At last, the joyous wedding-day came, and every one said, “What a tall, handsome señor is the bridegroom, and how very lovely the bride. The sun shines upon them and it will be a happy marriage.”
Soon after, they went to San Francisco, and Paul felt the old dream returning.
One day, as he walked through the market-place, he came to a vegetable stand. Behind it sat a sorrowful woman, with a sad, mild face, that woke the sleeping memories of his heart. “Mother!” he exclaimed, with a thrill of tenderness in his voice that raised the bowed head of the lonely one. She gave one look into the eyes that, once seen, could never be forgotten, and cried, “Paul! my son, my son!” and opening her arms, received upon her bosom the head of her long lost treasure.
How she wept, and smiled, and pressed him to her heart; then held him off, that she might gaze upon the dear handsome face.
Then they went home to the father, who was old and sick. He had lost strength and heart years ago, and they were very poor. “He has never held up his head,” so the mother said, “since our boy was taken from us.”
But that was all over; the lost was found; poverty, sorrow, and sickness fled with his presence.
He took the old father and mother home to Leota, who received them into her own heart; for, were they not his parents and hers?
At first the old vegetable woman stood a little in awe of her high-born daughter, but that soon melted away in the warmth of the dainty little Señora’s affection; and the father, mother, son, and daughter, lived all their lives together, a happy family, united in heart and mind by the silken bonds of a true, earnest affection.