The wagon had stopped. Well, it would be time enough to move when some one called. A dust-colored hound that slept at the corner of the house, stretched flat, as if moulded in relief from the soil upon which he lay, raised his head and pricked up one ear; then arose, as if reluctantly compelled to do the honors, and went slowly around the house. "Of course they've got a dawg; forty of 'em, like enough!" It was a girl's voice, pitched in a high, didactic key. "I guess I c'n make 'em understand, pappy; I'll try, anyway." She came around the house, and confronted Ricardo, who took his cigarette from his mouth, and looked at her gravely without moving. The senora turned her head slowly, and glanced over her shoulder. The girl smiled, displaying two rows of sound teeth shut tightly together. "How do you do?" she said, raising her voice still higher, and advancing toward the senora with outstretched hand. "I suppose you're Mrs. Gonsallies." The senora disentangled one arm slowly from her rebozo, and gave the newcomer a large, brown, cushiony hand. "This is my fawther," continued the girl, waving her left hand toward her companion; "sabby?" The man stepped forward, and confronted the senora. She looked at him gravely, and shook her head. He was a small, heavily bearded man, with soft, bashful brown eyes, which fell shyly under the senora's placid gaze. "She don't understand you, Idy," he said helplessly. The girl caught his hand, and squeezed it reassuringly. "Never mind, pappy," she said, lowering her voice; "I'll fetch her. Now, listen," she went on, fixing her wide gray eyes on the senora, and speaking in a loud, measured voice. "I--am--Idy Starkweather. This--is--my--fawther. There! Now! Sabby?" Evidently she considered failure to understand English a species of physical disability which might be overcome by strong concentration of the will. The senora turned a bland, unmoved face upon her son. The eyes of the newcomers followed her gaze. Ricardo held his cigarette between his fingers, and blew a cloud of smoke above his head. "She don' spik no Englis'," he said, looking at them mildly. The girl flushed to the roots of her hay-colored frizz of hair. "You're a nice one!" she said. "Why didn't you speak up?" Ricardo gave her another gentle, undisturbed glance. "Ah on'stan' a leetle Englis'; Ah c'n talk a leetle," he said calmly.