Mariposa’s sixteen dollars a month had been augmented to twenty-eight by the accession of three new pupils. These had been acquired through Isaac Pierpont, who was glad to find a cheap teacher for his potential prima donnas, who were frequently lacking in the simplest knowledge of instrumental music. Mariposa was impressed and flattered by her extended clientele, and at first felt some embarrassment in finding that one of the pupils was a woman ten years older than herself. The worry she had felt on the score of her living was now at rest, for Pierpont had promised her his continued aid, and her new scholars professed themselves much pleased with her efforts. Her monthly earnings were sufficient to cover her exceedingly modest living expenses. The remnants of her fortune--the few dollars left after her mother’s funeral and the money realized by the sale of the jewelry and furniture that were the last relics of their _beaux jours_--made up the amount of three hundred and twenty dollars. This was in the bank. In the little desk that stood on a table in her room was the five hundred dollars in gold Shackleton had sent her. She had not touched it and never intended to, seeming to repudiate its possession by keeping it thus secret and apart from her other store. The time was wearing on toward mid-December. Christmas was beginning to figure in the conversation of Miguel and Benito, and with an eye to its approach they had both joined a Sunday-school, to which they piously repaired every Sabbath morn. They had introduced the question of presents in their conversations with Mariposa with such smiling persistence that she had finally promised them that, on her first free afternoon, she would go down town and price certain articles they coveted. The afternoon came within a few days after her promise, one of her pupils sending her word that she was invited out of town for the holidays, and her lessons would cease till after New Year’s. The pricing had evidently been satisfactory, for, late in the afternoon, Mariposa turned her face homeward, her hands full of small packages. It was one of the clear, hazeless days of thin atmosphere, with an edge of cold, that are scattered through the San Francisco winter. There is no frost in the air, but the chill has a searching quality which suggests winter, as does the wild radiance of the sunset spread over the west in a transparent wash of red. The invigorating breath of cold made the young girl’s blood glow, and she walked rapidly along Kearney Street, the exercise in the sharp air causing a faint, unusual pink to tint her cheeks. Her intention was to walk to Clay Street and then take the cable-car, which in those days slid slowly up the long hills, past the Plaza and through Chinatown.