“Tell me those powerful thoughts, auntie, dear.”
Mrs. Benton sighed, but responded nothing loath:
“There’s your mother, Gabriella. Only child, left an orphan, raised by a second cousin once removed, who’d more temper than sense, and when your mother fell in love with your father, who’d more goodness than cash, shut the door on them both forthwith. So off they come to Californy and pitch their tent right here in the spot.”
“They couldn’t have chosen a lovelier place,” their daughter answered, with a sweeping glance over the fair land which formed her home.
“That’s true enough. Then him getting that New York company to buy Paraiso d’Oro Valley, so’s a lot of folks that was down in the world could come out here and live in it. Poor Cass’us dying, just as he’d got things to his liking; the losing of the title deed and your journeying to Los Angeles to get it back.”
“Not ‘lost,’ Aunt Sally. Poor Antonio hid it at El Desierto, in the cave of the Three Rocks. He––”
“Cat’s foot! Don’t you go to ‘pooring’ that snaky sneak, or you and me’ll fall out. I should hate that.”
“So should I. But you’ve set me thinking, too. How wonderful that Mr. Ninian Sharp was, the newspaper man. If it hadn’t been for him, we’d never have won that battle. What could I have done, with Ephraim Marsh in the hospital, and I knowing nothing about the city? That Mr. Hale was another splendid man. I can understand how he had to keep his word and do his best for the company which thought father had wronged it; and I can also understand that he was as glad as we to find their money safe with the poor banker who was killed, Luis Garcia’s father.”
“‘Pooring’ again are you? Another scamp, too.”