"Only father," she said. "That is his pet name for me—'My Springtime.'"
"You know," he said, "the story you told me of the naming of Spring street; how Ord, the surveyor, named it for his sweetheart, whom he called 'Mi Primavera,' is incomplete. Tell me, if you know, did he eventually marry the beautiful Senorita Trinidad de la Guerra?"
"I have often wondered that, myself," she said. "Whether they were married or not—what a gallant, romantic thing it was for him to do."
"And how few know the story!" he added.
"What dreams he must have had for the upbuilding of that street he named for the one he loved," she said. "I imagine he little thought it was to become a business street, that he thought of it always as lined with quaintly beautiful Spanish homes, shaded and quiet, with couples strolling along it at twilight and rest and contentment everywhere."
"That was his dream," he agreed. "The dream of a practical man—a surveyor and a soldier."
"And after all," she said, "is it as you said once that it is only in books and plays that dreams come true?"
Her chin resting in her hand, she gazed out the small chintz bordered window of the room, preoccupied. He noticed the daintiness of her profile, the placid sweetness of her face in repose.
The silence was broken by a rap on the door that startled him.
"Come in," she called.