"Hola! Raquelita mia! There is plenty to pay for masses; your priests always want money for that sort of thing. Since you look after my soul, I pay for the prayers when I have good luck."
Raquel arose from where she knelt at the little altar in the corner.
"Oh, is that where you are? What need to pay the priests when you do enough praying for an army?"
She smiled absently, but did not speak. He stood watching her as she brushed her mass of dark, slightly waving hair.
"Let your woman do that," he said at last, with perfunctory solicitude. "It tires your arm, and I don't want you tired to-day. There is a picnic, and we should go."
"Which of our friends make it?"
"It is Doña Maria Downing, who, as our one neighbor down the country, wants to add to the entertainment Los Angeles gives you. It is to make peace with the bishop, I think; at least, so it looks. He is invited. You can help them to be friends. Is that not the duty of us both as good Catholics?"
She halted in her task and looked at him quietly. He was plainly set on being very agreeable, for some reason; too seldom had he mentioned their faith but to scoff at the rigid rules of his mother and his wife.
"You want it very much," she said; "but why? You do not care at all for Doña Maria's personal peace with the bishop. That can be arranged without a picnic to the hills. It only needs that they give back, of their own free will, that which belongs to the Church, and make a confession that it was wrongly held."
"If you would only talk to her of this graciously, instead of demanding it," persisted Rafael, gently, "much could be effected. Doña Angela thinks for certain—"