was an impressive pause. The women were too dumfounded to comment.
Never in the history of Monterey had such a thing happened before.

Faquita continued: "The girls sit down on the floor and cry. Dona Carmen
turn very white and go in the other room. Then La Tulita jump up and
walk across the room. The lashes fall down over the eyes that look like
she is California and have conquer America, not the other way. The
nostrils just jump. She laugh, laugh, laugh. 'So!' she say, 'my rich and
generous and ardent bridegroom, he forget the smocks of the donas. He
proclaim as if by a poster on the streets that he will be a bad husband,
a thoughtless, careless, indifferent husband. He has vow by the stars
that he adore me. He has serenade beneath my window until I have beg for
mercy. He persecute my mother. And now he flings the insult of insults
in my teeth. And he with six married sisters!'

"The girls just sob. They can say nothing. No woman forgive that. Then
she say loud, 'Ana,' and the girl run in. 'Ana,' she say, 'pack this
stuff and tell Jose and Marcos take it up to the house of the Senor Don
Ramon Garcia. I have no use for it.' Then she say to me: 'Faquita, walk
back to Dona Maria's with me, no? I have engagement with the American.'
And I go with her, of course; I think I go jump in the bay if she tell
me; and she dance all night with that American. He no look at another
girl--all have the eyes so red, anyhow. And Dona Maria is crazy that her
nephew do such a thing, and La Tulita no go to marry him now. Ay, that
witch! She have the excuse and she take it."

For a few moments the din was so great that the crows in a neighbouring
grove of willows sped away in fear. The women talked all at once, at
the top of their voices and with no falling inflections. So rich an
assortment of expletives, secular and religious, such individuality yet
sympathy of comment, had not been called upon for duty since the seventh
of July, a year before, when Commodore Sloat had run up the American
flag on the Custom-house. Finally they paused to recover breath.
Mariquita's young lungs being the first to refill, she demanded of
Faquita:--

"And Don Ramon--when does he return?"

"In two weeks, no sooner."

PART II

Two weeks later they were again gathered about the tubs.

For a time after arrival they forgot La Tulita--now the absorbing topic
of Monterey--in a new sensation. Mariquita had appeared with a basket of
unmistakable American und