It immediately appeared, however, that her servants did not require summoning; they were already there. The good creatures had merely driven round the turn of the road in the morning, waited until she had ridden off in the rain, and crept back again, hiding themselves discreetly in their quarters. Their idea had been to feed her as the ravens fed the prophet and to keep out of her sight, for they were on intimate terms with her temper and her tongue. When the house party enforced descended upon their mistress they had come boldly forth, rather giving themselves airs; what--they wanted respectfully to know--would she have done without them? So it fell out that two brisk and cheerful school-teachers and a forlorn widower and his shabby children and a couple of Stanford students and a personage in a limousine made philosophically merry beneath the roof which had fully intended to cover nothing but desolate grief and decent silence, and Ling plied happily between his table and his glowing range, his queue snapping smartly out behind him, and old Manuela built fires and made up beds in the guest rooms, and Estrada rode into San Luis Obispo to send telegrams to distracted families. When she went to bed at midnight Virginia had worked out something of her rebellion in weariness. She had resurrected toys for the pinched children, helped the school-teachers and the Stanford students to trim a tree for them and to decorate the big rooms with snowberries and scarlet _toyon_--spurred herself to a civil semblance of hospitality. As she fell asleep she was aware of a feeling she had sometimes had when she was a rather bad and turbulent child--that, having been good, unusually, laboriously good--something good should and must come to her. It came at sunrise, when Estrada wakened her, calling excitedly in front of her window. She slipped her feet into Indian moccasins and threw a _serape_ about her and padded down the long corridor and out on to the veranda. She heard people stirring as she passed the guest rooms; one of the children was whimpering with eagerness to be dressed and allowed to hunt for its Christmas stocking. Behind the _mayordomo_ stood a tall man in uniform: for one mad moment her heart stood still and her eyes dilated and blurred and the figure in khaki swam dizzily in the keen morning light. Then the old Spaniard stepped quickly forward and she saw that his eyes were wet. “_Gracias a Dios, Señorita_--it is a friend of _Señor Alejandrino_! At last he has come, over the sea and over the land, to bring you the message!” The stranger came slowly nearer, staring at her. She saw then that he was a young man, but he did not look young. His eyes were intolerably tired and tragic and he was weary with weakness. He blinked a little as he looked at her; it was as if the brightness of her eyes and mouth and the gay _serape_ hurt and dazed him. “You are--‘Ginger’?” he wanted gravely to know.