how you'd adore this house! The floors are of dull-red
tiles and they are massaged three times a day, and the whole thing
is medieval in flavor,--a flock of velvet-voiced, dove-eyed servants
who adore Lupe and are pledged to her cause. Old Cristina, who was
her mother's nurse, is to be our stoutest ally.

Every night for an hour Emilio stands under her balcony "playing the
bear." Lupe, her face shrouded in her _reboso_, leans over and
whispers. I hover in the background like _Juliet's_ nurse. Afterward
the C.E., having ridden in from his mine, comes for me, and we sally
forth in the night like the Caliph and walk slowly up and down the
Street of Sad Children, where the music comes daintily to us,
filtered through the trees. Sometimes "Emily," as the C.E. wickedly
calls him, joins us, to talk of his two loves,--Lupe, and Mexico.
Sally, never laugh again at the Mexican revolutions,--they're not
funny, only pitiful.

My chief task now is to infuse a quality of hope and--_ginger_--into
these little lovers. Sometimes their attitude of _Dios no lo
quiso_--heaven wills otherwise--makes me want to shake them, but
slowly and surely I'm rousing them to action.

To-day we visited the prison here ... not the show model of Mexico
City. This one is a hold-over from the Dark Ages. Young and old,
gentle and simple, murderers and thieving children--all herded in
together. In the huge court, before pillars with chains, a _peon_
was mopping up some dark stains.... Ugh! This is the broken heart of
Mexico where tears and blood are brewing.

JANE.

_One Momentous Morning!_

All our little plans are perfected, Sally! We have to act quickly for
Lupe's Tio Diego is more irate than usual, and "Emily's" papa
languishes in prison, and there is a plot on foot to rescue him and
make him Governor or something.

The Budders find the situation singularly lacking in thrill, and feel
they would enjoy the safe and uneventful streets of San Francisco,
and we start north day after to-morrow night. They are interested in
my pretty _novios_ and will timidly help us.

It is all very simple. In the afternoon Lupe and I will stroll to the
little church where she was baptized and where the gentle old priest
is a friend of "Emily's" family. Emilio and the C.E. will be waiting.
Two of us are expeditiously