setting, and the desert was on fire. Thea contentedly took the back
seat with Mrs. Tellamantez. As they drove homeward the stars began to
come out, pale yellow in a yellow sky, and Ray and Johnny began to sing
one of those railroad ditties that are usually born on the Southern
Pacific and run the length of the Santa Fe and the "Q" system before
they die to give place to a new one. This was a song about a Greaser
dance, the refrain being something like this:--

"Pedro, Pedro, swing high, swing low,
And it's allamand left again;
For there's boys that's bold and there's some that's cold,
But the gold boys come from Spain,
Oh, the gold boys come from Spain!"

VIII

Winter was long in coming that year. Throughout October the days were
bathed in sunlight and the air was clear as crystal. The town kept its
cheerful summer aspect, the desert glistened with light, the sand hills
every day went through magical changes of color. The scarlet sage
bloomed late in the front yards, the cottonwood leaves were bright gold
long before they fell, and it was not until November that the green on
the tamarisks began to cloud and fade. There was a flurry of snow about
Thanksgiving, and then December came on warm and clear.

Thea had three music pupils now, little girls whose mothers declared
that Professor Wunsch was "much too severe." They took their lessons on
Saturday, and this, of course, cut down her time for play. She did not
really mind this because she was allowed to use the money--her pupils
paid her twenty-five cents a lesson--to fit up a little room for herself
upstairs in the half-story. It was the end room of the wing, and was not
plastered, but was snugly lined with soft pine. The ceiling was so low
that a grown person could reach it with the palm of the hand, and it
sloped down on either side. There was only one window, but it was a
double one and went to the floor. In October, while the days were still
warm, Thea and Tillie papered the room, walls and ceiling in the same
paper, small red and brown roses on a yellowish ground. Thea bought a
brown cotton carpet, and her big brother, Gus, put it down for her one
Sunday. She made white cheesecloth curtains and hung them on a tape. Her
mother gave her an old walnut dresser with a broken mirror, and she had
her own dumpy walnut single bed, and a blue washbowl and pitcher which
she had drawn at a church fair lottery. At the head of her bed she had a