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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch, by
+Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter, Illustrated by Frank J. Murch
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch
+
+
+Author: Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2008  [eBook #25578]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR
+RANCH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25578-h.htm or 25578-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/7/25578/25578-h/25578-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/7/25578/25578-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR RANCH
+
+by
+
+ELEANOR STUART
+
+Illustrated by Frank J. Murch
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "REDDY WAS RIGHT THERE EVERY TIME"
+
+(_See page 113_)]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Boston      L. C. Page &
+Company     Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1913
+by L. C. Page & Company
+(Incorporated)
+All rights reserved
+
+First Impression, April, 1913
+Second Impression, January, 1914
+
+The Colonial Press
+C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+    I. AUNT SOPHRONIA                                         1
+
+   II. PLANS FOR TEXAS                                       12
+
+  III. THE COMING OF GENEVIEVE                               28
+
+   IV. ON THE WAY                                            44
+
+    V. THE BOYS PREPARE A WELCOME                            61
+
+   VI. CORDELIA SEES A COWBOY                                72
+
+  VII. THE RANCH HOUSE                                       86
+
+ VIII. THE MISTRESS OF THE SIX STAR RANCH                    99
+
+   IX. REDDY AND THE BRONCHO                                110
+
+    X. CORDELIA GOES TO CHURCH                              121
+
+   XI. QUENTINA                                             137
+
+  XII. THE OPENING OF A BARREL                              157
+
+ XIII. THE PRAIRIE--AND MOONLIGHT                           171
+
+  XIV. A MAN AND A MYSTERY                                  185
+
+   XV. THE ALAMO                                            201
+
+  XVI. TILLY CROSSES BRIDGES                                215
+
+ XVII. "BERTHA'S ACCIDENT"                                  225
+
+XVIII. THE GOLDEN HOURS                                     235
+
+  XIX. HERMIT JOE                                           248
+
+   XX. THE NEW BOY                                          260
+
+  XXI. GENEVIEVE LEARNS SOMETHING NOT IN BOOKS              278
+
+ XXII. A TEXAS "MISSIONARY"                                 296
+
+XXIII. GENEVIEVE GOES TO BOSTON                             307
+
+ XXIV. A BROWN DRESS FOR ELSIE                              324
+
+  XXV. "WHEN SUNBRIDGE WENT TO TEXAS"                       339
+
+ XXVI. A GOOD-BY PARTY                                      349
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+  "REDDY WAS RIGHT THERE EVERY TIME" (_See page 113_)  _Frontispiece_
+
+  "A TALL, SLENDER GIRL ... APPEARED AT A CAR DOOR"          30
+
+  "'FOLLOW ME--QUICK!' HE ORDERED"                          181
+
+  "'THERE, NOW--LOOK!' SHE ADDED"                           207
+
+  "'HOW DO YOU DO, MR. OLIVER HOLMES,' SHE BEGAN"           265
+
+  "IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A WALK, THE WOMAN SAID, AS
+      SHE GAVE DIRECTIONS"                                  320
+
+
+
+
+The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AUNT SOPHRONIA
+
+
+The Reverend Thomas Wilson's sister, Miss Sophronia, had come to
+Sunbridge on a Tuesday evening late in June to make her brother's family
+a long-promised visit. But it was not until the next morning that she
+heard something that sent her to her sister-in-law in a burst of
+astonishment almost too great for words.
+
+"For pity's sake, Mary, what is this I hear?" she demanded. "Edith
+insists that her cousin, Cordelia, is going to Texas next week--to
+Texas!--_Cordelia!_"
+
+"Yes, she is, Sophronia," replied the minister's wife, trying to make
+her answer sound as cheerful and commonplace as she could, and as if
+Texas were in the next room. (It was something of a trial to Mrs.
+Thomas Wilson that her husband's sister could not seem to understand
+that she, a minister's wife for eighteen years and the mother of five
+children, ought to know what was proper and right for her orphaned niece
+to do--at least fully as much as should a spinster, who had never
+brought up anything but four cats and a parrot!) "Edith is quite right.
