"I can read it in your eyes," he exclaimed, rapturously. "Oh, how happy that makes me!" And if Sister Anna's head had not appeared behind Nora's shoulder, there is no telling what might have happened.
He had brought the spring with him; mountain and valley both had clothed itself in brightest green, in which the bare brown spots on the Gabilan Range were really a relief to the satiated eye. In the deep clefts of the Loma Prieta lay the blackish shade of the chemasal, and only one degree less sombre appeared the foliage of the live-oak against the tender green of the fresh grass. Again did Nora all day long watch the sun lying on the mountains—a clear golden haze in the daytime; pink and violet, and purplish gray in the evening mist.
"Is it not beautiful?" she asked of Brother-in-law Ben, one evening, as he came up the street and entered the gate.
"You are just growing to like our Valley, I see; it is a pity that you should now be 'borne away to foreign climes.'"
"And who's to bear me away?" she asked, laughing, as they entered the house.
"Let me call Anna," he said; "we will have to hold family council over this."
In council he commenced: "Don Pedro has this day requested that I, his legal adviser, go South with him, to see that all papers are properly made out, all preliminaries settled, before he fairly takes possession of his land."
"Well?" queried Anna.
"Well, my dear, so much for his counsellor Whitehead. But to his friend Benjamin's family he has extended an invitation to accompany us on this trip, presuming that his friend's wife and sister-in-law would be pleased to see this much-praised Southern country."