The San Rosario Ranch

"Welcome her, all things youthful and sweet, Scatter the blossoms under her feet!"

The house was a large square building, simple and hospitable in appearance. A wide veranda ran about the four sides, heavily draped by climbing roses and clematis. There were indisputable evidences that visitors were expected. Old Tip, the dog, knew it as well as everybody else about the house. He had been routed out from his favorite spot on the sunny side of the piazza, by Ah Lam, who had given him a shower-bath of water and soap-suds, because he did not move away to make room for the scrubbing-brush which the white-clad Celestial plied vigorously. From earliest morning the inhabitants of the simple house had been busied in making it ready. The very kittens which played about the steps of the piazza had licked an extra gloss upon their shining coats in honor of the expected guest. Only Tip, the old hunting-dog, the spoiled child of the household, showed no interest in what was going on, and with a cynical growl trotted off to the woods behind the house, where he might sleep safe from all fear of interruption.

From the wide doorway, which stood hospitably open, stepped a lady. At the first sight of Barbara Deering, strangers were always strongly impressed with the indisputable fact that she was above and before all else a lady. A second look,--and people were sure to take one,--and it appeared that she was a young lady and a beautiful one. She was tall, above the height of ordinary women, and her carriage was remarkably erect and commanding. She walked with a quick, light step to the edge of the piazza, and raising one hand to shade her eyes from the rays of the setting sun, stood looking out across the wide garden. Her figure was like that of a Greek Diana, muscular and graceful, indicating great strength and endurance. The limbs were rounded but not languidly, as one saw by the arm, from which the sleeve had slipped back: it was white, firm, and hard. Her hands were large and shapely, the tips of the fingers red, and the texture of the skin showed that they were used to other work than that of the broidery-frame. Her head, with its crown of pretty, curling flaxen hair, was habitually held rather high, and her face wore an expression in which a certain natural hauteur and imperiousness seemed at war with a gentleness which was more the result of education than a natural trait. The forehead was wide and unlined, the eyes brown and clear, the nose straight, and the mouth small and rosy. The soft, white woollen gown, with its breast-knot of red roses, suited the young woman perfectly; and as she stood in the sunset light, a spray of climbing rose hanging overhead from the roof of the piazza, she made an unconscious picture of grace and loveliness.

At the sound of a wagon on the driveway a warm flush mantled her cheek and throat, and stepping to the door of the house she called out in a sweet, high voice, "Mamma, mamma! they are coming!"

A moment later and a large open vehicle came into sight, drawn by two swift mules, which were urged forward by the driver, a young man in whose face the traits of the girl on the piazza were reproduced, but somewhat roughly. On the seat behind the driver was seen a female figure closely enveloped in heavy travelling wraps, her features concealed by a thick veil. As the mules stopped before the entrance, the young woman on the piazza came forward with both hands outstretched, saying cordially but half shyly,--

"Dear Millicent, welcome to San Rosario! Are you very, very tired? Let me help you out."

So saying, Barbara Deering almost lifted the new arrival from the wagon, and with her strong arm supported her to a chair.

"Thank you so much!" said the new-comer, speaking with a slightly foreign accent, and lifting her veil; "and you are Barbara? I know you from your picture, only you are much prettier."

"Poor child, you must be terribly tired; you shall come and speak to mamma, and then you must go directly to your room and lie down. Hal, you will go down for Millicent's luggage?"

The young man nodded an assent, touched up his steeds, and the wagon disappeared down the red dusty road. The two young girls entered the house, Barbara leading the stranger to a large room on the upper story. In a low chair sat a small woman, with a face which must have once been beautiful, and which now shone with an expression of simple sincerity and kindliness. She held out her hand to Millicent, kissed her on both cheeks, and warmly bade her welcome to San Rosario. Millicent Almsford acknowledged the greeting with a courteous grace, and immediately after accepted Barbara's offer to show her to her room.

When the door was shut upon her, and she was for the first time in many days alone, she seated herself at the window, and leaning her head upon her hand, remained wrapped in thought. She had travelled from the coast of the Adriatic Sea to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, with no companion save her maid and her own painful thoughts. And now the long journeying was at an end, and she found herself in the far West, in California, amidst her kindred, all strangers to her save by tradition and some slight correspondence. She looked about the strange room. It was exquisitely neat and fresh, with its clean whitewashed walls and new blue Kidderminster carpet, its black-walnut "bedroom set," and comfortable lounge, which had been newly covered in her honor. On the bureau were blue and white mats and cushions, a toilet-set which Barbara's busy fingers had stolen time to make.

