“The girls just sob.  They can say nothing.  No woman forgive that.  Then she say loud, ‘Ana,’ and the girl run in.  ‘Ana,’ she say, ’pack this stuff and tell Jose and Marcos take it up to the house of the Senor Don Ramon Garcia.  I have no use for it.’  Then she say to me:  ’Faquita, walk back to Dona Maria’s with me, no?  I have engagement with the American.’  And I go with her, of course; I think I go jump in the bay if she tell me; and she dance all night with that American.  He no look at another girl—­all have the eyes so red, anyhow.  And Dona Maria is crazy that her nephew do such a thing, and La Tulita no go to marry him now.  Ay, that witch!  She have the excuse and she take it.”

For a few moments the din was so great that the crows in a neighbouring grove of willows sped away in fear.  The women talked all at once, at the top of their voices and with no falling inflections.  So rich an assortment of expletives, secular and religious, such individuality yet sympathy of comment, had not been called upon for duty since the seventh of July, a year before, when Commodore Sloat had run up the American flag on the Custom-house.  Finally they paused to recover breath.  Mariquita’s young lungs being the first to refill, she demanded of Faquita:—­

“And Don Ramon—­when does he return?”

“In two weeks, no sooner.”

PART II

Two weeks later they were again gathered about the tubs.

For a time after arrival they forgot La Tulita—­now the absorbing topic of Monterey—­in a new sensation.  Mariquita had appeared with a basket of unmistakable American underwear.

“What!” cried Faquita, shrilly.  “Thou wilt defile these tubs with the linen of bandoleros?  Hast thou had thy silly head turned with a kiss?  Not one shirt shall go in this water.”

Mariquita tossed her head defiantly.  “Captain Brotherton say the Indian women break his clothes in pieces.  They know not how to wash anything but dish-rags.  And does he not go to marry our Dona Eustaquia?”

“The Captain is not so bad,” admitted Faquita.  The indignation of the others also visibly diminished:  the Captain had been very kind the year before when gloom lay heavy on the town.  “But,” continued the autocrat, with an ominous pressing of her lips, “sure he must change three times a day.  Is all that Captain Brotherton’s?”

“He wear many shirts,” began Mariquita, when Faquita pounced upon the basket and shook its contents to the grass.

“Aha!  It seems that the Captain has sometimes the short legs and sometimes the long.  Sometimes he put the tucks in his arms, I suppose.  What meaning has this?  Thou monster of hypocrisy!”

The old women scowled and snorted.  The girls looked sympathetic:  more than one midshipman had found favour in the lower quarter.

“Well,” said Mariquita, sullenly, “if thou must know, it is the linen of the Lieutenant of La Tulita.  Ana ask me to wash it, and I say I will.”