Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party
the ranch than it had been at Woodford. She liked to steal quietly out of the nursery and go adventuring before breakfast; she felt then like Blue Bonnet the fourteen-year-ol
arlier in the spring, had gathered great armfuls of blue bonnets from over in the south meadow. Now when she found herself away from the house, skirting San Franciscito in an eager chase for a butterfly, she could have
mother always sat at the head of the breakfast table, and her sweet "h
e?ora is not well,
t was unheard of. In her impetuous rush from the room Blue Bonnet almost colli
he Se?ora prefers to
I never knew Grandmother to be ill
The Se?ora is not so young
that her head ached and she didn't care for any breakfast. Debby, too, had kept her bed, declaring that she couldn't bear shoes on her poor lacerate
urried through the meal and ridden off, no one knew where. Blue Bonnet was not conversational; everything in her world se
l restraint, a resolution was forming in Amanda's mind, and at the conclusion of the meal
to study,
this decision. "I'll help y
ded out surprise. "Then you don't mind
you didn't," Amanda replied
iff. This time the object of her deep and bitter feeling was-herself. She had been rude to a guest in her own house. She had seen one of her best friends risk her life and had made no move to prevent it. She had been the cause of her grandmother's receiving a shock which, at her time of life, might prove ve
e Navajo under the big magnolia. "It's no use,-I reckon it's the same old
object-but grasped it instead. It was a book; opening her tear-wet reddened eyes Blue Bonnet saw that it was a volume of her grandm
well-worn volume, her thoughts more on the owner of the book than on its author. All at once her glance was caught and held by something that seem
ask thee for
may not disa
triving I ma
discern with
and may equal
ctise more than
conduct ma
relenti
purpose d
ated thy
a poet, have so exactly voiced the thought
sk thee for n
ay not disapp
d not hear a foot-fall, nor did she look up until Uncle Cliff exclaimed, "All alone, Honey? That doe
gain; but not soon enough for the trac
on the rug beside her now, and with a hand under her
. "Uncle Cliff, do you find
it was lucky no one else had heard that question. "S
straight and true.' I was so proud last winter when you said I'd proved I was an Ashe, clear
against a prairie-dog that if you've a yellow streak it's pure
e Cliff. It was my fault that Kitty was hurt yesterday. It's my fault Grandmo
eem to come in bunches, Honey, but you have to dispose of them one at a time. Why, it's hardly a year since a girl about your size-a bit younger she was, but she
ue Bonnet. Her face was buried again. "Do
how she reckoned that three hundred years would never make an Easterner of her, a
I do,
the time. It's best not to worry over spilt milk till you see it's made a grease-spot. Ten to one the cat will lick it up,-and it's a
ons I've heard sound like that last piece of mine-'variations on one theme'-and the theme is Duty with a big
at-awful
by something odd in his tone
f the earth," he
what
rch,-how fresh and sweet, a sky turned upside down-? It's the glory of the ranch, Honey. And what the
ds like the Duchess in 'Alice in
ng my education, young lady, since you b
it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appea
said, "and I hope you'll
d,-quite as tall, he thought, as her mother had been when she came a bride to
nk my 'indigo fit,' as Alec calls the blues, has faded to a pale az
ming on, I shall quote th
ed cosily on the bed at her feet the penitent poured out all her discouragement of the morning, and r
eptress, hearing Amanda's French verbs, or helping to discover the perplexing value
"that Blue Bonnet and Kitty have had a tif
hat after the third fa
too many times to doubt it. There are always three fires-the last th
ly. "I shouldn't like to believe it anyway, for it keeps you alw
gospel," Ama
that of the pacifier, pouring the oil of tactful words on troubled waters, or averting the wrath of either by a watchfulness that never relaxed. Just how much was due