“It’s fine milk,” answered the other, cautiously; “but, if it isn’t too much trouble, a bit of ice would improve it.”
“Ice? Why, where could I get ice? Sometimes, in the winter, a little forms along the arroyo, but now–I’m very sorry, indeed. I’d be so glad to get it if I could.”
Mr. Hale swallowed the sickeningly warm liquid with a gulp and hastened to apologize.
“It wouldn’t be good for me if you could. My compliments to your house-cow, and I’m very grateful for my refreshment. You have a beautiful home.”
“Haven’t we? The prettiest in the world, I guess. My father thought so and my mother loves it. So do we all, but to her it is dearest. Because, you see, father and she have made it all it is. Please, just let me move your chair nearer the edge of the porch. So. Now, look away off to the east. Father said there could be no view more uplifting. He wished everybody who had to live in cities could see it. He knew it would make them better men.”
Magnificent though it was, Mr. Hale found his small hostess more interesting than the view.
“Your father––” he began, questioningly.
“Isn’t here, now. He passed heavenward a year ago. Since then nothing seems just the same, and dear mother is often sad and troubled. You know she wants to carry on all father’s experiments, she doesn’t want his ‘life work to be wasted,’ she says, and Antonio isn’t able to get as much money as he used to be. She tries so bravely not to let it fret her, and I don’t see where she is. She was in the kitchen with me. We were getting dinner because Wun Lung, the cook, cut his hand, and Pasqual isn’t to be trusted. Of course, he’s a good enough boy, can make beds and such things, but–cook! One must be very dainty to do that. My mother can cook deliciously! She taught herself everything and the why of it. When she and father came here they lived in that tiny adobe away at the end of the second row. Do you see it? By the old corridor. Their table was a packing box and they had just a little camping outfit. Now there’s all this.”
Jessica Trent’s sweet face glowed with loving pride in her fair home, but this was as nothing of the tenderness which filled her eyes as they now caught sight of a tall woman in black coming over the garden path.
“There she is, my mother!”