If Nan had regrets at leaving California Mary Lee had pangs, for did it not also mean parting with her beloved Miss Dolores? She spent all the time she could in her idol's company, clung to her side when they were out walking and had a nightly weep when she calculated that there was one less day to be spent in the dear presence.
"You make me tired, Mary Lee," Nan would say. "I do wish you would stop that sniffling; I just know you are crying about the señorita."
"You're so heartless, Nan," Mary Lee would reply. "I don't believe you care one bit that after another week you will never see her again."
"I'm not going to think that, besides it doesn't make it any better to cry about it," and Nan would unsympathetically turn over and go to sleep.
"Shall you miss me one little bit?" Mary Lee asked Miss Dolores one day when it was near the time for them to leave Santa Barbara.
"Certainly," she replied. "More than I can say. Except my aunt no one has ever been so good and kind to me as your mother and aunt, and to you, my pupils, I give much affection. It will be a sad parting, but I hope to earn my living somewhere. Your aunt thinks in San Francisco I shall have much opportunity to get a situation and she will help me. She says my experience of the past three months will help me."
"If you only had some relatives," said Mary Lee, "cousins, or something, it would be much better. Cousins are a great help; we have some that we are very fond of and when mother was away last winter I don't know what we should have done without them."
"I had a little cousin to whom I gave much love," said the señorita. "She died when she was fifteen. Like myself she lived with an aunt and we were great friends."
"What was her name?" asked Mary Lee.
"Pepita we called her. It is the Spanish for Josephine, or rather it is the diminutive, as you would say, Josie."