+Cordelia is going to Texas next week."
+
+"But, Mary, are you crazy? To let a child like that go all the way from
+here to Texas--one would think New Hampshire and Texas were twenty miles
+apart!"
+
+Mrs. Wilson sighed a little wearily.
+
+"Cordelia isn't exactly a child, Sophronia, you must remember that. She
+was sixteen last November; and she's very self-reliant and capable for
+her age, too. Besides, she isn't going alone, you know."
+
+"Alone!" exclaimed Miss Sophronia. "Mary, surely, the rest that Edith
+said isn't true! Those other girls aren't going, too, are they?--Elsie
+Martin, and that flyaway Tilly Mack, and all?"
+
+"I think they are, Sophronia."
+
+"Well, of all the crazy things anybody ever heard of!" almost groaned
+the lady. "Mary, what _are_ you thinking of?"
+
+"I'm thinking of Cordelia," returned the minister's wife, with a spirit
+that was as sudden as it was unusual. "Sophronia, for twelve years, ever
+since she came to me, Cordelia has been just a Big Sister in the
+family; and she's had to fetch and carry and trot and run her little
+legs off for one after another of the children, as well as for her uncle
+and me. You _know_ how good she is, and how conscientious. You know how
+anxious she always is to do exactly right. She's never had a playday,
+and I'm sure she deserves one if ever a girl did! Vacations to her have
+never meant anything but more care and more time for housework."
+
+Mrs. Wilson paused for breath, then went on with renewed vigor.
+
+"When this chance came up, Tom and I thought at first, of course, just
+as you did, that it was quite out of the question; but--well, we decided
+to let her go. And I haven't been sorry a minute since. She's Tom's only
+brother's child, but we've never been able to do much for her, as you
+know. We can let her have this chance, though. And she's so happy--dear
+child!"
+
+"But what is it? How did it happen? Who's going? Edith's story sounded
+so absurd to me I could make precious little out of it. She insisted
+that the 'Happy X's' were going."
+
+The minister's wife smiled.
+
+"It's the girls' 'Hexagon Club,' Sophronia. They call themselves the
+'Happy Hexagons.' There are six of them."
+
+"Humph!" commented Miss Sophronia. "Who are they--besides Cordelia?"
+
+"Bertha Brown, Tilly Mack, Alma Lane, Elsie Martin, and Genevieve
+Hartley."
+
+"And _who_?" frowned Miss Sophronia at the last name.
+
+"Genevieve Hartley. She is the little Texas girl. It is to her ranch
+they are going."
+
+"_Her_ ranch!"
+
+"Well--her father's."
+
+"But who is she? What's she doing here?"
+
+"She's been going to school this winter. She's at the Kennedys'."
+
+"A Texas ranch-girl at the Kennedys'! Why, they're _nice_ people!"
+exclaimed Miss Sophronia, opening wide her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Wilson laughed now outright.
+
+"You'd better not let Miss Genevieve hear you say 'nice' in that tone of
+voice--and in just that connection, Sophronia," she warned her.
+"Genevieve might think you meant to insinuate that there weren't any
+_nice_ people in Texas--and she's very fond of Texas!"
+
+Miss Sophronia smiled grimly.
+
+"Well, I don't mean that, of course. Still, a ranch must be sort of wild
+and--and mustangy, seems to me; and I was thinking of the Kennedys,
+especially Miss Jane Chick. Imagine saying 'wild' and 'Miss Jane' in the
+same breath!"
+
+"Yes, I know," smiled Mrs. Wilson; "and I guess Genevieve has been
+something of a trial--in a way; though they love her dearly--both of
+them. She's a very lovable girl. But she _is_ heedless and thoughtless;
+and, of course, she wasn't at all used to our ways here in the East. Her
+mother died when she was eight years old; since then she has been
+brought up by her father on the ranch. She blew into Sunbridge last
+August like a veritable breeze from her own prairies--and the Kennedy
+home isn't used to breezes--especially Miss Jane. I imagine Genevieve
+did stir things up a little there all winter--though she has improved a
+great deal since she came."
