The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California

e thought. The proclamation of the Commodore Sloat has been pasted on all the walls of the town and promises that our grants shall be secured to us under the new government, that we shall el

, I do not doubt but they will take advantage of our ignorance, with their Yankee sharpness! I know them! Do not speak of them to me again. If it must be, it must; and at least I have

to the dark face which could expre

he fate of my country deeper heart. So long as they do not put their ugly bayonet

is part of my soul! But perhaps it is as well, for thou

; I love no one in

k and tapped the girl's f

on Fernando

my mo

n Perez? Nor any of the caballero

t comes as sweetly from on

uld have thee be the same. But do not hasten to leave me alone. Thou art so young! Thine eyes have yet the roguishness of youth; I would not see love flash it aside. Thy mouth is like a child's; I shall shed the saddest tears of my life the day it tremb

you. I am afraid I love to dance through the night and flirt my breath away better than I love the intellectual conversation of th

the languages thou hast learned from the Se?or Hartnell. Ay, my little one, nobody but thou wouldst dare to say thou care

ned the clasp of her arms and pressed her face close to her mother's. "Mamacita, darling,

ke to know. I thought thy ten

night Don Thomas Larkin gives a ball at his house to the officers of t

those men? Válgame Dios! A

will never go. We shall meet them everywhere-every night-every day. And my new gown, mamacita! The beautiful silver spangles! There is not such a gown in Monterey! Ay, I must go. And they say the Americans hop like puppies whe

can think-we must meet these insolent braggarts sooner or later. So I would not-" her cheeks blanched suddenly, she caught her daughter's face between her hands, and be

amed of lovers. "I love an American? Oh, my mother! A great, big, yellow-haired bear! When I want only to