Boyd was in two minds about claiming that dance—it wouldn’t do the little Texan any harm to be called down; but when the time came, he presented himself before Blue Bonnet, outwardly as smiling as usual.

“Would you mind if we sat it out?” she asked.

Boyd looked his surprise; she had not been sitting out any of the other dances, and again that uneasy feeling came over him. “As you like, of course,” he answered, leading the way to the old bench under a big apple tree just outside.

“I wanted to tell you,” Blue Bonnet began at once,—“I’ve thought it all over, and it doesn’t seem fair not to tell you—that I know about—”

Boyd’s quick glance of astonishment, even though she felt it to be half assumed, made it hard to go on.

“About your Sargent paper,” she added determinedly.

“Is that to be wondered at? It is down on the board with the rest.”

“I think you know what I mean. You know that those notes you dropped the other day belonged to Alec.”

396 “Upon my word, that is—”

“And that the subject you used was really the one he was using.”

“Aren’t you taking a good deal for granted?” Boyd broke in; she should not have it all her own way.

“You know what I say is so,” Blue Bonnet insisted. “Those were Alec’s notes, the subject was his, and all at once he gave up sending in a paper. It’s very plain.”

“It has not occurred to you that Alec might have given me those notes?”

“Then, in that case, you would not have looked so—ashamed, while you were picking them up.”

Boyd sprang to his feet, his face crimson. “I don’t wonder they sent you East to be taught—manners!”

It was Blue Bonnet’s turn to crimson, but she held back the retort trembling at the edge of her tongue; she had come out there to tell Boyd Trent what she knew, and she had told him. It was inconceivable that a Trent—the General’s grandson, and Alec’s cousin—should have done this thing.

“I only wish you were a boy!” Boyd said.

“I’d like well to be—for a few moments,” Blue Bonnet answered, turning away.

Boyd did not follow her; instead he wandered off to the lower end of the yard, out of sight of the lantern-lighted barn, but not out of hearing of the397 fiddle played by Amanda’s Uncle Dave. Leaning against the old stone wall, the boy stared miserably out over the broad moonlit meadow.

The worst of it was that he did not know what Blue Bonnet would do now. As things were, it would be just his luck for that paper to take a prize. It ought to, considering how carefully Alec had prepared those notes; there had been very little left for him to do, beyond putting them together. He wouldn’t have bothered about writing a paper at all—what did he care for Woodford customs?—except that his grandfather had seemed to expect it, and he wanted to keep on the right side of his grandfather—for various reasons. Alec shouldn’t have left the notes lying around, he knew he had been hunting for a subject; and anyhow, they were only notes—taken from books; he wouldn’t have thought of taking a real paper. There would have been plenty of time for Alec to get up another one; it was the sort of thing he liked doing. If only Blue Bonnet had not—Alec could have been depended on not to tell; he had not referred to the matter since—Boyd moved impatiently; that brief interview between his cousin and himself was one of the things he preferred to forget.

It was all a horrid mess whatever way you looked at it; he would be mighty glad when school closed; next fall he should be going back to his own school; he never wanted to see Woodford again.

398 In the meantime, he supposed that Amanda girl was wondering where her partner for this last dance was? She would have to wonder, that was all.

They were finishing the dance as he went back to the barn. Amanda received his murmured apology about a sudden headache in indignant silence; she didn’t believe he had a headache.

More than once, during the ride home, Boyd felt Kitty’s inquisitive eyes upon him. “Why aren’t you singing with the rest of us?” she demanded at last.

“I’d rather listen.”

“You didn’t look as if you were doing even that,” Kitty remarked.

Alec glanced at his cousin; something had happened during that sitting out.

“Don’t let’s wait to talk,” Susy urged; “we’ll be home before we know it now. Mrs. Parker, mayn’t we go around the long way? It’s such a beautiful night.”

But Mrs. Parker vetoed this request; the short way ’round was fully long enough in her opinion.

Two or three days later, Blue Bonnet came in after school waving a letter. “I met the carrier! It’s from Uncle Cliff! He expects to get here by the twelfth. He will be here in two weeks! And then in ten days school will be out!” Blue Bonnet waltzed Solomon about the room excitedly.

399 There was a litter of sewing about the sitting-room; Blue Bonnet was to take her summer things back with her, and Grandmother insisted on having a share in the making of them. Being fitted by Grandmother was much pleasanter than being fitted by Mrs. Morrow, Blue Bonnet thought; she didn’t fill her mouth full of pins, and then sigh if one so much as stirred.

Not that there were no fittings to be gone through with at the old-fashioned house at the further end of the village; Mrs. Morrow was making the new white dress for “Closing Day” right now, and Blue Bonnet was due in her little trying-on room right now, too.

“To think that it’s only two weeks!” Blue Bonnet looked about the sitting-room a little soberly; would she be homesick for it after she got back to the ranch? The great living-room there was not much like this, certainly.