+
+"But why did she come in the first place?"
+
+Mrs. Wilson smiled oddly.
+
+"That's the best part of it," she said. "It seems that last April, when
+Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick were on their way home from California, they
+stopped in Houston, Texas, a few days, and there they met John Hartley
+and his daughter, Genevieve. It appears they had known him years ago
+when they were 'the Chick girls,' and he came to Sunbridge to visit
+relatives. I've heard it whispered that he was actually a bit in love
+with one of them, though I never heard whether it was Miss Jane, or the
+one who is now the Widow Kennedy. However that may be, he was delighted
+to see them in Texas, report says, and to introduce to them his
+daughter, Genevieve."
+
+"But that doesn't explain how the girl came here," frowned Miss
+Sophronia.
+
+"No, but I will," smiled her sister-in-law. "Fond and proud as Mr.
+Hartley very plainly was of his daughter, it did not take Mrs. Kennedy
+long to see that he was very much disturbed at the sort of life she was
+living at the ranch. That is, he felt that the time had come now when
+she needed something that only school, young girl friends, and
+gently-bred women could give her; yet he could not bear the thought of
+sending her off alone to an ordinary boarding school. Then is when Mrs.
+Kennedy arose to the occasion; and very quickly it was settled that
+Genevieve should come here to her in Sunbridge for school this last
+winter--which she did, and Mrs. Kennedy has been a veritable mother to
+her ever since. She calls her 'Aunt Julia.'"
+
+"Hm-m; very fine, I'm sure," murmured Miss Sophronia, a little shortly.
+"And now she's asked these girls home with her--the whole lot of them!"
+
+"Yes; and they're crazy over it--as you'd know they would be."
+
+Miss Sophronia sniffed audibly.
+
+"Humph! It's the parents that are crazy, I'm thinking," she corrected.
+"Imagine it--six scatter-brained children, and all the way to Texas!
+Mary!"
+
+"Oh, but the father is in the East here, on business and he goes back
+with them," conciliated Mrs. Wilson, hastily. "Besides, Mrs. Kennedy is
+going, too."
+
+Miss Sophronia raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Well, I can't say I envy her the thing she's undertaken. Imagine _my_
+attempting to chaperon six crazy girls all the way from New Hampshire to
+Texas--and then on a ranch for nobody knows how long after that!"
+
+"I can't imagine--_your_ doing it, Sophronia," rejoined the minister's
+wife, demurely. And at the meaning emphasis and the twinkle in her eye,
+Miss Sophronia sniffed again audibly.
+
+"When do they go?" she asked in her stiffest manner.
+
+"The first day of July."
+
+"Indeed! Very fine, I'm sure. Still--I've been thinking of the expense.
+Of course, for a minister--"
+
+
+Mrs. Wilson bit her lip. After a moment she filled the pause that her
+sister-in-law had left.
+
+"I understand, of course, what you mean, Sophronia," she acknowledged.
+"And ministers' families don't have much money for Texas trips, I'll
+own. As it happens, however, the trip will cost the young people
+nothing. Mr. Hartley very kindly bears all the expenses."
+
+"He does?"
+
+"Yes. He declares he shall be in the girls' debt even then. You see,
+last winter Genevieve sprained her ankle, and was shut up for weeks in
+the house. It was a very bad sprain, and naturally it came pretty hard
+on such an active, outdoor girl as she is. Mrs. Kennedy says she thinks
+Genevieve and all the rest of them would have gone wild if it hadn't
+been for the girls. One or more of them was there every day. Then is
+when they formed their Hexagon Club. It was worth everything to
+Genevieve, as you can imagine; and Mr. Hartley declares that nothing he
+can ever do will half repay them. Besides, he wants Genevieve to be with
+nice girls all she can--she's had so little of girls' society. So he's
+asked them to go as his guests."
