“I have an excuse. I can’t tell it. Please don’t say anything more about it. I don’t think she’ll send for me.” “Well, well, perhaps you’ll tell me after a time. Meanwhile make yourself at home.” He was much puzzled, but reflected that Patience was not like other children; and he knew Mrs. Sparhawk’s commanding talent for making herself disagreeable. Still, he was shocked at her appearance; and as the day wore on and she would not meet his eye, but sat staring at the floor, his uneasy mind glimpsed ugly possibilities. At dinner she ate little and did not raise her eyes from her plate, although she made a few commonplace remarks. At four o’clock Billy, the buggy, and a farm hand stopped before the Custom House. The man handed a note to Lola, asking her to give it to Patience. The note read: You come home—hear? If you don’t, I’ll see that you do. M. SPARHAWK. Patience went out to the man, who still sat in the buggy. “Tell her,” she said, looking at Billy, “that I’m not going home,—not now nor at any other time. Just make her understand that I mean it.” The man stared, but nodded and drove off. XV At midnight Patience was awakened by a frantic clamour in the street. “Those dreadful Bohemians,” she thought sleepily, then sat up with thumping heart. “They say your name, _niña_, no?” said Lola, whose sonorous slumbers had also been disturbed. Patience slipped to the floor and looked through the window. The moon flooded the old town. The ruined fort on the hill had never looked more picturesque, the pines above more calm. In the hollow near the blue waters the white arms of Junipero Serra’s cross seemed extended in benediction. The old adobes were young for the hour. One might fancy Isabel Herrara walking down from the long house on the hill, her _reboso_ fluttering in the night wind, old Pio Pico, glittering with jewels, beside her. And in the wide street before the Custom House, surrounded by a hooting mob, the refuse of the saloons, was a cursing gesticulating woman. Her black hair was unbound, her garment torn. She flung her fists in the face of those that sought to hold her. “Patience Sparhawk!” she shrieked. “Patience Sparhawk! Come down here to your mother. Come down here this minute. Come, I say,” and a volley of oaths followed, greeted with a loud cackling laugh by the rabble. Patience saw Mr. Foord, clad in his dressing-gown, go forth. She flung on her clothes hastily and ran down the stair. Her mother and Mr. Foord were in the kitchen. “Oh, she’ll come back,” Mrs. Sparhawk was saying. “I’ll see to that. How do you like a row under your windows? Well, I’ll come here every night unless she comes home. You’ll put me in the Home of the Inebriates, will you? Think she’ll like to have that said of her mother when she’s grown up? Not Patience Sparhawk. I know her weak point. She’s as proud as hell, and I’m not afraid of going to any Home of the Inebriates.”