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