"I did not know this. No, I did not know this. She was always most severe in speaking of our mother. I could not bear to hear her, and so I never did mention the name of mother to her."
"That is what rouses my indignation," cried Anita, clenching her hand. "To think that they should have set you against your dear, sweet mother, that they should have believed evil of her." She spoke passionately.
Her mother laid a restraining hand upon her arm. "Never mind that, dear," she said. "It is all past. At last we are together. Let the dead past bury its dead. Should you like to go back to Spain to live, Pepé?"
"Joseph," cried Aunt Manning. "Don't call him Pepé. It's all this treatment of your mother, Joseph, that has set me against Spain. I suppose it is unchristian when there are those Germans behaving so outrageously toward everybody, yet when a thing strikes directly home and touches those you love you do feel that you want to vent your spite upon something or somebody."
"Spain is not so bad," returned Pepé, smiling. "I have no unkind feeling toward Spain, but I should not want to go back there to live. I have been there too unhappy."
"But you will have to go back. Tell him, mother, why he must," Anita spoke.
Then Mrs. Beltrán told him about his Uncle Marcos's will, and of how it affected him and his little Cousin Amparo.
"Madre de Dios!" exclaimed Pepé, reverting to his familiar Spanish. "How strange is all this. I am in a dream. I sleep. I am not awake. I cannot believe. Yet, that Uncle Marcos was not so unkind. He made me work, yes, too hard, but while he lived he had a fondness, a sort of fondness for me. He was miserly, but not so as the wife, nor so unkind. I see he wished me well. I cannot believe that I, the poor boy, the poor working boy, now am possessing that land upon which I slaved. It is too incredible. I shall have to go. Yes, I shall have to go to Spain for a time, perhaps, only for a time."
"And I shall go with you, my son," said Mrs. Beltrán. "We know them all, all who were your friends, and we have other friends whom you do not know and who will be so glad to see you, to learn that at last we have found each other."
"We must send a card to that good Tito Alvarez. We must do it to-morrow. We must each send him a Christmas card," said Anita.