She marked all these little details, not one of which escaped her eyes, even to the embroidered towel-rack with her initials, and the worked motto, "Welcome home." Again she looked out from the window over a wide pleasant orchard, filled with heavily fruited peach and plum trees; over a garden gay with bright-hued flowers, and beyond to the everlasting hills which close about the happy valley wherein stands the house of the San Rosario Ranch. Numbers of oxen and cows were straying over the hills, with here and there groups of sheep cropping the sun-dried grass of the hills.

The landscape was a perfect symphony in brown. The round shiny hills were golden in color; the warm-hued earth in the ploughed fields and the meadows, whose crop of grass had long since been mowed, was of a deeper tint. The house stood in an oasis of green. A great hedge of rose-trees blushing with red blossoms marked the boundary of the flower-garden, irrigated with great care through the long summer months. The sun, low-hanging over the hilltops, suddenly dropped from sight; and as the room grew dim, Millicent shivered slightly, and turning from the window threw herself on the couch and lay there quite still, too tired even to weep out the pain and homesickness in her heart. A tap on the door was followed by the entrance of one of her trunks, brought in by two strong Chinamen, at whose coppery faces Millicent stared curiously. Six large boxes were placed in a row and unstrapped by the younger Chinaman, who, when he had completed his task, approached the stranger land said in a sympathetic voice, "Me solly you sick; Ah Lam bring tea-cup?" The white Celestial smiled benignantly and vanished, quickly reappearing with the promised cup of tea, which proved most grateful to the girl's tired nerves. The creature's sympathy and attention brought tears to her eyes; and when Barbara came in a few minutes later, to help her in unpacking, she found the traces of these tears on Millicent's cheeks.

"Do not try to dress for tea, dear; you are too tired. Where shall I find your dressing-case? You must let me take the place of your maid, now that she has left you so cruelly."

So talking pleasantly, Barbara unpacked the guest's dressing-bag, looked admiringly at the silver-topped bottles with "M. A." engraven upon them, the ivory brushes, and all the dainty et ceteras which were necessities to the foreign girl, with the long white hands and finger-nails which shone like pale pink conch-pearls.

"Thank you, if you would help me a little to-night, I shall quickly learn to do for myself. If you will look in that largest trunk, you may give me whatever gown lies at the top."

Barbara unfolded as she was bid a sea-green cashmere dress, in which the stranger quickly clad her slender figure. Manifold strings of tiny seed-pearls she wound about her white throat and wrists, performing all the details of her dressing with a careful precision which seemed part of her nature. The pink nails received an extra polish, though the tea-bell had twice summoned the inmates of the house to the evening repast. With a peculiarly graceful motion, like the undulation of a swift but quiet stream, she moved about the room and finally down the stairway to the dining-room below.

"Millicent, will you sit here, on my right? Hal shall have the pleasure of occupying the place beside you."

The speaker was the lady whose gentle, firm hand swayed the small realm of the San Rosario Ranch during the long absence of its master, Mr. Ralph Almsford.

Mr. Almsford had been a widower for the past ten years. On the death of his beloved wife, her mother Mrs. Deering had continued at his earnest request to make his house her home. Her two younger children, Barbara and Henry Deering, remembered no other home, and it seemed but natural to them that they should continue to live with their brother-in-law. The family life was a particularly happy one, and the tie between Ralph Almsford and the Deerings was closer than that which exists between many blood relations.

The advent of the young heiress Millicent Almsford, the half-sister of Ralph, was an event of great importance in the household, and had been eagerly anticipated by Mrs. Deering and her daughter for several weeks. Henry Deering--or as he was always called Hal--displayed an absolute indifference concerning the "strange girl" who was coming to make her home among them for a year. What Ralph Almsford felt about his guest no one of the household could divine. He was a quiet, reticent man, entirely absorbed in his business, which of late had often taken him from home for months at a time. He had written to his half-sister, urging her to visit the ranch; and his letter, the first one of the kind she had ever received, had so moved the girl that she had telegraphed her departure, and forthwith started on her long journey.

Her brother met her in San Francisco, where they passed one day together,--a business engagement calling him away on the morrow, as he hoped for a few days only.

Millicent took the place assigned her by Mrs. Deering, and supper was enlivened by conversation about the journey she had just achieved, which she described as the most terrible ordeal that it was possible for a human being to undergo. The guest was entirely at her ease, though her position might have been to many people an embarrassing one. Arriving alone in a household of near connections, who were as yet absolute strangers to her, and with whom it had been decided that the next year of her life should be passed, most girls in her place would have experienced some sensation of awkwardness; but Millicent was entirely mistress of the situation. She spoke principally to Hal Deering, a jolly-looking fellow of twenty-five, who puzzled her with the bits of dialect, perfectly unintelligible to her, which he introduced into his conversation.