ee seemed sometimes
a-flutter with doves and dovelings. Here and there, between the houses,
were huge baskets, larger than barrels, woven of twigs, as the eagle
weaves its nest, only tighter and thicker. These were the outdoor
granaries; in these were kept acorns, barley, wheat, and corn. Ramona
thought them, as well she might, the prettiest things she ever saw.

"Are they hard to make?" she asked. "Can you make them, Alessandro? I
shall want many."

"All you want, my Majella," replied Alessandro. "We will go together to
get the twigs; I can, I dare say, buy some in the village. It is only
two days to make a large one."

"No. Do not buy one," she exclaimed. "I wish everything in our house
to be made by ourselves." In which, again, Ramona was unconsciously
striking one of the keynotes of pleasure in the primitive harmonies of
existence.

The tule house which stood nearest to the dove-cote was, by a lucky
chance, now empty. Ysidro's brother Ramon, who had occupied it, having
gone with his wife and baby to San Bernardino, for the winter, to work;
this house Ysidro was but too happy to give to Alessandro till his own
should be done. It was a tiny place, though it was really two houses
joined together by a roofed passage-way. In this passage-way the tidy
Juana, Ramon's wife, kept her few pots and pans, and a small stove.
It looked to Ramona like a baby-house. Timidly Alessandro said: "Can
Majella live in this small place for a time? It will not be very long;
there are adobes already made."

His countenance cleared as Ramona replied gleefully, "I think it will be
very comfortable, and I shall feel as if we were all doves together in
the dove-cote!"

"Majel!" exclaimed Alessandro; and that was all he said.

Only a few rods off stood the little chapel; in front of it swung on
a cross-bar from two slanting posts an old bronze bell which had once
belonged to the San Diego Mission. When Ramona read the date, "1790," on
its side, and heard that it was from the San Diego Mission church it had
come, she felt a sense of protection in its presence.

"Think, Alessandro," she said; "this bell, no doubt, has rung many times
for the mass for the holy Father Junipero himself. It is a blessing to
the village. I want to live where I can see it all the time. It will be
like a saint's statue in the house."

With every allusion that Ramona made to the saints' statues,
Alessandro's desire to procure one for her deepened. He said nothin