Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/367

 Juan looked into her pleading eyes, satisfying himself that something more than curiosity, that pride of which she had spoken, had prompted the unexpected opening of a question he had thought closed forever. He turned his face away, giving her no answer, leaving her trembling in the fear of his displeasure, which seemed so plainly expressed.

The last of the little girls were whirling in a ring beyond them in the court, chanting some childish game; Borromeo was in his door, letting down his sleeves, his face bright from the strong mission soap, making ready to close his shop for the day; Padre Ignacio was hurrying along the arcade toward the church, his head bent, his manner rapt as if he walked in a dream.

The evening bell, sounding in measured stroke: One; two; three. At the first note the little girls' hands broke the circle of their whirling dance, the little heads bowed, the little hands fluttered on bosoms, the devout lips moved in the quick words of earnest prayer; at the first stroke Borromeo bent his head, one sleeve up on his bare arm, and Padre Ignacio stopped suddenly, standing as still as the statue of St. Francis in his brown gown at the altar side. Gertrudis and Juan rose quickly to their feet, their handclasp broken, their heads bowed in prayer.

A moment so. And then the bell, quick, joyous; exulting, it seemed, in the call to weary men in the far fields that their day's work was done. The little girls ran laughing off down the arcade behind