+
+"Dear me! Well, he must have some money!"
+
+"He has. Mrs. Kennedy says he is a man of independent means, and he has
+no one but Genevieve to spend his money on. So, as for this trip--in his
+whole-hearted, generous Western fashion, he pays all the bills himself."
+
+"Hm-m; very kind, I'm sure," admitted Miss Sophronia, grudgingly. "Well,
+I'm glad, at least, that it doesn't cost you anything."
+
+There was a moment's silence, then Mrs. Wilson said, apologetically:
+
+"I'm sorry, Sophronia, but I'm afraid you'll have to stand it till the
+children go--and there'll be something to stand, too; for it's 'Texas,
+Texas, Texas,' from morning till night, everywhere. Genevieve herself
+is in New Jersey visiting friends, but that doesn't seem to make any
+difference. The whole town is wildly excited over the trip. I found even
+little Mrs. Miller, the dressmaker, yesterday poring over an old atlas
+spread out on her cutting-table.
+
+"'I was just a-lookin' up where Texas was,' she explained when she saw
+me. 'My! only think of havin' folks go all that distance--folks I know,
+I mean. I'm sure I'd never dare to go--or let my girl.'"
+
+"Very sensible woman, I'm sure," remarked Miss Sophronia.
+
+Mrs. Wilson smiled; but she went on imperturbably.
+
+"Even the little tots haven't escaped infection. Imagine my sensations
+Sunday when Bettie Barker, the primmest Miss Propriety in my infant
+class, asked: 'Please, Mis' Wilson, what is a broncho, and how do you
+bust 'em?'"
+
+This, indeed, was too much for even Miss Sophronia's gravity. Her lips
+twitched and relaxed in a broad smile.
+
+"Well, upon my word!" she ejaculated, as she rose to her feet to go
+up-stairs to her room. "Upon my word!"
+
+An hour later, in that same room, Mrs. Wilson, going in to place some
+fresh towels upon the rack, found a huge book spread open on Miss
+Sophronia's bed. The book was number seven in the Reverend Thomas
+Wilson's most comprehensive encyclopedia; and it was open at the word
+"Texas."
+
+Mrs. Wilson smiled and went out, closing the door softly behind her.
+
+It was, indeed, as Mrs. Wilson had said, "Texas, Texas, Texas,"
+everywhere throughout the town. Old atlases were brought down from
+attics, and old geographies were dug out of trunks. Even the
+dictionaries showed smudges in the T's where not over-clean fingers had
+turned hurried pages for possible information. The library was besieged
+at all hours, particularly by the Happy Hexagons, for they, of course,
+were the storm-center of the whole thing.
+
+Ordinarily the club met but once a week; now they met daily--even in the
+absence of their beloved president, Genevieve. Heretofore they had met
+usually in the parsonage; now they met in the grove back of the
+schoolhouse.
+
+"It seems more appropriate, somehow," Elsie had declared; "more sort of
+airy and--Texasy!"
+
+"Yes; and we want to get used to space--wide, wide space! Genevieve says
+it's all space," Bertha Brown had answered, with a far-reaching fling of
+her arms.
+
+"Ouch! Bertha! Just be sure you've got the space, then, before you get
+used to it," retorted Tilly, aggrievedly, straightening her hat which
+had been knocked awry by one of the wide-flung arms.
+
+The Happy Hexagons met, of course, to study Texas, and to talk Texas;
+though, as Bertha Brown's brother, Charlie, somewhat impertinently
+declared, they did not need to meet to _talk_ Texas--they did that
+without any meeting! All of which merely meant, of course, retaliated
+the girls, that Charlie was jealous because he also could not go to
+Texas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PLANS FOR TEXAS
+
+
+It was a pretty little grove in which the Happy Hexagons met to study
+and to talk Texas. Nor were they the only ones that met there. Though
+Harold Day, Alma Lane's cousin, was not to be of the Texas party, the
+girls invited him to meet with them, as he was Texas-born, and was one
+of Genevieve's first friends in Sunbridge. On the outskirts of the magic
+circle, sundry smaller brothers and sisters and cousins of the members
+hung adoringly. Even grown men and women came sometimes, and stood
+apart, looking on with what the Happy Hexagons chose to think were
+admiring, awestruck eyes--which was not a little flattering, though
+quite natural and proper, decided the club. For, of course, not every
+one could go to Texas, to be sure!
