invidiously in Andrea's presence on Mexico and
all things Mexican, the artist, in a wicked moment, taught her to lisp
"_Hoch der Kaiser_!" _lese-majeste_ that almost caused Paul a
fainting-fit.

"You shouldn't have taught her that," he said to Bachelder. But the
mischief was done. Whenever, thereafter, through torment of insect or
obsession of national pride, he animadverted on her country, she
silenced him with the treasonable expression.

She learned other than English from Bachelder's woman, sweating out the
dog days in Rosa's kitchen, experimenting with the barbaric dishes
Gringos love. She slaved for his comfort, keeping his linen, her house
and self so spotlessly clean that as Paul's passion waned, affection
grew up in its place--the respectful affection that, at home, would have
afforded a permanent basis for a happy marriage. When, a year later,
their baby came, no northern benedict could have been more proudly
happy.

Watching him playing with the child, Bachelder would wonder if his union
also would terminate like all the others of his long experience. In her,
for it was a girl baby, Paul's fairness worked out, as she grew, in
marvelous delicacies of cream and rose, weaving, moreover, a golden woof
throug