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Blue Bonnet came up the steps of the long, low ranch house, and threw herself listlessly back in one of the deep veranda chairs.

“Tired, Honey?” Mr. Ashe asked, laying down his paper.

“Yes, Uncle Cliff. I—hate walking!”

“Then why not ride?”

Blue Bonnet was smoothing the ears of Don, the big collie who had followed her up on to the veranda, and now stood resting his fine head on her knee. “I—didn’t want to,” she answered, slowly, without looking up.

“See here, Honey,” said Mr. Ashe, leaning toward her, a note of inquiry in his deep, pleasant voice; “come to think of it, you haven’t been riding lately.”

“No, Uncle Cliff.” Blue Bonnet’s eyes were turned now out over the wide stretch of prairie before the house.

“Any reason, Honey?”

2 The girl hesitated. “Yes, Uncle Cliff.”

“Don’t you want to tell me it, Blue Bonnet?”

“No,” Blue Bonnet answered, slowly, “I don’t want to tell it to you. I—it’s because I’m—afraid.”

“Afraid! Blue Bonnet! That’s an odd word for an Ashe to use!”

“I know, Uncle Cliff; I reckon I’m not an Ashe—clear through.” Blue Bonnet rose hurriedly and ran down the steps. Around the house she went, and in through the back way to her own room. There she brushed the hot tears from her eyes with an impatient movement. “Oh, it is true,” she said to herself, “and I can’t help it. Oh, if I could only go away—I hate it here! Hate it! Hate it!”

Later, swinging in the hammock on the back veranda, she looked up suddenly as her uncle came to sit on the railing beside her. Something in his face and manner made her wonder.

“Blue Bonnet,” he said, abruptly, “we might as well have it out—right here and now—it’ll be the best thing for us both.”

Blue Bonnet sat up, pushing back her soft, thick hair. “Have it out?” she repeated.

“Blue Bonnet,” he answered, bending nearer, “suppose you tell me just what it is you would like to do? It wouldn’t take much insight to see that you aren’t very happy nowadays; and—well, I3 reckon your father wouldn’t want things going on as they’ve been—lately.”

The girl’s face changed swiftly. “Oh, I have been horrid, Uncle Cliff! But I—oh, I do so—hate it—here!”

“Hate it here! Hate the Blue Bonnet Ranch—the finest bit of country in the whole state of Texas!”

“I—hate the whole state of Texas!”

“Blue Bonnet!”

“I do. I want to go East to live. I—my mother was an Easterner. I want to live her life.”

“But, Honey, your mother chose to come West. Why, child,”—there was a quick note of triumph in the man’s voice—“it was your mother who named you Blue Bonnet.”

“I wish she hadn’t. It’s a—ridiculous sort of name—I would like to have been called Elizabeth—it is my name, too.”

“Elizabeth?” Mr. Ashe repeated. “It doesn’t seem to suit you nearly as well, Honey. All the same, if you like it. But Blue—Elizabeth, you know that this is your ranch, and that your father wanted you brought up to know all about it, so as to be able to manage things for yourself a bit—at a pinch.”

“I shall sell—as soon as I come of age.”

Mr. Ashe rose. “I reckon we’d best not talk any more now.”

4 “Uncle Clifford.” Blue Bonnet looked up. “Uncle Clifford, please don’t think it’s just—temper. I mean it, truly—I sha’n’t ever make a Westerner. I’m sorry—on your account. Still, it’s true—I hate it all—now,—everything the life out here stands for—and I want to go East. I—I don’t see why I shouldn’t choose my own life—for myself.”

Her uncle looked down into the upturned, eager face. “You seem to have gone over this pretty thoroughly in your own mind, Bl—Elizabeth.”

“I have, Uncle Cliff.”

“Well, you and I’ll talk things over another time; I’ve some business to see to now. I suppose things’ll have to go on, even if you do intend to sell—in six years.”

“I wish you’d try to see my side of it, Uncle Cliff.”

“I’m going to—after a while. Just now, I can’t get beyond the fact that you hate the Blue Bonnet Ranch. I hope your father doesn’t know it!” And Mr. Ashe turned away.

