"Didn't they miss him and wonder where he was?"
"They did the next morning, and rode after him to San Diego, but he was already on the ship and was just putting out to sea. Some swam out to try to reach him, but he could not, or would not, come back, and passed from their sight with extended arms, blessing them. His poor Indians must have returned with deep sadness in their hearts, for they knew they would never see him again, and after thirty years of loving service such as his was, they must have felt that he was more than a father to them. What a subject for a poem it would be."
"It is all tremendously interesting," declared Nan. "It does make one know so much more about history to be actually on the spot where things have taken place. I knew in a sort of vague way about California belonging to Spain and to Mexico, and then to us, but I never thought much about the whys and wherefores; it always seemed so mixy-up and complicated. When you tell me about the missions I can understand that it was Spain that first held it, then when Mexico became a republic they wouldn't have any more Spanish rule and snatched the missions from the Spanish priests. Then we came along and did some more snatching from the Indians. We grabbed up California and stuck a new star on our flag, after the Mexican war, so now she is ours for keeps. I'm glad of that, but I want to hide my face under the bed-covers when I think of how outrageously we have treated the Indians."
"You certainly have the situation in a nut-shell," said Miss Helen with a smile as they left the carriage and made their way to the mission to gain a view of the interior of the church, to look at the fine old mortuary chapel, the ancient pulpit and the pathetic ruins, now the abode of toads and lizards, and where weeds ran riot.
Among the ruins they sat down with the padre who met them and who told them tales of the past. He opened his heart on the matter of his hopes for the future, his dear desire to see the mission fully restored, and, as they thought of its past, both Miss Helen and Nan echoed his wish.
"It's been like walking on my great-grandmother's shoes," said Nan as they drove away. "I feel as if I had been living in her time or even in my great-great's. I feel sort of blinky and queer in my mind, as you do when you come out of a dark place into the sunlight."
Miss Helen laughed. Nan's original similes always amused her. "How I shall love to take you to Europe," she said. "You are such a satisfactory sort of somebody, Nan."
"Am I? That's awfully complimentary, Aunt Helen."
"No, as a little boy I knew would say when you charged him with flattering you, 'that isn't a compliment, it's the truth.' One would suppose that a compliment couldn't be the truth from his point of view, but it can be and is, in this case. Nan, dear, take your last look of San Luis Rey; you may never see it again."
"I don't want to think that, but I'll take the look all the same," and Nan leaned out to see the fast vanishing campanile of the old church.