The child had many new thoughts about it at this time.
"People must have been very wicked then if there were not ten good ones. There are more than that now," confidently.
"But the world will never be drowned again. We have that promise."
"Only it is to be burned up. And that will be dreadful, too. Do you suppose—the people will be—burned?" hesitating awesomely.
"Oh, no, no! Don't think of that, child."
"I wonder why they saved so many horrid animals? Did you ever see a tiger and a lion?"
"Oh, yes, at a menagerie."
"Tell me about it."
She had an insatiable desire for stories, this little girl, and picked up much knowledge that way. Miss Holmes taught her, for there was no nearby school.
She made friends with the Estenega girls, though at first their mother, with true Spanish reticence and pride held aloof, but interest in her children's welfare and a half fear of the Americanos, beside the frankness of the little girl induced her to walk in their direction one day, and in a shaded nook she found Miss Holmes and her charge. Perhaps the truth was that Señora Estenega had many lonely hours. Friends and relatives were dead or had gone away, for there had been no little friction when California was added to the grasping "States." When she could sell her old homestead she meant to remove to Monterey, which at this period was not quite so overrun with Americanos. But she had been born here, and her happy childhood was connected with so many favorite haunts. Here she had been wedded, her children born, in the closed room where there was a little altar her husband had died, and she kept commemorative services on anniversaries. And then no one had offered to buy the place—it was out of the business part, and though the town might stretch down there, it had shown no symptoms as yet.