romance, and had only wavered between it and Senor Gonzalez,--which
she pronounced Seener Gon-zallies,--the other dark-eyed hero of the
book. Perhaps she pictured to herself her baby growing up into such
another lofty, black-plumed hidalgo as those whose magnificent
language and mustachios had so deeply impressed her. It was true
that she herself had pinkish eyes and white eyelashes, while her
husband was familiarly known as "Carrots,"--but what of that?

But he had a fall, this poor baby,--a cruel fall, from the
consequences of which no high-sounding name could save him; and then
presently the little mother died, and the father married again.

The boy's childhood had been a sad one, and all the happiness he had
known had been lately, since his elder brother married. Big,
good-natured Joe Pitkin, marrying the prettiest girl in the village,
had been sore at heart, even in his new-wedded happiness, at the
thought of leaving the deformed, sensitive boy alone with the
careless father and the shrewish stepmother. But his young wife had
been the first to say:

"Let Don Alonzo come and live with us, Joe! Where there is room for
two, there is room for three, and that boy wants to be made of!"

So the strong, cheerful, wholesome young woman took the sickly lad
into her house and heart, and "made of him," to use her own quaint
phrase; and she became mother and sister and sweetheart, all in one,
to Don Alonzo.

Now she stood looking at him, shaking her head, yet smiling.
"Don 'Lonzo, how can you behave so?" she asked. "This is the third