Padre Alonzo rose and turned, reaching up to stroke her. “Good-night, Loretta,” he said fondly. “There were none too lowly for His gift of love. It was spared to thee, a yawping fowl, a talker after the manner of the lazy Mexicans that bred thee.”
He turned back upon the path, sighing and raising his eyes once more. “But for high or low,” he said, musing aloud, “the fruit of that love is sacrifice.”
IV
Out of the chapel came the sounds of the noon service—the level intoning of prayer, the rumble and swell of the padres’ voices. From her place before the great crucifix Loretta mocked it, only ceasing now and then to answer Tony’s warbles with little whistles of delight, or to run her open bill up and down the bit of vertical pole dividing her perch. Yesterday’s bout in the kitchen, yesterday’s hunger and fear, the lonely night ramble along the path, the lack of her preening friend—all these were forgotten in to-day’s safety, sunlight, plenty, and companionship. And so she gurred and purred, a-a-awed and ga-a-wked, shrilled her “Buenos días!” across the garden, laughed uproariously, or droned the familiar mass.
In reach of her pacing, in touch of her very tail, was the gilded cage, with Tony darting up stairs and down, yet sparing time now and then for a sip or a seed or a saucy chirp.