+
+At the beginning, at least, of each meeting, affairs were conducted with
+the seriousness due to so important a subject. In impressive silence the
+club seated itself in a circle; and solemnly Cordelia Wilson, the
+treasurer, opened the meeting, being (according to Tilly) a "perfect
+image of her uncle in the pulpit."
+
+"Fellow members, once more we find ourselves gathered together for the
+purpose of the study of Texas," she would begin invariably. And then
+perhaps: "We will listen to Miss Bertha Brown, please. Miss Brown, what
+new thing--I mean, what new features have you discovered about Texas?"
+
+If Miss Brown had something to say--and of course she did have something
+(she would have been disgraced, otherwise)--she said it. Then each in
+turn was asked, after which the discussion was open to all.
+
+They were lively meetings. No wonder small brothers and sisters and
+cousins hung entranced on every word. No wonder, too, that at last, one
+day, quite carried away with the enthusiasm of the moment, they made so
+bold as to have something to say on their own account. It happened like
+this:
+
+"Texas is the largest state in the Union," announced Bertha Brown, who
+had been called on first. "It has an area about one twelfth as large as
+that of the whole United States. If all the population of the country
+were placed there, the state would not be as thickly settled as the
+eastern shore of Massachusetts is. Six different flags have waved over
+it since its discovery two hundred years ago: France, Spain, Mexico,
+Republic of Texas, Confederate States of America, and the Star Spangled
+Banner."
+
+"Pooh! I said most of that two days ago," muttered Tilly, not under
+breath.
+
+"Well, I can't help it," pouted Bertha; "there isn't very much new left
+to say, Tilly Mack, and you know it. Besides, I didn't have a minute's
+time this morning to look up a single thing."
+
+"Order--order in the court," rapped Cordelia, sharply.
+
+"Oh, but it doesn't matter a bit if we do say the same things,"
+protested Alma Lane, quickly. (Alma was always trying to make peace
+between combatants.) "I'm sure we shall remember it all the better if we
+do repeat it."
+
+"Of course we shall," agreed Cordelia, promptly. "Now, Alma--I mean Miss
+Lane--" (this title-giving was brand-new, having been introduced as a
+special mark of dignity fitting to the occasion; and it was not easy to
+remember!)--"perhaps you will tell us what you have found out."
+
+"Well, the climate is healthful," began Alma, hopefully. "Texas is less
+subject to malarial diseases than any of the other states on the Gulf of
+Mexico. September is the most rainy month; December the least. The mean
+annual temperature near the mouth of the Rio Grande is 72°; while along
+the Red River the mean annual temperature is only 80°. In the
+northwestern part of the state the mean annual--"
+
+"Alma, please," begged Tilly, in mock horror, raising both her hands,
+"_please_ don't give us any more of those mean annual temperatures. I'm
+sure if they can be any _meaner_ than the temperature right here to-day
+is," she sighed, as she fell to fanning herself vigorously, "I don't
+want to know what it is!"
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, in shocked disapproval. "What would Genevieve
+say!"
+
+Tilly shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Say? She wouldn't say anything--she couldn't," declared Tilly,
+unexpectedly, "because she'd be laughing at us so for digging into Texas
+like this and unearthing all its poor little secrets!"
+
+"But, Tilly, I think we ought to study it," reproved Cordelia,
+majestically, above the laugh that followed Tilly's speech. "Elsie--I
+mean, Miss Martin,--what did you find out to-day?"
+
+Elsie wrinkled her nose in a laughing grimace at Tilly, then began to
+speak in an exaggeratedly solemn tone of voice.
