Mrs. Clyde, sitting at her sewing in her own room, started in surprise as the front door was slammed violently, followed by a quick rush of feet on the stairs.

That the commotion could only be caused by Elizabeth was probable, but what was she doing home from school at this hour?

Going to Blue Bonnet’s room to inquire, she found her tossing the things about in her upper drawer in a wild search for something.

“Elizabeth!” she exclaimed.

“I can’t find my purse, Grandmother.” Blue Bonnet did not turn around.

“Your purse?”

“I want to send a telegram to Uncle Cliff. I—I’m going home.”

Mrs. Clyde sat down on the lounge. “You are going home!”

“Yes, Grandmother.” Blue Bonnet had found her purse at last, and was hurriedly counting its contents. “Uncle Cliff told me I had only to send word and—and—” Dropping suddenly into a chair, Blue Bonnet hid her face in her hands. The123 last barrier her pride had raised had fallen, broken down by that scene of the morning. Her one thought now was to go back. Back to the ranch, where there were no explanations to be made; no Miss Rankins to be displeased with one; no principals to be sent to. She hated it here in the East—hated the life and all it stood—Blue Bonnet caught herself up, remembering the last time she had used those same words.

“Elizabeth,” her grandmother asked, “what has happened?”

Blue Bonnet wiped her eyes impatiently. “Miss Rankin has behaved horridly; and I—came home; I’m never going back!”—the words came punctuated with sobs.

“And what had you done, Elizabeth, to occasion such behavior on the part of Miss Rankin?”

“I—intended to explain. She—wouldn’t listen. She said I—must go to—Mr. Hunt!” Blue Bonnet’s head went down again; the memory of that moment’s humiliation was too much for her.

“She sent you to Mr. Hunt, Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Grandmother; but I didn’t go—I came home.”

“But, Elizabeth, what could you have done, requiring such extreme measures? Come here and tell me about it.”

And Blue Bonnet obeyed.

124 Grandmother listened to the long, rather incoherent story in a silence that Blue Bonnet did not feel to be entirely condemnatory. For Grandmother had the blessed gift of seeing more than one side of a question. Knowing the girl’s inherited love of freedom, remembering her upbringing, she had not the heart to be too hard upon her. And yet, for the girl’s own sake, she could not be too easy.

“And so,” Blue Bonnet ended wearily, “I want to go home. I’m so tired of being ‘trained,’ Grandmother.”

“Tired of it, at fifteen, Elizabeth! When the training has only just begun! But you shall go back—if you really wish to—though the going must be done decently and in order; or you shall stay, and do that which in your heart you know to be right. The decision shall rest with yourself; but remember, Elizabeth, as you decide, so will your whole life be the weaker or the stronger for it.”

“But, Grandmother—even if I could—it’s too late.”

“It is not too late, Elizabeth.”

“Grandmother, I can’t do it!” Blue Bonnet sobbed.

“It will be hard, dear; I do not deny it.”

The girl moved restlessly. “I want to go home.”

“I have said that you may go, Elizabeth. But you are not the girl I think you, if you run away125 in that cowardly fashion. I am going to leave you to decide the matter here and now.”

In her own room, Mrs. Clyde waited rather anxiously for the issue. Whatever the decision, it was likely to be a speedy one. She was glad that Lucinda had chosen this day on which to go to Boston. Lucinda’s methods were a little too strenuous for a case of this kind.

Less than a quarter of an hour later, the front door slammed again. From the window, Mrs. Clyde caught a glimpse of a hurrying figure, a crimson tam-o’-shanter, even more awry than usual. She went back to her sewing with hands that trembled a little. Was it Mr. Hunt, or the telegraph office?

Just before the noon intermission, Mr. Hunt heard a low knock on his door. “Come in,” he called, wheeling round in his chair as Blue Bonnet entered.

“Good morning, Elizabeth,” he said. “Haven’t you been rather a long time getting here?” He had seen Miss Rankin at recess.

Something in his tone, in the grave kindly eyes, gave Blue Bonnet courage.

She came up to the desk. “I—I shouldn’t have come at all, if it hadn’t been for Grandmother. She—she said it would be—cowardly—not to.”

“Ah!” Mr. Hunt said.

“I was going home—to the ranch.”

126 “Rather than face me?”

“It was—the having to come.”

“Suppose you tell me why you had to come?”

“Because I—didn’t stay in yesterday, when Miss Rankin told me to.”

“Why didn’t you, Elizabeth?”

And Blue Bonnet, looking at him with a pair of very frank blue eyes, told him why,—very much as she had told her grandmother.

There was a short silence when she had finished; then Mr. Hunt said, “Elizabeth, do you suppose you are the only one who gets tired, very tired, of the confinement of school work—who longs for the open? What if we were all—Miss Rankin, all the teachers, myself—to drop everything, and go when the fancy seized us?”

