The Indian said, “No; but they were friends.”
He then said to Massea and Docas, “We call the white men ‘father.’ They are very good to us. They showed us how to make a very large house. It is not made of brush, but is made of clay, and we call this house the church.”
“How big is it?” asked Docas.
“It is so large that many oak trees could stand inside it. On the walls are things that, when you come in front of them, show your face clearer than the quietest spring of water. Then there are long white sticks that make a soft light when they are lit. But the most beautiful things in the church are the pictures.”
“What are pictures?” asked Massea.
“Flat things that hang on the wall and look like people,” the stranger answered.
He stopped for a while after he had told all this. Massea and Docas did not say anything. By and by he said, “The fathers have been kind to us, so I have gone to live with them. I am a Mission Indian now.” After this Massea and Docas asked him many questions about how they lived.
Before he went away, Massea said to him, “I think I should like to be a Mission Indian. Are not any of the fathers coming over across the mountains?”
The strange Indian from Monterey said, “Yes, a little while ago a new father, called Father Pena, came to our Mission. He soon started over the mountains to begin a new Mission. He must be out in the valley somewhere now.”
After a while, Massea and Docas took up their baskets and started off. All the way home they kept talking about the Mission and what the Indian from Monterey had told them.