+
+"I find Texas is so large, and contains so great a variety of soil, and
+climate, that any product of the United States can be grown within its
+limits. It is a leader on cotton. Corn, wheat, rice, peanuts, sugar cane
+and potatoes are also grown, besides tobacco."
+
+"And watermelons, Elsie," cut in Bertha Brown. "I found in a paper that
+just last year Texas grew 140,000,000 watermelons."
+
+"I was coming to the watermelons," observed Elsie, with dignity.
+
+"Wish I were--I dote on watermelons!" pouted Tilly in an audible aside
+that brought a chuckle of appreciation from Harold Day.
+
+Cordelia gave her a reproachful look. Elsie went on, her chin a little
+higher.
+
+"Texas is the greatest producer of honey in the United States. As for
+the cattle--prior to 1775 there were vast ranches all over Southwestern
+Texas, and herds of hundreds of wild cattle were gathered and driven to
+New Orleans. I found some figures that told the number of animals in
+1892, or about then. I'll give them. They're old now, of course, but
+they'll do to show what a lot of animals there were there then."
+
+Elsie paused to take breath, but for only a moment.
+
+"There were 7,500,000 head of cattle, 5,000,000 sheep, and 1,210,000
+horses, besides more than 2,321,000 hogs."
+
+There was a sudden giggle from Tilly--an explosive giggle that brought
+every amazed eye upon her.
+
+"Well, really, Tilly," disapproved Elsie, aggrievedly, "I'm sure I don't
+see _what_ there was so very funny in that!"
+
+"There wasn't," choked Tilly; "only I was thinking, what an awful noise
+it would be if all those 2,321,000 hogs got under the gate at once."
+
+"Tilly!" scolded Cordelia; but she laughed.
+
+She could not help it. They all laughed. Even the little boys and girls
+on the outskirts giggled shrilly, and stole the opportunity to draw
+nearer to the magic circle. Almost at once, however, Cordelia regained
+her dignity.
+
+"Miss Mack, we'll hear from you, please--seriously, I mean. You haven't
+told us yet what you've found."
+
+Tilly flushed a little.
+
+"I didn't find anything."
+
+"Why, Tilly Mack!" cried a chorus of condemning voices.
+
+"Well, I didn't," defended Tilly. "In the first place I've told
+everything I can think of: trees, fruits, history, and everything; and
+this morning I just had to go to Mrs. Miller's for a fitting."
+
+"Oh, Tilly, _another_ new dress?" demanded Elsie Martin, her voice a
+pathetic wail of wistfulness.
+
+"But there are still so many things," argued Cordelia, her grave eyes
+fixed on Tilly, "so many things to learn that--" She was interrupted by
+an eager little voice from the outskirts.
+
+"I've got something, please, Cordelia. Mayn't I tell it? It's a
+brand-newest thing. Nobody's said it once!"
+
+Cordelia turned to confront her ten-year-old cousin, Edith.
+
+"Why, Edith!"
+
+"And I have, too," piped up Edith's brother, Fred, with shrill
+earnestness. (Fred was eight.) "And mine's new, too."
+
+Cordelia frowned thoughtfully.
+
+"But, children, you don't belong to the club. Only members can talk, you
+know."
+
+"Pooh! let's hear it, Cordelia," shrugged Tilly. "I'm sure if it's
+_new_, we need it--of all the old chestnuts we've heard to-day!"
+
+"Well," agreed Cordelia, "what is it, Edith? You spoke first."
+
+"It's gypsies," announced the small girl, triumphantly.
+
+"Gypsies!" chorused the Happy Hexagons in open unbelief.
+
+"Yes. There's lots of 'em there--more than 'most anywhere else in the
+world."
+
+The girls looked at each other with puzzled eyes.
+
+"Why, I never heard Genevieve say anything about gypsies," ventured
+Tilly.
+
+"Well, they're there, anyhow," maintained Edith; "I read it."
