e asked, perturbed, "you
don't _pray_ to Tersookey, do you?" Lola looked horrified.

"Me? _Maria Santissima!_ I am of the Church! Tesuque is not to pray to.
I hope you have not been making your worship to him. It is like this,
senora: You plant the seed and the leaf comes; you set out Tesuque and
rain falls. It is quite simple."

[Illustration: "'HE IS TESUQUE, THE RAIN-GOD.'"]

Jane rested in this easy and convincing philosophy. She saw the joke of
Lola's advice to her not to misplace her devotions, and one day she
repeated the story to the doctor, showing him the rain-god.

"Do you know," said the doctor, handling Tesuque, "that this thing is
surprisingly well-modeled? The Mexicans can do anything with adobe, but
this has something about it beyond the reach of most of them."

After this, a pleasanter atmosphere spread in Jane's dwelling. Lola
often unbent to talk. Sometimes she sewed a little on the frocks and
aprons, preparing for her school career. Oftener she worked in her
roofless pottery by the ditch, where many a queer jug and vase and
bowl, gaudy with ochre and Indian red, came into being and passed early
to dust again, for want of firing. Jane found these things engrossing.
She liked to sit and watch them grow under Lola's fingers, while the
purple alfalfa flowers shed abroad sweet odors, and the ditch-water
sang softly at her feet. As she sat thus one afternoon, Alejandro Vigil
came running across the field, waving a letter.

"'Tis for you, Lolita!" he cried. "My father read the marks. It is from
Cripple Creek!"

"Oh, give me! give me!" cried Lola, flinging down a mud dish.

Jane had taken the letter. "It's for me, dear," she said, beginning to
open it. "I'll read it aloud--" She paused. Her face had a gray color.

Lola held out her hands in a passion of joy and eagerness. "What does
he say? Oh, hurry! Oh, let me have it!"

Jane suddenly crushed the letter, and her eyes were stern as she
withdrew it resolutely from Lola's reaching fingers.

"No, Lola, no!" she said, in a sharp tone. "I--can't let you have this
letter! I can't! I can't!"

A TRUE BENEFACTRESS

CHAPTER THREE

A TRUE BENEFACTRESS

Lola's breath was suspended in amazement. Indignation flashed from her
eyes. She dropped her hands and Jane saw the fingers clench.

"It is my father's letter--and you keep it from me? You are cruel!"
said Lola, passionately.

Jane's eyes, set on the ground, seemed to see there, in fie