"Yes, in the city; and she has six children." Her voice was raised a little, her nut-brown eyes looked into his with an unconscious appeal for sympathy, and her delicate nostrils quivered as in terror—which the bare recollection of the little heathens seemed to inspire her with.
"And did you live at her house?—have you neither father nor mother living?"
"Neither. How happy you must be—you have so kind a father and so good a mother—"
The "good mother" came in just then, shaking her best sack vigorously, and lamenting, in pointed words, the "ruination" of this expensive fur robe—calling a painful blush to Hetty's cheek as well as Frank's. The young man tried vainly to make it appear a pleasant joke. "Indeed, mother, you ought to look upon that piece of fur as a handsome New-Year's gift—you have my promise of a new fur sack as soon as I go to the city. And isn't my word good for a fur sack?" he asked, laughingly.
"Yes," said the good mother. "I know your extravagance well enough; but, to my notion, you can afford such things better after you've married Lolita, than before."
Frank bit his lips angrily, and turned away—but not before Hetty had seen the hot red that flushed his cheek.
Toward noon there was loud rejoicing on the porch, and Hetty, looking from her window, saw Mrs. Sutton welcoming a tall, dark-eyed girl of about twenty, whose companion—her brother, to all appearance—seemed several years her senior.
This girl, Lolita Selden, the daughter of an American father and a wealthy Spanish mother, was a fair specimen of the large class represented by her in California. Generous and impulsive, as all her Spanish half-sisters are, neither her piecemeal education, nor the foolish indulgence of the mother, had succeeded in making anything of her but an impetuous, though really kind-hearted woman. In the brother's darker, heavier face, there was less of candor and sympathy, and his figure—though he had all the grace and dignity of the Spaniard—was lacking in height and the breadth of shoulder that made Frank Sutton look a giant beside him.
It was some time before our heroine was introduced to the pair; not, indeed, till dinner was on the table, though Frank had repeatedly hinted to his mother that Hetty might not feel at liberty to make her appearance among them without being formally invited—to which he received the cheering response that "he was always botherin'."
When they met, it was hard to say whether Hetty was more charmed with Lolita's stately presence and simple kindness, or Lolita with Hetty's heroism. The brother, too, seemed lost in admiration of Hetty's heroic conduct or Hetty's pretty face—a fact which escaped neither Frank nor his mother, for she commented on it days afterward. "What a chance it would be for a poor girl like this 'ere one, if she could make a ketch of young Selden, and he married her!"