“But I don’t,” Blue Bonnet answered; “I’ve never been before school closed, though it’s been pretty hard not to, some days.”

“Yesterday was not the first time you went before you had the right—even though school was over.”

“No,” Blue Bonnet admitted. “You—you know about the other time?”

“Yes.”

“But I made that up—and that first time—it didn’t seem very wrong. You see I’ve never been to school before I came to Woodford; and tutors aren’t very—strict. At least, mine weren’t.”

127 “How about the second time, Elizabeth? You must have known then.”

“I couldn’t stay,” Blue Bonnet answered. “I had to get out-of-doors. I think fifteen is rather too late to begin to go to school, after all.”

Mr. Hunt smiled a little. “It is because you are so unused to school routine, and school discipline that we have been very patient with you, Elizabeth. But things cannot go on as they have been doing. Do you want your class to go on without you? If they do, it will not be because you have not the ability but the will to keep up with them.”

“I never thought of that,” Blue Bonnet said.

“I want you to think of it very seriously. And now, what do you suppose I am going to do with you?”

Blue Bonnet caught her breath. Her ideas as to what a principal might or might not be expected to do under the circumstances, were indefinite—and a little disquieting. “I don’t know,” she said.

“I am going to put you on your honor not to disobey in this fashion again; and to try to conform more carefully to all the rules of the school,—which will include, most emphatically, being more punctual. Your record, in that respect, Elizabeth, is decidedly very far from what it should be.”

Blue Bonnet looked exceedingly sober. Being put on her honor meant all to the girl that Mr.128 Hunt had known it would. “I’ll promise, Mr. Hunt,” she said, after a moment or two.

Miss Rankin had had more than one inattentive pupil that forenoon. As the morning went by and Blue Bonnet did not reappear, excitement ran high among the “We are Seven’s.”

“Mean old thing!” Kitty telegraphed to Debby, behind their teacher’s back.

And Debby nodded agreement.

Just before afternoon school, Blue Bonnet came in and went straight to Miss Rankin’s desk. There was a straining of eyes and ears, but nothing was heard of the low conversation that followed. Then, for a moment, Miss Rankin laid a hand on Blue Bonnet’s shoulder,—a most unwonted demonstration.

A moment after, Blue Bonnet turned and came slowly down the aisle to her place.

“Where have you been, Elizabeth Ashe?” Kitty demanded.

“In various places,” Blue Bonnet answered.

“I was just thinking about organizing a relief expedition!”

“For whom?” Blue Bonnet asked. Almost harder than the going to Mr. Hunt had the coming back to class been for her. She had passed the noon hour by herself in the grove back of the129 schoolhouse, doing some of the hardest thinking she had ever done in her life.

The face she wore now was far too serious to suit Kitty’s ideas.

“Was he very—dreadful, Elizabeth?” she asked sympathetically.

“He was—not.”

“You know,” Kitty said thoughtfully, “Mr. Hunt can be rather—awful.”

“How do you know?” Blue Bonnet questioned.

Kitty turned to the rest. “Beginning to sit up and take notice,” she announced demurely.

Mr. Hunt met Miss Rankin in the corridor that afternoon and stopped to speak with her. “Well,” he said, “your young Texan appeared—eventually.”

“So I understand.”

“I don’t believe it will happen again. I have put her on her honor.”

“The best thing you could have done, I think.”

“Poor child!” Mr. Hunt said. “To use a simile peculiarly appropriate in her case, she is not taking very kindly to bit and bridle. Ease up a bit on her, when you can, Miss Rankin.”

“I intend to. Did you send her to me, Mr. Hunt?”

“To apologize? No. That was one of the things I left to her honor.”

130 “Quite safely, as it proved,” Miss Rankin answered. “She is a dear child. I think things will run more smoothly now.”

Blue Bonnet was rather late in getting home from school that afternoon, but two of those lessons had been made up.

At the door, her grandmother met her. “Elizabeth!”

Blue Bonnet looked up. “I reckon it’s all right, Grandmother.”

“You have seen Mr. Hunt, Elizabeth?”

“Yes, Grandmother; he was mighty kind.”

“I am very glad, Elizabeth; but where were you this noon?”

“In the grove. I didn’t want any lunch. Oh, dear!” Blue Bonnet looked up, struck by a sudden thought. “Were you worried, Grandmother?”

“I was a little anxious. You had left me in something of an uncertainty, you remember.”

“I reckon you knew how it would come out, Grandmother. I wonder will I ever learn to think of everything?”

“I think you are learning to think of a good many things, dear. Now you must have some lunch, and then go for a brisk walk.”

“I was going to study.”
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