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Rh "It would be a good thing if we too had a bit of music now and then," Juan Canito would grumble; "but the lad's chary enough of his bow on this side the house."

"Ho! we're not good enough for him to play to!" Margarita would reply; Like master, like servant,' is a good proverb sometimes, but not always. But there's a deal going on, on the veranda yonder, besides fiddling!" and Margarita's lips would purse themselves up in an expression of concentrated mystery and secret knowledge, well fitted to draw from everybody a fire of questions, none of which, however, would she answer. She knew better than to slander the Señorita Ramona, or to say a word even reflecting upon her unfavorably. Not a man or a woman there would have borne it. They all had loved Ramona ever since she came among them as a toddling baby. They petted her then, and idolized her now. Not one of them whom she had not done good offices for,—nursed them, cheered them, remembered their birthdays and their saints'-days. To no one but her mother had Margarita unbosomed what she knew, and what she suspected; and old Marda, frightened at the bare pronouncing of such words, had terrified Margarita into the solemnest of promises never, under any circumstances whatever, to say such things to any other member of the family. Marda did not believe them. She could not. She believed that Margarita's jealousy had imagined all.

"And the Señora; she'd send you packing off this place in an hour, and me too, long's I've lived here, if ever she was to know of you blackening the Señorita. An Indian, too! You must be mad, Margarita!"

When Margarita, in triumph, had flown to tell her that the Señora had just dragged the Señorita Ramona up the garden-walk, and shoved her into her