A Prairie Infanta

by Eva Wilder Brodhead

"Tia! tia!" exclaimed Lola, herself glowing like a prairie-rose, as she dashed out of the train. "What have you done? You are good to look at! Your hair—oh, asombro!"

But when the white burros of the mail wagon, wildly skimming the plains, brought them in sight of the new house, Lola's joy turned white on her cheeks, and she clutched Jane's arm.

"Tia—our house! It is gone—gone!"

Then was Jane's time to laugh with sheer happiness, to throw open gate and door and usher her guest into the old room where Tesuque sat and the Navajo blanket still covered the couch as of yore, and nothing was altered except that now other rooms opened brightly on all sides, and in one a piano displayed its white teeth in beaming welcome.

Lola's blank face, whereon every moment printed a new delight, was to Jane a sight hardly to be matched. The satisfaction grew also with time, as the piano awoke to such strains as Lola had mastered, and people strolled up from the village ways to listen, and, to Jane's deep gratification, to praise the musician. The Mexicans came in throngs, filling the air with a chorus of "Caspitas!" and "Carambas!" None of them called Lola "Infanta" nowadays unless it were in a spirit of friendly pleasantry; and she herself had lost much of the air which had brought this contemptuous honor upon her childish head.

"She is Mexican—yes!" they nodded to one another, deriving much simple satisfaction from the circumstance. For was it not provocative of racial pride that one of their compatriots should be able to make tunes—actual tunes!—issue from those keys which responded to their own tentative touches merely with thin shrieks or a dull, rumbling note?

"Lolita is like she was," remarked Alejandro Vigil to his sister on the morning of the Fourth of July, as they wandered around the common beyond the arroyo.

This space of desert had an air of festive import, for unwonted celebrations of the day were forward. A pavilion roofed with green boughs had been built for the occasion, on the skirts of an oval course which was to be the ground of sundry feats of cowboy horsemanship, and of a foot-race between Piedro Cordova and the celebrated Valentino Cortés. There would be music, also, before long. Already the sound of a violin in process of tuning rang cheerfully through the open. The Declaration of Independence was to be read by the lawyer, who might be seen in the pavilion wiping his brow in anticipation of this exciting duty. A tribe of little girls, who were to sing national airs, were even now climbing into the muslin-draped seats of the lumber-wagon allotted them.

It was to be a great day for Aguilar! People from Santa Clara and Hastings and Gulnare were arriving in all manner of equipages. Mexican vehicles made a solid stockade along the west of the track. In the upper benches of the pavilion were ranged the flower and chivalry of the town—the families of the mine boss, the liveryman, the lawyer, the schoolmaster and several visiting personages. Jane, in her gray gown, was among them; beside her sat Lola, with Edith May Jonas.

"And did you think going away to school would make her different?" inquired Ana of her brother. "What should it do to her, 'Andro? Make her white like Miss Jonas? Vaya! Lola is only a Mexican!"