“Only a matter of weeks,” Aunt Lucinda said, dislodging Solomon from the piece of muslin, where he had suddenly elected to take a nap.

Blue Bonnet’s face sobered even more; if only they wouldn’t care so much. “Uncle Cliff thinks Chula had better go out to Darrel’s for the summer,” she went on. “And, oh, Grandmother! He’s going to give me a week in New York before we go West!”

“That will be fine!” Mrs. Clyde said, her400 thoughts going back to the Spring afternoon when the other Elizabeth had sat there on that same lounge telling of certain plans, a letter from Texas in her hand.

“I think, Blue Bonnet,” Aunt Lucinda suggested, “that Mrs. Morrow will be wondering where you are.”

“You’d think she give that up by now, wouldn’t you?” Blue Bonnet remarked. “But she always looks just as surprised as if it was the first time I’d kept her waiting. Come on, Solomon, you may go, too,—but you are not to chase the cat, remember.”

The “We are Seven’s” received the news of Mr. Ashe’s expected arrival with mingled pleasure and regret. “It isn’t that we mind his coming, if it didn’t mean your going,” Kitty explained, linking her arm through Blue Bonnet’s.

“I suppose,” Ruth said, “that if you asked him your prettiest, he would let you stay on through the summer.”

“That’s one of the things you’re not likely to find out,” Blue Bonnet laughed.

The seven were out in full force to welcome Mr. Ashe. “May I have her this time?” he asked Kitty.

“I reckon we’ll have to lend her to you—for the summer,” Kitty answered; “but you’ll have to promise first to get her back before school opens.”

401 “Woodford appears to agree with you, Honey,” Mr. Ashe said, as the club left them at the gate. He stood a moment before opening it. It was over five months since he had seen her. She had grown taller in the five months; taller, and a bit older. “I suppose one of these trips I shall come back and find you quite grown up,” he said.

Blue Bonnet’s laugh was reassuring. “Not as long as I can help it! Tell me about everything, Uncle Cliff! It doesn’t seem believable that in just a little while now I’ll be going back. They’ll be glad to see me, won’t they?”

“Uncle Joe intimated pretty plainly that if I came back without you this time he wouldn’t hold himself responsible for anything that might happen.”

“One thing, there won’t be anything changed!”

Uncle Cliff’s eyes twinkled.

“And please, Uncle Cliff, you’ll ask Grandmother the first thing? I want that settled. There she is in the garden; Aunt Lucinda’s out.”

“Haven’t you asked her, Honey?”

“I waited till you came; I didn’t want to give her too much time for thinking it over in.”

“It is really very good of you to be glad to see me,” Mr. Ashe said, as Grandmother came forward to meet him, “considering that this time I do not ‘go back alone.’”

“I have been telling myself that turn and turn402 about is only fair play,” Mrs. Clyde answered; “and that the fall is not so far off.”

“Please, Grandmother,” Blue Bonnet’s tone was most insinuating, “it won’t take you very long to get ready?”

“‘To get ready’?” Mrs. Clyde repeated.

“Why, to go with us. Uncle Cliff and I have been hoping and planning for that this ever so long; but I didn’t tell you before, because I didn’t want you to have time to think up objections in. There aren’t any really, you know.”

Grandmother sat down on one of the garden benches, looking from Blue Bonnet to Mr. Ashe in a surprise too great for words.

“It would be so lovely,” Blue Bonnet sat down beside her; “for us, I mean, and we would try to make it as pleasant as possible for you. You see, I never knew, until I came East, how much I needed a grandmother.”

“The need was mutual,” Grandmother said softly.

“And you could keep me from slipping back into the old spoilt ways; you could see that I did my mending and practising, and only took coffee at Sunday morning breakfast—”

Mrs. Clyde smiled. “At least, I should be on hand to bring you back with me in the fall;” and suddenly, Texas did not seem as far away as it had. Lucinda wanted to go abroad this summer—the403 only drawback had been leaving her mother alone. She would like to see the Blue Bonnet Ranch, where the other Elizabeth had been so happy during those few years of her married life. And it would mean too the not parting with Blue Bonnet for the summer.

“I will think it over,” she said.

“But that is just what I didn’t want you to do,” Blue Bonnet protested. “Please, couldn’t you promise first?”

“Couldn’t you?” Mr. Ashe said. “Blue Bonnet and I have certainly set our hearts on this; and I have a rooted objection to having our young lady disappointed—unnecessarily.”

“There comes Aunt Lucinda, I hear Solomon’s bark!” Blue Bonnet jumped up. “May I go and tell her it’s all settled, Grandmother?”

“You may go and tell her what it is we are trying to settle,” Mrs. Clyde laughed.

Miss Lucinda approved of the plan thoroughly. “I think it would be a delightful trip for you, Mother,” she said.

