Mrs. Sanderson was most winning. She had come, she said, in search of good company for a drive. She was going to Pasadena for two yards of yellow ribbon. Was it not absolutely delightful to drive eight miles for a couple of yards of ribbon? Such irresponsible pleasure made one scorn philanthropy. Why should one desire to reconcile happy Hottentots to Parisian costume? Why be perpetually annoyed with grave and difficult questions, when all could be easily dismissed in a drive after ribbon? She lamented that she had not come to San Gabriel years ago, before there was so little to prolong. She was sure native Californians were born without nerves. It rested her more than a whole year at a sanitarium to look at Mariposilla. What a perfect beauty she was, this minute, in her red frock. She must gain at once the Doña Maria's consent and come for a drive. All must make haste, for it was criminal to lose one moment of the morning. Mariposilla, as usual, had stood unconsciously enthralled by Mrs. Sanderson's wonderful personality. The child had not understood the lady's ironic sallies, but the invitation to drive had been plain. Instantly the absent, incomprehensible look fled from her eyes; they seemed suddenly bathed in lambent joy, while an emotional radiance enveloped her form. Resembling the beautiful little creature after which she had been named, she appeared to dart through the sunshine, then to vanish in the doorway of the somber adobe, like a lost meteor. Her marvelous, unstudied motions seemed the reflection of fickle twilight. "Will she come back? or has she flown forever into an old legend of Spain?" Mrs. Sanderson demanded, tragically. "She will return as demure as a novitiate," I replied. A few moments later the truth of the statement was verified. The girl's first intense emotions had been forcibly quieted by her desire to be thought conventional. When she reappeared, prepared for the drive, she walked slowly, almost stiffly--"like a lady," the Sisters at the Convent would have said. She had donned a black jacket, that was fortunately too small and obliged to flare, exposing the little velvet girdle and a dash of scarlet that emulated coquettishly the breast of a robin. Her hair was carefully twisted into a girlish coil, while upon her head she wore a large, picturesque black hat. During the drive to Pasadena she was ecstatically solemn, and it was only when she turned her profile to reply almost in monosyllables to the ingenious questions of Sidney that I discovered how happy she was. Her cheeks had again assumed wonderful tints, occasioned by a renewed realization of her exalted privileges, and I could see that she was flattered beyond her most daring expectation. Sidney, usually so reticent, had suddenly maddened into an animated inquisitor. I observed that he never allowed his eyes to leave the girl's face, when she replied modestly to his volley of direct questions.