"You can't help asking her now," said Walter, looking very glum. "I never knew her to be so impolite and bold before."
"But Walter," said Nellie, "I meant for Ramona—may I call you Ramona?—to come and visit us, too. We are going to be great friends."
"Bold?" chuckled Alejandro, with a smile. "That makes me think of something. When I first went to Santa Clara I did not know English as well as I do now, although I had been at the Mission."
"With the Indians?" inquired Walter, thoughtlessly.
"With the Indians—yes," said Alejandro. "And why not? My mother put me there; it was a good place, and I liked the Sisters very much."
Walter looked mystified. Ramona hastened to explain. "When he was little," she said, "Alejandro did not live with us. I have been with my grandmother since my father died. Alejandro was a little baby then. Our mother sent him, when he was old enough, to the Mission."
"And then my sister found me," added the boy. "But for her I should never have come here or known my grandmother."
"Well, that is too long a story," said Ramona. "Maybe some other time you will hear it, but not now. What were you going to say before, 'Jandro?"
"About 'bold,'" replied her brother. "When I first went up there some English words were strange to me. Or, rather, I did not understand their different meanings. One day a big boy, a new one, too, said he did not like bold girls. 'I like every one to be bold,' I said. 'Girls are horrid when they are bold,' said he. 'Sometimes they have to be,' I said. 'Suppose a mountain lion should come, and a girl would have to save herself from him, and would shoot, though afraid—then she would be bold.' Oh, how he laughed; and he said, 'You mean brave, don't you?' And then he told me the difference."