Her ring at the bell brought the whole Garcia family to the door and the hall. A child of ten--the elder of the young Mrs. Garcia’s boys--opened it. He was in the condition of moisture and mud consequent on a game of baseball on the way home from school. Behind him crowded a smaller boy--of a cherubic beauty--arrayed in a very dirty sailor blouse, with a still dirtier wide white collar, upon which hung locks of wispy yellow hair. Mrs. Garcia, the younger, came drearily forward. She was a thin, pretty, slatternly, young woman, very baggy about the waist, and with the same wispy yellow hair as her son, which she wore in the popular bang. It had been smartly curled in the morning, but the damp had shown it no respect, and it hung down limply nearly into her eyes. Back of her, in the dim reaches of the hall, Mariposa saw the grandmother, the strange old Spanish woman, who spoke no English. She looked very old, and small, and was wrinkled like a walnut. But as she encountered the girl’s miserable gaze she gave her a gentle reassuring smile, full of that curious, patient sweetness which comes in the faces of the old who have lived kindly. The younger members of the family escorted the new arrival upstairs. She had seen her room before, had already placed therein her piano and many of her smaller ornaments, but its bleakness struck her anew. She stopped on the threshold, looking at its chill, half-furnished extent with a sudden throttling sense of homesickness. It was a large room, evidently once the state bedroom of the house, signs of its past glory lingering in the elaborate gilt chandelier, the white wall-paper, strewed with golden wheat-ears, and the marble mantelpiece, with carvings of fruit at the sides. Now she saw with renewed clearness of vision the threadbare carpet, with a large ink-stain by the table, the rocking-chair with one arm gone, the place on the wall behind the sofa where the heads of previous boarders had left their mark. “Your clock don’t go,” said the cherubic boy in a loud voice. “I’ve tried to make it, but it only ticks a minute and then stops.” “There!” said Mrs. Garcia, with a gesture of collapsed hopelessness, “he’s been at your clock! I knew he would. Have you broken her clock?” fiercely to the boy. “No, I ain’t,” he returned, not in the least overawed by the maternal onslaught. “It were broke when it came.” “He did break it,” said the other boy suddenly. “He opened the back door of it and stuck a hairpin in.” Mrs. Garcia made a rush at her son with the evident intention of administering corporal punishment on the spot. But with a loud, derisive shout, he eluded her and dashed through the doorway. Safe on the stairs, he cried defiantly: “I ain’t done it, and no one can prove it.” “That’s the way they always act,” said Mrs. Garcia despondently, pushing up her bang so that she could the better see her new guest. “It’s no picnic having no husband and having to slave for everybody.”