“And next year, maybe you won’t be wanting to go abroad, Aunt Lucinda,” Blue Bonnet said; “then you and Grandmother can both come out to the ranch.”

“Perhaps.” Miss Lucinda agreed.

After supper, Blue Bonnet and her uncle went for a ride. “Chula’ll miss me,” Blue Bonnet404 said, patting the glossy neck; “she’s the dearest horse.”

“And Firefly will be mighty glad to see you. Listen, Honey, I’ve been cogitating. Don’t you want to take one or two of those girls along with you for the summer? You must be sort of used to having girls to run with by now.”

“Uncle Cliff! Oh, I would love that!”

“Kitty, I suppose—who else?”

“Kitty would be most fun. And Sarah’s been—you don’t know how good Sarah Blake was to me a while back, Uncle Cliff!”

“How about telling me, Honey?”

Mr. Ashe listened to the rather sketchy story she told him, filling in the outlines from his knowledge of her. When she finished, he leaned nearer, laying a hand over hers. “Sarah’s going out to the ranch with us if I have to kidnap her.”

The thought of Sarah being kidnapped sent Blue Bonnet off into a fit of laughter. “But,” she said presently, “it wouldn’t do, really, to pick and choose like that. The others would feel ever so hurt. They’re ‘We are Seven’s’ too.”

“Then we’ll corral the whole bunch. There’s room enough for them on the ranch, and if there isn’t, the one adjoining is in the market.”

“I wish we could! They’ve all been so nice to me, and we’ve had such good times together. But I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

405 “I thought it was a copy-book maxim that nothing was impossible.”

“You haven’t lived ten months in Woodford, Uncle Cliff.”

“The first thing is—whether you really want them all to go?”

“Indeed I do!”

“Then the next thing to do is to see how your grandmother feels about it. It may strike her as a pretty big proposition.”

“Grandmother won’t mind—she likes young people about. And if she says yes, I suppose you will allow their fathers and mothers some voice in the matter?”

“As a matter of courtesy, it might be as well to,” Mr. Ashe laughed. “How about your neighbor; I thought it was settled that he was to have a taste of ranch life?”

“Alec! Oh, he would like that. It would do him a lot of good. His cousin is going abroad for the summer, to stay with his people.”

It was Aunt Lucinda who looked dubious when this latter plan was explained. “Wouldn’t it mean too much responsibility for you, Mother?” she asked.

“But please,” Blue Bonnet exclaimed, “we’d try not to trouble Grandmother one bit; she wouldn’t have to do anything for us; and we’d be as good as gold. Why, most of the time, she wouldn’t know we were on earth.”

406 “My dear—” Aunt Lucinda began.

“That would hardly be a very satisfactory state of mind to be in,” Mrs. Clyde said; she smiled down into Blue Bonnet’s eager face. “I should hate to be the one to deprive any of the young people of such a summer’s outing. And the fact that I am going may make it the easier for you to secure their parents’ consents.”

“Thank you so much!” Blue Bonnet said joyously; and Aunt Lucinda reflected that it was very improbable they would all be allowed to go.

“The first one who makes you a bit of trouble you send to me, ma’am,” Mr. Ashe said.

“They would hate that so!” Blue Bonnet laughed. “But none of us would dream of bothering Grandmother. And it’s all settled beautifully! We’ll look like a party of Raymond’s Tourists, won’t we? And now I can tackle those dreadful exams with a clear mind. They begin to-morrow.”

Blue Bonnet found Alec in his garden the next morning before breakfast. “Uncle Cliff’s coming over to see General Trent by and by,” she said. “Guess what for?”

Alec’s gray eyes lightened, as if before them he already saw the wide open sweep of the prairie. “Oh, I say!” he cried.

“Grandmother’s going!”

“Good!”

“And—Uncle Cliff says that it is only fair to407 prepare you—all the girls, if we can manage it.”

Alec stood the shock bravely. “It’ll prove an eye opener for Sarah.”

“It’ll be like having seven sisters, won’t it—for you?”

“I’ve always understood,” Alec laughed, “that the only boy in a large family of girls got a lot of waiting on and spoiling.”

“You think your grandfather will say yes?”

“I’m not much afraid of his saying no,” Alec answered.

The six girls were the next to be told. “This isn’t the official invitation,” Blue Bonnet explained, as they sat in a little group under a tree in the school yard—she had started for school good and early that morning; “Uncle Cliff and I are going visiting this afternoon, but I wanted you to be prepared—so you wouldn’t say no instead of yes when your mothers asked if you would like to go.”

The wonder of it was holding even Kitty speechless.

“If we could—” Ruth sighed at last.

“Do you want us to go—very, very much, Blue Bonnet?” Debby asked.

“I do.”

“Then,” Debby nodded confidently at the others, “it’s as good as settled. Blue Bonnet always gets what she wants—if she wants it hard enough.”

408 And............