Below the house, leaning against the low fence enclosing the oblong piece of ground called “the garden,” Mr. Ashe found Uncle Joe Terry, ranch foreman, and his chief adviser in the difficult task of bringing up his orphan niece.

Uncle Joe was smoking placidly, his eyes on the wild riot of color which was one of the principal5 characteristics of Blue Bonnet’s garden. “Tell you what,” he said, as Mr. Ashe came up, “this here place needs weeding. Blue Bonnet ain’t been keeping an eye on Miguel lately.”

Blue Bonnet’s uncle stood a moment looking down at the neglected garden. “Yes,” he said, “and it’s not only the garden, Joe, that’s been left to itself lately.”

“She ain’t been out on Firefly this two weeks,” Uncle Joe commented. “What’s wrong, Cliff?”

“She wants to go East.”

“So that’s it? Well, I reckon it’s natural—wants to run with the other young folks, I suppose?”

“But—Joe, she says she hates—the ranch.”

Uncle Joe puffed at his pipe thoughtfully. “Hm—so she says that? She always was an outspoken little piece, Cliff.”

“She says, too, that she means to sell.”

“My lady must be a bit excited. Well, it won’t be to-morrow, Cliff, and a whole lot of things can happen in six years. You just give my lady her head; she’s looking to be crossed, and she’s all braced up to pull the other way. All you want to do is to go with her a bit.”

“It’s a pretty big proposition—sending her East,” Mr. Ashe said. “Oh, she’ll pick up a lot of tomfool notions, most likely,” Uncle Joe admitted, “and a whole heap of others that’ll come in6 mighty handy one of these days. You just send her ’long back to those folks of her mother’s and quit worrying.”

That night Mr. Ashe wrote a letter to Blue Bonnet’s grandmother. He said nothing to Blue Bonnet herself about it, however. Possibly Mrs. Clyde would not care to assume the charge of her granddaughter. In any case, it would be well to have the matter settled before mentioning it.

Then one evening, not a fortnight later, Uncle Joe, coming home from the little post-office town, twenty miles away, tossed him several letters.

“Postmarked Woodford,” the older man said. “Looks like sentence was about to be pronounced.”

Five minutes more and Mr. Ashe knew how hard he had been hoping against hope these last two weeks.

“Well?” Uncle Joe asked; and the other looked up to find him still sitting motionless in his saddle.

“They want her to come as soon as possible, so that she may be ready to start school at the beginning of the fall term.”

“Pretty good school back there?”

“Said to be—it’s the one her mother went to.”

“I reckon they’re tickled to death to have her come?”

“They seem pleased.”

“Blue Bonnet’s out in the garden,” Uncle Joe suggested.

7 Blue Bonnet was gathering nasturtiums when her uncle called to her from the gate at the upper end of the garden. He had two letters in his hand, and, as she reached him, he held them out. “They came to-night,” he explained. “They are in answer to one I wrote a short time ago.”

Blue Bonnet took them wonderingly, and, sitting on the ground, the great bunch of gay-colored nasturtiums beside her, she opened one of them. As it happened, it was the one from her Aunt Lucinda—a short letter, perfectly kind and sincere, but very formal. On the whole, a rather depressing letter, in spite of the answer it brought to her great desire.

Blue Bonnet refolded it rather soberly. “I wish,” she said, studying the firm, upright handwriting, “that I hadn’t read this one first. Grandmother’s must be different.”

It certainly was. A letter overflowing with the joy the writer felt over the prospect of Blue Bonnet’s coming. Through its magic the girl was carried far away from the little garden, from all the old familiar scenes. Dimly remembered stories her mother used to tell her of the big white house standing amidst its tall trees came back to her, and the vague hopes and dreams that had been filling her thoughts for weeks past began to take definite form.

And she was going there—back to her mother’s old home. She was to have the very room that had8 been her mother’s,—Grandmother had said so. It seemed too good to be true. She was glad, now, she had kept this letter to the last. And she would be going soon;—that thought, with its accompanying one of hurry and preparation, brought her back to the present.