west of Santa Clara Valley, turned in at the kitchen door.

"I don't know what to do wit' the boy. Go, mine Anna, get the lad a
clean shirt, and take it down to the creek."

On Anna's return from the bathing pool she said softly to her
mother, "Willie isn't at the creek. Perhaps he has run off."

"O child, don't bother me about Willie! He'll run back again fast
enough, he's that scared of the mountains and the trees."

Anna was conscious of an undercurrent of sympathy with the forlorn
waif her father had brought from the city some months before. The
very love and awe with which the mountains filled her imaginative
soul gave her comprehension of the fear with which they imbued the
dull-witted offspring of San Francisco gutters.

Willie did not return all that long, August day. The captain and
his American wife spread and dipped prunes busily on the hot south
slope. The box-laden wagon rolled by at intervals. Household duties
went helter-skelter under Anna's management. At six o'clock Mrs.
Schulz, hot and tired, wakened her lazy little daughter,
outstretched beneath the hollyhocks and poppies in the small front
garden.

"For gracious sake, Anna! Hurry! You've not done the dinner
dishes!"

"Have the cows come?" Anna asked, resourcefully.