Page:Helen Hunt--Ramona.djvu/330

324 from what it is if you only see her in a chapel. Oh, I could never be very unhappy with her in my room!”

“I would almost go and steal it for you, Majella,” cried Alessandro, with sacrilegious warmth.

“Holy Virgin!” cried Ramona, “never speak such a word. You would be struck dead if you laid your hand on her! I fear even the thought was a sin.”

“There was a small figure of her in the wall of our house,” said Alessandro. “It was from San Luis Rey. I do not know what became of it,—if it were left behind, or if they took it with my father's things to Pachanga. I did not see it there. When I go again, I will look.”

“Again!” cried Ramona. “What say you? You go again to Pachanga? You will not leave me, Alessandro?”

At the bare mention of Alessandro's leaving her, Ramona's courage always vanished. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, she was transformed from the dauntless, confident, sunny woman, who bore him up as it were on wings of hope and faith, to a timid, shrinking, despondent child, crying out in alarm, and clinging to the hand.

“After a time, dear Majella, when you are wonted to the place, I must go, to fetch the wagon and the few things that were ours. There is the raw-hide bed which was Father Peyri's, and he gave to my father. Majella will like to lie on that. My father believed it had great virtue.”

“Like that you made for Felipe?” she asked.

“Yes; but it is not so large. In those days the cattle were not so large as they are now: this is not so broad as Señor Felipe's. There are chairs, too, from the Mission, three of them, one almost as fine as those on your veranda at home. They were given to my father. And music-books,—beautiful parchment