For he saw a sight which, in the sparsely populated mountains of Santa Ana, would astonish any one. Orso and Jenny were dressed in their circus attire. The beautiful girl, clothed in pink tights and short white skirt, appearing so suddenly before him, looked in the firelight like some fairy sylph. Behind her stood the youth with his powerful figure, covered also with pink fleshings, through which you could see his muscles standing out like knots on the oak.
The old squatter gazed at them with wide-open eyes.
“Who are you?” he inquired.
The girl, relying more on her own eloquence than on that of Orso, began to speak.
“We are from the circus, kind sir! Mr. Hirsch beat Orso very much and then wanted to beat me, but Orso did not let him, and fought Mr. Hirsch and four negroes, and then we ran off on the plains, and went a long distance through the cacti, and Orso carried me; then we came here and are very hungry.”
The face of the old man softened and brightened as he listened to her story, and he looked with a fatherly interest on this charming child, who spoke with great haste, as if she wished to tell all in one breath.
“What is your name, little one?” he asked.
“Jenny.”
“Welcome, Jenny! and you, Orso! people rarely come here. Come to me, Jenny.”
Without hesitation the little girl put her arms around the neck of the old man and kissed him warmly. He appeared to her to be some one from the “good book.”