Quite the most absorbing topic of conversation Monday was, of course, the coming visit to Quentina Jones.  
"But what is her name?" demanded Mr. Hartley at last, almost impatiently. "It isn't 'Quentina,' of course. I know that man who was here Sunday would never have named a daughter of his 'Quentina.'"
 
"Her name is 'Clorinda Dorinda,'" replied Genevieve. "She told us so in her letter; but she said she was always called 'Quentina.' I don't know why."
 
"Whew! I should think she would be," laughed Mr. Hartley. "Only fancy having to be called 'Clorinda Dorinda' whenever you were wanted!"
 
"Sounds like a rhyming dictionary to me," Tilly. "'Clorinda, Dorinda, Lucinda, Miranda,'" she chanted.
 
Mr. Hartley laughed, and walked off.
 
"Well, I'll leave her to you, anyhow, whatever she is," he called back.
 
"I'll bet he's just dying to go with us, all the same," whispered Tilly, .
 
Cordelia frowned, hesitated, then .
 
"Auntie says ladies don't bet," she observed, in her severest manner.
 
"Oh, don't they?" snapped Tilly; then she, too, frowned, and hesitated. "All right, Cordy—Cordelia; see that you don't do it, then," she concluded good-naturedly.
 
Monday was a very quiet day for the girls at the . Mrs. Kennedy had insisted from the first upon this. She said that the next two days would be quite exciting enough to call for all the rest possible beforehand. So, except for the usual watching of the boys' morning start to work, there was little but music, books, and letter-writing allowed.
 
Tuesday dawned clear, but very warm. The girls were all awake at sunrise, and were soon ready for the early breakfast. Almost at once, , they stowed themselves—with little crowding but much giggling—in the carriage, and called gayly to Carlos: "We're all ready!"
 
"Yes, we're all aboard, Carlos," cried Genevieve.
 
"Good, Señorita! It is ver' glad I am to see you so prompt to the halter," grinned Carlos. "Quien sabe?—mebbe I didn't reckon on corrallin' the whole bunch of you so soon!"
 
Genevieve laughed, even while she made a face.
 
"I'm afraid Carlos remembers that I was never on time, girls," she . "But you don't know, Carlos, what a of promptness I've become back East— since somebody gave me a watch," she finished, smiling into the old man's face.
 
"All ready!" grinned Carlos, climbing into his seat.
 
"Let's give our Texas yell," proposed Tilly, softly, as she looked back to see Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Hartley, and Mammy Lindy on the gallery steps. "Now count, Cordelia!"
 
And Cordelia did count. Once again her face expressed a tragedy of responsibility, and once again the resulting
 
"Texas, Texas, Tex—Tex—Texas!
Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
GENEVIEVE!"
was the glorious success it ought to have been. So to a responsive chorus of shouts, laughter, and hand-clapping, the Happy Hexagons drove away from the ranch house.
It was a pleasant drive, though a warm one. It did seem a little long, too, so anxious were they to reach their goal. The prairie sights and sounds, though interesting, were not so new, now. Even the two or three of cattle they met, and the groups of cowboys they saw across the prairies, did not create quite the excitement they always had created heretofore. Quentina and the minister's home were so much more interesting to think of!
 
"What do you suppose she'll be like?" asked Elsie.
 
"Quien sabe?" laughed Genevieve.
 
"There! what does that mean?" demanded Tilly. "I've heard it lots of times since I've been here."
 
"'Who knows?'" translated Genevieve, smilingly.
 
"Yes, who does know?" retorted Tilly, not understanding. "But what does it mean?"
 
Genevieve laughed .
 
"That's just what it means—'Who knows?' The Mexicans and the cowboys use it a lot here, and when I come back I get to saying it, too."
 
"I should think you did," Tilly. "Well, anyhow, let's talk straight English for a while. Let's talk of Quentina. What do you suppose she's like, girls?"
 
"Let's guess," proposed Genevieve. "We can, you know, for Miss Jones was too sick to tell us anything, and we haven't a thing to go by but Quentina's letter, and that didn't tell much."
 
"All right, let's guess. Let's make a game of it," cried Tilly. "We'll each tell what we think, and then see who comes the nearest. You begin, Genevieve."
 
"All right. I think she's quiet and tall, and very dark like a Spaniard," announced Genevieve, weighing her words carefully.
 
"I think she's bookish, and maybe stupid," declared Tilly. "Her letter sounded queer."
 
"I think she's little, and got yellow hair and light-blue eyes," said Bertha.
 
"I think she's got curls—black ones—and looks lovely in red," declared Elsie Martin.
 
"We can trust you, Elsie, to get in something about her clothes," chuckled Tilly.
 
"Well, I think she's got brown eyes like Genevieve's, and brown hair like hers, too," asserted Alma Lane.
 
"Now, Cordelia," smiled Genevieve, "it's your turn. You haven't said, yet."
 
"There isn't anything left for me to say," replied Cordelia, in a slightly worried voice. "You've got all the pretty things used up. I should just have to say I think she's fat and —and I don't think I ought to say that, for it would be a downright fib. I don't think she's that at all!"
 
There was a general laugh at this; then, for a time, there was silence while the carriage rolled along the prairie road.
 
Carlos had no difficulty in finding the home of the . Mr. Jones in Bolo. It proved to be a little house, unattractive, and very plain. It looked particularly forlorn with its bare little front yard, in which some one had made an attempt to raise nasturtiums and .
 