+
+"You read it! Where?" demanded Cordelia.
+
+"In father's big sac'l'pedia." Edith's voice sounded grieved, but
+triumphant. "I was up in auntie's room, and I saw it. It was open on her
+bed, and I read it. It said there was coal and iron and silver, and lots
+and lots of gypsies."
+
+There was a breathless hush, followed suddenly by a shrieking laugh from
+Tilly.
+
+"Oh, girls, girls!" she gasped. "That blessed child means 'gypsum.' I
+saw that in papa's encyclopedia just the other day."
+
+"But what is gypsum?" demanded Alma Lane.
+
+"Mercy! don't ask me," shuddered Tilly. "I looked it up in the
+dictionary, but it only said it was a whole lot of worse names. All I
+could make out was that it had crystals, and was used for dressing for
+soils, and for plaster of Paris. _Gypsies!_ Oh, Edith, Edith, what a
+circus you are!" she chuckled, going into another gale of laughter.
+
+It was Fred's injured tones that filled the first pause in the general
+hubbub that followed Tilly's explanation.
+
+"You haven't heard mine, yet," he challenged. "Mine's right!"
+
+"Well?" questioned Cordelia, wiping her eyes. (Even Cordelia had laughed
+till she cried.) "What is yours, Fred?"
+
+"It's boats. There hasn't one of you said a single thing about the boats
+you were going to ride in."
+
+"Boats!" cried the girls in a second chorus of unbelief.
+
+"Oh, you needn't try to talk me out of that," bristled the boy. "I
+_know_ what _I'm_ talking about. Old Mr. Hodges told me himself. He's
+been in 'em. He said that years and years ago, when he was a little boy
+like me, he and his father and mother went 'way across the state of
+Texas in a prairie schooner; and I asked father that night what a
+schooner was, and he said it was a boat. Well, he did!" maintained Fred,
+a little angrily, as a shout of laughter rose from the girls.
+
+"And so 'tis a boat--some kinds of schooners," Harold Day soothed the
+boy quickly, rising to his feet, and putting a friendly arm about the
+small heaving shoulders. "Come on, son, let's you and I go over to the
+house. I've got a dandy picture of a prairie schooner over there, and
+we'll hunt it up and see just what it looks like." And with a
+ceremonious "Good day, ladies!" and an elaborate flourish of his hat
+toward the Happy Hexagons, Harold drew the boy more closely into the
+circle of his arm and turned away.
+
+It was the signal for a general breaking up of the club meeting.
+Cordelia, only, looked a little anxiously after the two boys, as she
+complained:
+
+"Harold never tells a thing that he knows about Texas, and he must know
+a lot of things, even if he did leave there when he was a tiny little
+baby!"
+
+"Don't you fret, Cordy," retorted Tilly. (Cordelia did not like to be
+called "Cordy," and Tilly knew it.) "Harold Day will talk Texas all
+right after Genevieve gets back. Besides, you couldn't expect a boy to
+join in with a girls' club like us, just as if he were another
+girl--specially as he isn't going to Texas, anyway."
+
+"Well, all he ever does is just to sit and look bored--except when
+Tilly gets in some of her digs," chuckled Bertha.
+
+"Glad I'm good for something, if nothing but to stir up Harold, then,"
+laughed Tilly, as she turned away to answer Elsie Martin's anxious:
+"Tilly, what color is the new dress? Is it red?"
+
+It was the next day that the letter came from Genevieve. Cordelia
+brought it to the club meeting that afternoon; and so full of importance
+and excitement was she that for once she quite forgot to open the
+meeting with her usual ceremony.
+
+"Girls, girls, just listen to this!" she began breathlessly.
+
+The Happy Hexagons opened wide their eyes. Never before had they seen
+the usually placid Cordelia like this.
+
+"Why, Cordelia, you're almost girlish!" observed Tilly, cheerfully.
+
+Cordelia did not seem even to hear this gibe.
+
+"It's a letter from Genevieve," she panted, as she hurriedly spread open
+the sheet of note paper in her hand.
