"She is Mexican--yes!" they nodded to one another, deriving much simple satisfaction from the circumstance. For was it not provocative of racial pride that one of their compatriots should be able to make tunes--actual tunes!--issue from those keys which responded to their own tentative touches merely with thin shrieks or a dull, rumbling note? "Lolita is like she was," remarked Alejandro Vigil to his sister on the morning of the Fourth of July, as they wandered around the common beyond the _arroyo_. This space of desert had an air of festive import, for unwonted celebrations of the day were forward. A pavilion roofed with green boughs had been built for the occasion, on the skirts of an oval course which was to be the ground of sundry feats of cowboy horsemanship, and of a foot-race between Piedro Cordova and the celebrated Valentino Cortés. There would be music, also, before long. Already the sound of a violin in process of tuning rang cheerfully through the open. The Declaration of Independence was to be read by the lawyer, who might be seen in the pavilion wiping his brow in anticipation of this exciting duty. A tribe of little girls, who were to sing national airs, were even now climbing into the muslin-draped seats of the lumber-wagon allotted them. It was to be a great day for Aguilar! People from Santa Clara and Hastings and Gulnare were arriving in all manner of equipages. Mexican vehicles made a solid stockade along the west of the track. In the upper benches of the pavilion were ranged the flower and chivalry of the town--the families of the mine boss, the liveryman, the lawyer, the schoolmaster and several visiting personages. Jane, in her gray gown, was among them; beside her sat Lola, with Edith May Jonas. "And did you think going away to school would make her different?" inquired Ana of her brother. "What should it do to her, 'Andro? Make her white like Miss Jonas? _Vaya!_ Lola is only a Mexican!" "She is not ashamed to be one, either!" cried Alejandro, accepting Ana's tacit imputation of some inferiority in their race. "And she is white enough," he added, regarding Lola as she sat smiling and talking, with the boughy eaves making little shadows across the rim of her broad straw hat. "Who said she was ashamed?" asked Ana, with suspicious suavity. "You hear words that have not been spoken. I tell you of your faults, _hermano mio_, because I love you!" Alejandro turned off in a sulk, and, leaving Ana to her own resources, went toward the place where the ponies and burros were tethered. It was comparatively lonely here, and Alejandro began to make friends with a disconsolate burro who was bewailing his fate in a series of lamentable sounds.