But when the white burros of the mail wagon, wildly skimming the
plains, brought them in sight of the new house, Lola's joy turned white
on her cheeks, and she clutched Jane's arm.

"_Tia_--our house! It is gone--gone!"

Then was Jane's time to laugh with sheer happiness, to throw open gate
and door and usher her guest into the old room where Tesuque sat and
the Navajo blanket still covered the couch as of yore, and nothing was
altered except that now other rooms opened brightly on all sides, and
in one a piano displayed its white teeth in beaming welcome.

Lola's blank face, whereon every moment printed a new delight, was to
Jane a sight hardly to be matched. The satisfaction grew also with
time, as the piano awoke to such strains as Lola had mastered, and
people strolled up from the village ways to listen, and, to Jane's deep
gratification, to praise the musician. The Mexicans came in throngs,
filling the air with a chorus of "_Caspitas!_" and "_Carambas!_" None
of them called Lola "_Infanta_" nowadays unless it were in a spirit of
friendly pleasantry; and she herself had lost much of the air which had
brought this contemptuous honor upon her childish head.

"She is Mexican--yes!" they nodded to one another, deriving much simple
satisfaction from the circumstance. For was it not provocative of
racial pride that one of their compatriots should be able to make
tunes--actual tunes!--issue from those keys which responded to their
own tentative touches merely with thin shrieks or a dull, rumbling
note?

"Lolita is like she was," remarked Alejandro Vigil to his sister on the
morning of the Fourth of July, as they wandered around the common
beyond the _arroyo_.

This space of desert had an air of festive import, for unwonted
celebrations of the day were forward. A pavilion roofed with green
boughs had been built for the occasion, on the skirts of an oval course
which was to be the ground of sundry feats of cowboy horsemanship, and
of a foot-race between Piedro Cordova and the celebrated Valentino
Cortes. There would be music, also, before long. Already the sound of a
violin in process of tuning rang cheerfully through the open. The
Declaration of Independence was to be read by the lawyer, who might be
seen in the pavilion wiping his brow in anticipation of this exciting
duty. A tribe of little girls, who were to sing national airs, were
even now climbing into the muslin-draped seats of the lumber-wagon
allotted the