+
+          "Dear Cordelia, and the whole Club," read
+          Cordelia, excitedly. "I came up yesterday from New
+          Jersey with the Hardings for two days in New York.
+          I have been to see the animals at the Zoo all the
+          afternoon, and I'm going to see the Hippodrome
+          this evening. That sounds like another animal but
+          it isn't one, they say. It's a place all lights
+          and music and crowds, and with a stage 'most as
+          big as Texas itself, with scores of real horses
+          and cowboys riding all over it.
+
+          "I am having a perfectly beautiful time, but I
+          just can't wait to see my own beloved home on the
+          big prairie, and have you all there with me. I
+          sha'n't see it quite so soon though, for father
+          has been delayed about some of his business, and
+          he can't come for me quite so soon as he expected.
+          He says we sha'n't get away from Sunbridge until
+          the fifth; but he's engaged five sections in a
+          sleeper leaving Boston at eight P. M. So we'll go
+          then sure.
+
+          "Mrs. Harding is calling me. Good-by till I see
+          you. We're coming the third. With heaps of love to
+          everybody, Your own
+
+                                         "GENEVIEVE HARTLEY."
+
+"Well, I like that," bridled Tilly. "Just think--not go until the
+fifth!"
+
+"Oh, but just think of going at all," comforted Alma Lane, hurriedly;
+"and in sleepers, too! Sleepers are loads of fun. I rode in one fifty
+miles, once--it wasn't in the night, though."
+
+"I rode in one at night!" Tilly's voice rose dominant, triumphant.
+
+"My stars!"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"What was it like?"
+
+"Was it fun?"
+
+"Why didn't you tell us?"
+
+Tilly laughed in keen enjoyment of the commotion she had created.
+
+"Don't you wish you knew?" she teased. "Just you wait and see!"
+
+"Yes, but, Tilly, do they lay you down on a little narrow shelf,
+really?" worried Cordelia.
+
+"I sha'n't take off a single thing, anyhow," announced Bertha, with
+decision, "not even my shoes. I'm just sure there'll be an accident!"
+
+Tilly laughed merrily.
+
+"A fine traveler you'll make, Bertha," she scoffed. "Sleepers are made
+to sleep in, young lady--not to lie awake and worry in, for fear
+there'll be an accident and you'll lose your shoes. As for you, Cordy,
+and the shelf you're fretting over--there are shelves, in a way; but you
+lay yourself down on them, my child. Nobody else does it for you."
+
+"Thank you," returned Cordelia, a little stiffly. Cordelia did not like
+to be called "my child"--specially by Tilly, who was not quite sixteen,
+and who was the youngest member of the club.
+
+"But, Tilly, are--are sleepers nice, daytimes?" asked Edith Wilson, who,
+as usual, was hovering near. "I should think they'd be lovely for
+nights--but I wouldn't like to have to lie down all day!"
+
+Tilly laughed so hard at this that Edith grew red of face indeed before
+Alma patched matters up and made peace.
+
+It was the trip to Texas that was the all-absorbing topic of discussion
+that day; and it was the trip to Texas that Cordelia Wilson was thinking
+of as she walked slowly home that night after leaving the girls at the
+corner.
+
+"I wonder--" she began just under her breath; then stopped short. An old
+man, known as "Uncle Bill Hodges," stood directly in her path.
+
+"Miss Cordelia, I--I want to speak to ye, just a minute," he stammered.
+
+"Yes, sir." Cordelia smiled politely.
+
+The old man threw a suspicious glance over his shoulder, then came a
+step nearer.
+
+"I ain't tellin' this everywhere, Miss Cordelia, and I don't want you to
+say nothin'. You're goin' to Texas, they tell me."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hodges, I am." Cordelia tried to make her voice sound properly
+humble, but pride would vibrate through it.
+
+"Well, I--" The man hesitated, looked around again suspiciously, then
+blurted out a storm of words with the rush of desperation. "I--years
+ago, