The time was wearing on toward mid-December. Christmas was beginning to figure in the conversation of Miguel and Benito, and with an eye to its approach they had both joined a Sunday-school, to which they piously repaired every Sabbath morn. They had introduced the question of presents in their conversations with Mariposa with such smiling persistence that she had finally promised them that, on her first free afternoon, she would go down town and price certain articles they coveted. The afternoon came within a few days after her promise, one of her pupils sending her word that she was invited out of town for the holidays, and her lessons would cease till after New Year’s.
The pricing had evidently been satisfactory, for, late in the afternoon, Mariposa turned her face homeward, her hands full of small packages. It was one of the clear, hazeless days of thin atmosphere, with an edge of cold, that are scattered through the San Francisco winter. There is no frost in the air, but the chill has a searching quality which suggests winter, as does the wild radiance of the sunset spread over the west in a transparent wash of red. The invigorating breath of cold made the young girl’s blood glow, and she walked rapidly along Kearney Street, the exercise in the sharp air causing a faint, unusual pink to tint her cheeks. Her intention was to walk to Clay Street and then take the cable-car, which in those days slid slowly up the long hills, past the Plaza and through Chinatown.
She was near the Plaza, when a hail behind her fell on her ear, and turning, she saw Barron close on her heels, his hands also full of small packages. He had been at the mines for two weeks, and she could but notice the unaffected gladness of his greeting. She felt glad, too, a circumstance of which, for some occult reason, she was ashamed, and the shame and the gladness combined lent a reserved and yet conscious quality to her smile and kindled a charming embarrassment in her eye. They stood by the curb, he looking at her with glances of naïve admiration, while she looked down at her parcels. Passers-by noticed them, setting them down, she in her humble dress, he in his unmetropolitan roughness of aspect, as a couple from the country, a rancher or miner and his handsome sweetheart.
He took her parcels away from her, and they started forward toward the Plaza.
“Do you hear me panting?” he said, laying his free hand on his chest.
“No, why should you pant?”
“Because I’ve been running all down Kearney Street for blocks after you. I never knew any one to walk as fast in my life. I thought even if I didn’t catch you you’d hear me panting behind you and think it was some new kind of fire-engine and turn round and look. But you never wavered—simply went on like a racer headed for the goal. Did you walk so fast because you knew I was behind you?”
She looked at him quickly with a side glance of protest and met his eyes full of quizzical humor and yet with a gleam of something eager and earnest in them.
“I like to walk fast in this cold air. It makes me feel so alive. For a long time I’ve felt as though I were half dead, and you don’t know how exhilarating it is to feel life come creeping back. It’s like being able to breathe freely after you’ve been almost suffocated. But where did you see me on Kearney Street?”
“I was in a place buying things for the boys. I was looking at a drum for Benito, and I just happened to glance up, and there you were passing. I dropped the drum and ran.”