ways so steadfast and strong and
cheerful, had gone hastily from the room in the agitation of one who
struggled with unaccustomed tears. Lola hesitated to follow Jane. Some
inward prompting withheld her.

"She is like me," mused the girl. "She would rather be alone when
anything troubles her. I will wait. Maybe she will come back soon and
tell me everything."

Outside it was as dry and bright as ever. The Peaks stood bald and
pink against the flawless sky. Over in the Vigil yard Lola saw the
smaller Vigil boys lassoing one another with a piece of clothes-line,
while, dozing over her sewing, Senora Vigil herself squatted in the
doorway. Propped against the house-wall, Diego Vigil sat munching a
corn-cake and frugally dispersing crumbs to the magpies which hovered
about him in short, blue-glancing flights.

Diego was two years old--quite old enough to doff his ragged frock for
the "pantalones" which his mother was still working upon, after weeks
of listless endeavor. The senora's thread was long enough to reach
half-way across the yard, and it took time and patience to set a
stitch. For very weariness the senora nodded over her labor, and made
many little appeals to the saints that they might guide aright the
tortuous course of her double cotton.

"Life is hard!" sighed the senora, pausing over a knot in her endless
thread. "Ten children keep the needle hot. Ay, but this knot is a hard
one! There are evil spirits about."

She laid down her work to wipe her eyes, and, observing two of her sons
grappling in fraternal war at the house corner, she arose to cuff each
one impartially, exclaiming, "_Ea, muchachos!_ You fight before my very
eyes, eh? Take that! and that!" Waddling reluctantly back to her
sewing, she saw Lola standing in the white-pillared porch of the big
adobe house beyond, and a gleam of inspiration crossed the senora's
dark, fat face.

"She shall take out this knot," thought Senora Vigil. "Senorita!" she
called. "Come here, I pray you! There is a tangle in my thread and all
my girls are away!"

And, as Lola came across the field, she added, "I am dead of
loneliness, Lolita. Ana and Benita and Ines and Marina and Alejandro
are gone up the Trujillo to the wedding-party of their cousin, Judita
Vasquez. To-morrow she marries the son of Juan Montoya. _Hola!_ She
does well to get so rich a one! He has twenty goats, a cow and six
dogs. His house has two rooms and a shed. They will live splendid! It
is to be