ood in close rows against the walls, and in them were always growing
fine geraniums, carnations, and yellow-flowered musk. The Senora's
passion for musk she had inherited from her mother. It was so strong
that she sometimes wondered at it; and one day, as she sat with Father
Salvierderra in the veranda, she picked a handful of the blossoms, and
giving them to him, said, "I do not know why it is, but it seems to me
if I were dead I could be brought to life by the smell of musk."

"It is in your blood, Senora," the old monk replied. "When I was last in
your father's house in Seville, your mother sent for me to her room,
and under her window was a stone balcony full of growing musk, which so
filled the room with its odor that I was like to faint. But she said
it cured her of diseases, and without it she fell ill. You were a baby
then."

"Yes," cried the Senora, "but I recollect that balcony. I recollect
being lifted up to a window, and looking down into a bed of blooming
yellow flowers; but I did not know what they were. How strange!"

"No. Not strange, daughter," replied Father Salvierderra. "It would have
been stranger if you had not acquired the taste, thus drawing it in with
the mother's milk. It would behoove mothers to remember this far more
than they do."

Besides the geraniums and carnations and musk in the red jars, there
were many sorts of climbing vines,--some coming from the ground, and
twining around the pillars of the veranda; some growing in great bowls,
swung by cords from the roof of the veranda, or set on shelves against
the walls. These bowls were of gray stone, hollowed and polished,
shining smooth inside and out. They also had been made by the Indians,
nobody knew how many ages ago, scooped and polished by the patient
creatures, with only stones for tools.

Among these vines, singing from morning till night, hung the
Senora's canaries and finches, half a dozen of each, all of different
generations, raised by the Senora. She was never without a young
bird-family on hand; and all the way from Bonaventura to Monterey, it
was thought a piece of good luck to come into possession of a canary or
finch of Senora Moreno's 'raising.

Between the veranda and the river meadows, out on which it looked, all
was garden, orange grove, and almond orchard; the orange grove always
green, never without snowy bloom or golden fruit; the garden never
without flowers, summer or winter; and the almond orchard, in early