the bell-ringer of San Juan the snapping Gringo oath comes
metamorphosed into a gentle "Gah-tham!" The girl, to whom the speech
of Chavez was something as new and strange as the face of the earth
about her, regarded him with grave, curious eyes.

She was seated against the Mission wall upon the little bench which no
one but Ignacio guessed was to be painted green one of these fine days,
a bronze-haired, gray-eyed girl in white skirt and waist, and with a
wide panama hat caught between her clasped hands and her knee. For a
moment she was perhaps wondering how to take him; then with a
suddenness that had been all unheralded in her former gravity, she
smiled. With lips and eyes together as though she accepted his
friendship. Ignacio's own smile broadened and he nodded his delight.

"It is truly beautiful here," she admitted, and had Ignacio possessed a
tithe of that sympathetic comprehension which his eyes lied about he
would have detected a little note of eagerness in her voice, would have
guessed that she was lonely and craved human companionship. "I have
been sitting here an hour or two. You are not going to send me away,
are you?"

Ignacio looked properly horrified.

"If I saw an angel here in the garden, señorita," he exclaimed, "would
I say _zape_ to it? No, no, señorita; here you shall stay a thousand
years if you wish. I swear it."

He was all sincerity; Ignacio Chavez would no sooner think of being
rude to a beautiful young woman than of crying "Scat!" to an angel.
But as to staying here a thousand years . . . she glanced through the