“I expected you, Miss Hinckley. You must help me as you did the Governor, if I need help. He is safe, is he not?” said Catalina.
“You expected me, you say? Well, that is a coincidence. Yes, child, the great Governor, author and scientific man is safe and unharmed. He is beyond the pale of the revolutionists. No great harm can attend; the great Divine Influence will protect him from physical destruction, but often his existence physically will be in danger of annihilation. Come, dear, tell me why you are out, and in what way I can serve you. We are both working to accomplish the same result,” said the beautiful Helen Hinckley, as she pressed the child’s soft white hands to her lips.
“I am out,” answered Catalina, “to look after several people; those who should be compelled to repent of their evil ways in this life, that others in a life to come may not be imposed upon by them.”
“So far,” said Helen Hinckley, “your answer is logical and full of feeling. But who are the people about whom you have reached such a conclusion?”
“The main person is ‘The Plunger from Kansas.’ He is in hiding and in disguise. He lingers and lingers in this city; yet it is hard to get him to the bar of justice.”
“That is true, child; there is a great mental magnet that holds him here in spite of himself. And if by some means he becomes a subject, he will walk up by his own free will and acknowledge the debt he owes to me and others, and will proffer the money. The day of reckoning is sure to come. Do not let the Plunger give you one moment of uneasiness, dear,” added Miss Hinckley.
“I am not uneasy. I am only anxious to get out of the body again; and I wish to serve his Honor all that is possible before I go,” was the rather serious reply of Catalina.
“You are unhappy, child. Why is it, when you are surrounded by every comfort, and are dearly beloved by his Honor? He could not love a child of his own any more. Do not wish to leave. I will be lonely when you are gone. And his Honor, I cannot say how badly he will feel. I do not like to see a little girl so serious.”
Helen Hinckley took the strange child on her lap as she concluded, and pressed her face to her bosom.
Catalina put her arms around her neck and as she kissed her fondly on the cheek, said: “Before I remembered, I was not serious; but I took spells of crying, and without any reason whatever I cried to be called Catalina Lehumada. Then on the day I went to sell flowers and saw the bad, bad man who caused me grief in the life gone by, I remembered. Señor Julio Murillo says he put a small bottle of ‘Memory Fluid’ near by, so I could not help inhaling the fumes, and that is what made me remember. Then I knew why I felt as I did about not being his little girl. It is enough to make any one serious to be born into a family in which there is no harmony whatever with one’s life. When I see the Plunger repentant, and hear Marriet Motuble confess her sins, and the man who made me faint, mend his ways, I will go, and return, I hope, into a sphere of harmony. There comes Marriet Motuble. I must follow her instead of her following me.”