The San Rosario Ranch

by Maud Howe Elliott

When the door was shut upon her, and she was for the first time in many days alone, she seated herself at the window, and leaning her head upon her hand, remained wrapped in thought. She had travelled from the coast of the Adriatic Sea to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, with no companion save her maid and her own painful thoughts. And now the long journeying was at an end, and she found herself in the far West, in California, amidst her kindred, all strangers to her save by tradition and some slight correspondence. She looked about the strange room. It was exquisitely neat and fresh, with its clean whitewashed walls and new blue Kidderminster carpet, its black-walnut "bedroom set," and comfortable lounge, which had been newly covered in her honor. On the bureau were blue and white mats and cushions, a toilet-set which Barbara's busy fingers had stolen time to make.

She marked all these little details, not one of which escaped her eyes, even to the embroidered towel-rack with her initials, and the worked motto, "Welcome home." Again she looked out from the window over a wide pleasant orchard, filled with heavily fruited peach and plum trees; over a garden gay with bright-hued flowers, and beyond to the everlasting hills which close about the happy valley wherein stands the house of the San Rosario Ranch. Numbers of oxen and cows were straying over the hills, with here and there groups of sheep cropping the sun-dried grass of the hills.

The landscape was a perfect symphony in brown. The round shiny hills were golden in color; the warm-hued earth in the ploughed fields and the meadows, whose crop of grass had long since been mowed, was of a deeper tint. The house stood in an oasis of green. A great hedge of rose-trees blushing with red blossoms marked the boundary of the flower-garden, irrigated with great care through the long summer months. The sun, low-hanging over the hilltops, suddenly dropped from sight; and as the room grew dim, Millicent shivered slightly, and turning from the window threw herself on the couch and lay there quite still, too tired even to weep out the pain and homesickness in her heart. A tap on the door was followed by the entrance of one of her trunks, brought in by two strong Chinamen, at whose coppery faces Millicent stared curiously. Six large boxes were placed in a row and unstrapped by the younger Chinaman, who, when he had completed his task, approached the stranger land said in a sympathetic voice, "Me solly you sick; Ah Lam bring tea-cup?" The white Celestial smiled benignantly and vanished, quickly reappearing with the promised cup of tea, which proved most grateful to the girl's tired nerves. The creature's sympathy and attention brought tears to her eyes; and when Barbara came in a few minutes later, to help her in unpacking, she found the traces of these tears on Millicent's cheeks.

"Do not try to dress for tea, dear; you are too tired. Where shall I find your dressing-case? You must let me take the place of your maid, now that she has left you so cruelly."

So talking pleasantly, Barbara unpacked the guest's dressing-bag, looked admiringly at the silver-topped bottles with "M. A." engraven upon them, the ivory brushes, and all the dainty et ceteras which were necessities to the foreign girl, with the long white hands and finger-nails which shone like pale pink conch-pearls.

"Thank you, if you would help me a little to-night, I shall quickly learn to do for myself. If you will look in that largest trunk, you may give me whatever gown lies at the top."

Barbara unfolded as she was bid a sea-green cashmere dress, in which the stranger quickly clad her slender figure. Manifold strings of tiny seed-pearls she wound about her white throat and wrists, performing all the details of her dressing with a careful precision which seemed part of her nature. The pink nails received an extra polish, though the tea-bell had twice summoned the inmates of the house to the evening repast. With a peculiarly graceful motion, like the undulation of a swift but quiet stream, she moved about the room and finally down the stairway to the dining-room below.

"Millicent, will you sit here, on my right? Hal shall have the pleasure of occupying the place beside you."

The speaker was the lady whose gentle, firm hand swayed the small realm of the San Rosario Ranch during the long absence of its master, Mr. Ralph Almsford.

Mr. Almsford had been a widower for the past ten years. On the death of his beloved wife, her mother Mrs. Deering had continued at his earnest request to make his house her home. Her two younger children, Barbara and Henry Deering, remembered no other home, and it seemed but natural to them that they should continue to live with their brother-in-law. The family life was a particularly happy one, and the tie between Ralph Almsford and the Deerings was closer than that which exists between many blood relations.