e thee again." She buried her face in her hands and sobbed
aloud.

The little acolyte tried to comfort her, but with such abstraction of
manner and inadequacy of warmth that she hastily removed his caressing
hand.

"But why? What has happened?" he asked eagerly.

The girl's manner had changed. Her eyes flashed, and she put her brown
fist on her waist and began to rock from side to side.

"But I'll not go," she said viciously.

"Go where?" asked the boy.

"Oh, where?" she echoed, impatiently. "Hear me, Francisco; thou knowest
I am, like thee, an orphan; but I have not, like thee, a parent in the
Holy Church. For, alas," she added, bitterly, "I am not a boy, and
have not a lovely voice borrowed from the angels. I was, like thee, a
foundling, kept by the charity of the reverend fathers, until Don Juan,
a childless widower, adopted me. I was happy, not knowing and caring who
were the parents who had abandoned me, happy only in the love of him who
became my adopted father. And now--" She paused.

"And now?" echoed Francisco, eagerly.

"And now they say it is discovered who are my parents."

"And they live?"

"Mother of God! no," said the girl, with scarcely filial piety. "There
is some one, a thing, a mere Don Fulano, who knows it all, it seems, who
is to be my guardian."

"But how? tell me all, dear Juanita," said the boy with a feverish
interest, that contrasted so strongly with his previous abstraction that
Juanita bit her lips with vexation.

"Ah! How? Santa Barbara! an extravaganza for children. A necklace of
lies. I am lost from a ship of which my father--Heaven rest him--is
General, and I am picked up among the weeds on the sea-shore, like Moses
in the bulrushes. A pretty story, indeed."

"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Francisco, enthusiastically. "Ah,
Juanita, would it had been me."

"THEE!" said the girl bitterly,--"thee! No!--it was a girl wanted.
Enough, it was me."

"And when does the guardian come?" persisted the boy, with sparkling
eyes.

"He is here even now, with that pompous fool the American alcalde from
Monterey, a wretch who knows nothing of the country or the people, but
who helped the other American to claim me. I tell thee, Francisco, like
as not it is all a folly, some senseless blunder of those Americanos
that imposes upon Don Juan's simplicity and love for them."

"How looks he, this Americano who seeks thee?" asked Francisco.

"What care I how he looks," said Juanita, "or wh