identical spot I sent him to.’

‘But, Dr. Paul, I’ll tell you what we could do,’ suggested Jack.  ‘If we get any kind of a start, we can’t fail to reach camp by seven or eight o’clock at latest.  Now it’s bright moonlight, and if we find Pancho, he’ll have the baggage unloaded, and Hop Yet will have a fire lighted.  What’s to prevent our swinging the hammocks for the ladies?  And we’ll just roll up in our blankets by the fire, for to-night.  Then we’ll get to housekeeping in the morning.’

This plan received a most enthusiastic reception.

‘Very well,’ replied the Doctor.  ‘If you are all agreed, I suppose we may as well begin roughing it now as at any time.’

You may have noticed sometimes, after having fortified yourself against a terrible misfortune which seemed in store for you, that it didn’t come, after all.  Well, it was so in this case; for just as Dr. Winship and the boys started out over the hillside at a brisk pace, an immense cloud of dust, some distance up the road, attracted their attention, and they came to a sudden standstill.

The girls held their breath in anxious expectation, and at length gave an irrepressible shout of joy and relief when there issued from the dense grey cloud the familiar four-horse team, with Daisy, Tule Molly, Villikins, and Dinah, looking as fresh as if they had not been driven a mile, tough little mustangs that they were.

A long conversation in Spanish ensued, which, being translated by Dr. Winship, furnished all necessary information concerning the delay.

S. D. M. F. H. N. stated that Pancho was neither faithless nor stupid, but was waiting for them on the camping-ground, and that as the goods were already packed in his wood-cart he would follow them immediately.  So the whole party started without more delay; Dr. and Mrs. Winship, Master Paul, Jack Howard, and the three girls riding in the wagon, while Geoffrey and Philip galloped ahead on horseback.

It was a long, dusty, tiresome ride; and Dicky, who had been as good all day as any saint ever carved in marble and set in a niche, grew rather warm, cross, and hungry, although he had been consuming ginger-snaps and apricots since early morning.  After asking plaintively for the fiftieth time how long it would be before dinner, he finally succumbed to his weariness, and dropping his yellow head, that was like a cowslip ball, in his mother’s lap, he fell asleep.

But the young people, whose eyes were not blinded by hunger and sleep, found more than enough to interest them on this dusty California road, winding as it did through grand old growths of trees, acres and acres of waving grain, and endless stretches of gorgeous yellow mustard, the stalks of which were five or six feet high, almost hiding from view the boys who dashed into the golden forest from time to time.

At the foot of the hill they passed an old adobe hut, with a crowd of pretty, swarthy, frowzy Mexican children playing in the sunshine, while their mother, black-haired and ample of figure, occupied herself in hanging great quantities of jerked beef on a sort of clothes-line running between the eucalyptus-trees.

The father, a wild-looking individual in a red shirt and enormous hat, came from behind the hut, unhitched the stout little broncho tied to the fence, gave the poor animal a desperately tight ‘cinch,’ threw himself into the saddle without touching his foot to the lumbering wooden stirrups, and, digging his spurs well into the horse’s sides, was out of sight in an instant, leaving only a huge cloud of dust to cover his disappearance.

‘How those fellows do ride!’ exclaimed Dr. Winship, savagely.  ‘I wish they were all obliged to walk until they knew how to treat a horse.’

‘Then they’d walk straight into the millennium,’ said Jack, sagely, ‘for their cruelty seems to be an instinct.’

‘But how beautifully they ride, too!’ said Polly.  ‘Mamma and I were sitting on the hotel piazza the other day, watching two young Spaniards who were performing feats of horsemanship.  They dropped four-bit pieces on the dusty road, and riding up to them at full speed clutched them from the ground in some mysterious way that was perfectly wonderful.  Then Nick Gutierrez mounted a bucking horse, and actually rolled and lighted a cigarette while the animal bucked with all his might.’

‘See that cunning, cunning muchachita, mamma!’ cried Bell; for, as they stopped at the top of the hill to let the horses breathe, one of the little Mexican children ran after them, holding out a handful of glowing yellow poppies.

She was distractingly pretty, with a beauty that is short-lived with the people of her race.  The afternoon sun shone down fiercely on her waving coal-black locks, and brought a rich colour to her nut-brown cheek; she had one little flimsy, ragged garment, neither long, broad, nor thick, which hung about her picturesquely; and, with her soft, dark, sleepy eyes, the rows of little white teeth behind her laughing red mouth, and the vivid yellow blossoms in her tiny outstretched hand, she was a very charming vision.

‘Como te llamas, muchachita?’  (What is your name, little one?) asked Bell, airing her Spanish, which was rather good.

‘Teresita,’ she answered, with a pretty accent, as she scratched a set of five grimy little toes to and fro in the dusty ground.

‘Throw her a bit, papa,’ whispered Bell; and, as he did so, Teresita caught the piece of silver very deftly, and ran excitedly back to the centre of the chattering group in front of the house.

‘How intense everything is in California!  Do you know what I mean, mamma?’ said Bell.  ‘The fruit is so immense, the cañons so deep, the trees so big, the hills so high, the rain so wet, and the drought so dry.’

‘The fleas so many, the fleas so spry,’ chanted Jack, who had perceived that Bell was talking in rhyme without knowing it.  ‘California is just the place for you, Bell; it gives you a chance for innumerable adjectives heaped one on the other.’

‘I don’t always heap up adjectives,’ replied Bell, with dignity.  ‘When I wish to describe you, for instance, I simply say “that hateful boy,” and let it go at that.’

Jack retired to private life for a season.

‘I’d like to paint a picture of Teresita,’ said Margery, who had a pretty talent for sketching, ‘and call it The Summer Child, or some such thing.  I should think the famous old colour artists might have loved to paint this gorgeous flame-tinted poppy.’

‘Not poppy,—eschscholtzia,’ corrected Jack, coming rapidly to the surface again, after Bell’s rebuke, and delivering himself of the tongue-confusing word with a terrible grimace.

‘I’m not writing a botany,’ retorted Margery; ‘and I can never remember that word, much less spell it.  I don’t see how it grows under such an abominable Russian name.  It’s worse than ichthyosaurus.  Do you remember that funny nonsense verse?—

“I is for ichthyosaurus,
Who lived when the world was all porous;
   But he fainted with shame
   When he first heard his name,
And departed a long while before us.”’

‘The Spaniards are more poetic,’ said Aunt Truth, ‘for they call it la copa de oro, the golden cup.  Oh, see them yonder!  It is like the Field of the Cloth of Gold.’

The sight would have driven a royal florist mad with joy: a hillside that was a swaying mass of radiant bloom, a joyous carnival of vivid colour, in which the thousand golden goblets, turned upward to the sun, were dancing, and glowing, and shaming out of countenance the purple and blue and pink masses which surrounded them on every side.

‘You know Professor Pinnie told us that every well-informed young girl should know at least the flora of her own State,’ said Jack, after the excitement had subsided.

‘Well, one thing is