"Mercy! I guess we'll have to stand up in corners to sleep," gurgled Tilly, as the carriage stopped before the side door.
 
"Sh-h!" warned Genevieve. "Tilly, isn't it awful? Only think of our Quentina's living here!"
 
At that moment the door of the little house opened, and Mr. Jones appeared. From around his feet there seemed to tumble out upon the steps several boys of " sizes," as Tilly expressed it afterward. Then the girls saw her in the —Quentina. She was slender, not very tall, but very pretty, with large, dark eyes, and fine yellow hair that fluffed and curled all about her forehead and ears and neck.
 
"O Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons, welcome, welcome, Happy Hexagons!" breathed the girl in the doorway ecstatically, clasping her hands.
 
"Sounds almost like our Texas yell," Tilly, under her breath.
 
Genevieve was the first to reach the ground.
 
"Quentina—I know you're Quentina; and I'm Genevieve Hartley," she cried, before Mr. Jones had a chance to speak.
 
"Yes, this is Quentina," he said then, cordially shaking Genevieve's hand. "And now I'll let you present her to your young friends, please, because you can do it so much better than I."
 
They were all out now, on the ground, hanging back a little diffidently. It was this, perhaps, that made Cordelia think that something ought to be said or done. She came hurriedly forward as she caught Genevieve's eye and heard her own name called.
 
"Yes, I'm Cordelia, and I'm so glad to see you," she ; "and I'm so glad you're not fat and homely, too—er—that is," she corrected , "I mean—we didn't any of us get you right, you know."
 
"Get me—right?" Quentina opened her dark eyes to their fullest extent.
 
Cordelia blushed, and tried to back away. With her eyes she Tilly or Elsie to take her place.
 
It was Genevieve who came to the rescue.
 
"We'll have to own up, Quentina," she laughed. "On the way here we were trying to picture how you look; and of course we each had to guess a different thing, so we got all kinds of combinations."
 
"Yes, but we didn't get yours," chuckled Tilly, coming easily forward, with outstretched hand.
 
"Indeed we didn't," echoed Elsie, admiringly.
 
"Why, of course we couldn't," stammered Cordelia, still red of face. "We never, never could think of anything so pretty as you really are!"
 
Quentina laughed now, and raised hurried hands to hide the pretty red that had flown to her cheeks.
 
"Oh, you funny, funny Happy Hexagons!" she cried, in her sweet, Southern drawl.
 
Naturally there could be nothing stiff about the introductions, after that, and they were dispatched in short order, even to Mr. Jones's pulling the boys into line, and announcing:
 
"This is Paul, with the solemn face. And this grinning little chap is Edward—Ned, for short; and these are the twins, Bob and Rob."
 
"Are they both 'Robert'?" questioned Tilly, interestedly.
 
Mr. Jones smiled.
 
"Oh, no. Bob is Bolton, and Rob is Robert. The 'Rob and Bob' is Quentina's idea—she likes the sound of it."
 
"I told you!—she is a rhyming dictionary," whispered Tilly, in an aside that nearly convulsed the two girls that heard her.
 
Inside the house they all met "mother."
 
Mother, in spite of her foot, was a very forceful personality. She was bright and cheery, too, and she made the girls feel welcome and at home immediately.
 
"It's so good of you to come!" she exclaimed. "Poor Quentina has been shut up with me for weeks. But I'm better, now—lots better; and I shall soon be about again."
 
"I think it was very good of you to let us come," returned Genevieve, politely, "specially when you aren't well yourself. But we'll try not to make you any more trouble than we can't help."
 
"Trouble, dear child! I reckon we don't call you trouble," declared the minister's wife, , "after all your kindness to my daughter, Alice." Genevieve raised a protesting hand, but Mrs. Jones went on smilingly. "And then that letter to Quentina—she's never ceased to talk and dream of the girls who sent it to her."
 
"Oh, I did like it so much—indeed I did," chimed in Quentina. "Why, Genevieve, I made a poem on it—a lovely poem just like Tennyson's 'Margaret,' you know; only I put in 'Hexagons,' and changed the words to fit, of course."
 
Tilly nudged Elsie violently, and Elsie choked a spasmodic into a cough; but Quentina unhesitatingly went on.
 
"It began:
 
"'O sweet pale Hexagons,
O rare pale Hexagons,
What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight on a falling shower?
Why sent you, loves, so full and free,
Your letter sweet to little me?'
That's just the first, you know," smiled Quentina, engagingly, "and of course when I wrote it I didn't know you weren't really 'pale,' at all; but then, we can just call that part ."
Genevieve laughed . Tilly giggled. Cordelia looked from them to Quentina.
 
"I'm sure, that—that's very pretty," she .
 
Mrs. Jones smiled.
 
"I'm afraid, for a little, you won't know just what to make of Quentina," she explained laughingly. "We're used to her turning everything into , but strangers are not."
 
"Oh, mother, I don't," cried Quentina, reproachfully. "There's heaps and heaps of things that I never wrote a line of poetry about. But how could I help it?—that beautiful letter, and the Happy Hexagons, and all! It just wrote itself. I sent it East, too, to a magazine, two or three times—but they didn't put it in," she added, as an afterthought.
 
"Why, what a shame!" murmured Tilly.
 
Genevieve looked up quickly. Tilly was wearing her most innocent, mos............