They waited to hear no more, but walked quietly onward until they found shelter within the crumbling doorway of the brown, smoky adobe.
CHAPTER V.
AT CHURCH.
True to his Indian nature, Francisco made no further allusion to the episode with the missionary. After unharnessing Rosinante, he began searching for eggs. When he and Walter had found a couple of dozen, he placed them in an old tin pail and said:
"I will let the horse rest now for an hour, and then I must go to the spring for a barrel of water again. But first, if you like to come with me, I will take these eggs to the lady that lives in the doctor's house."
"Have you a doctor here?" asked Walter.
"Not now," Francisco hastened to say. "But once, for three years, we had. There was also a woman they called a matron to teach our women to sew and keep house. How funny that was—how funny! They would not give us our own teachers—the Sisters, or some Catholics. They sent us a teacher—who is kind, but who hates the Catholic religion—and another man and woman, the doctor and matron, who had nothing at all to do to earn their good salary of seventy-five dollars a month. It was too plain—that fraud—my uncle said, and so they took them away. But altogether they cost as much as would have kept ten sisters in the place."
They were passing the church now, and Walter said:
"See, Francisco, the window is open. It was not when my father and Nellie and I came up this morning."