A few lounging "Excelsior" boys were equally astonished to see Jovita's red rose crest and black mantilla glide by, and followed her unvarying smile and jesting salutation up to the shadow of the crumbling portal.
At vespers nearly all Buckeye, hitherto virtuously skeptical and good-humoredly secure in Works without Faith, made a point of attending; it was alleged by some to see if Jovita's glossy Indian-inky eyes would suffer aberration in her devotions.

But the rose-crested head was never lifted from the well-worn prayer-book or the brown hands which held a certain poor little cheap rosary like a child's string of battered copper coins.

Buckeye lounged by the wall through the service with respectful tolerance and uneasy shifting legs, and came away.

But the apparently simple event did not end there.

It was unconsciously charged with a tremendous import to the settlement.