"Like the mother's," said Alessandro; on which Ysidro turned an astonished look upon Ramona, and saw for the first time that her eyes, too, were blue.
"Wonderful!" he said. "It is so. I never saw it;" and he wondered in his heart what father it had been, who had given eyes like those to one born of an Indian mother.
"Eyes of the sky," became at once the baby's name in the village; and Alessandro and Ramona, before they knew it, had fallen into the way of so calling her. But when it came to the christening, they demurred. The news was brought to the village, one Saturday, that Father Gaspara would hold services in the valley the next day, and that he wished all the new-born babes to be brought for christening. Late into the night, Alessandro and Ramona sat by their sleeping baby and discussed what should be her name. Ramona wondered that Alessandro did not wish to name her Majella.
"No! Never but one Majella," he said, in a tone which gave Ramona a sense of vague fear, it was so solemn.
They discussed "Ramona," "Isabella." Alessandro suggested Carmena. This had been his mother's name.
At the mention of it Ramona shuddered, recollecting the scene in the Temecula graveyard. "Oh, no, no! Not that!" she cried. "It is ill-fated;" and Alessandro blamed himself for having forgotten her only association with the name.
At last Alessandro said: "The people have named her, I think, Majella. Whatever name we give her in the chapel, she will never be called anything but 'Eyes of the Sky,' in the village."
"Let that name be her true one, then," said Ramona. And so it was settled; and when Father Gaspara took the little one in his arms, and made the sign of the cross on her brow, he pronounced with some difficulty the syllables of the Indian name, which meant "Blue Eyes," or "Eyes of the Sky."
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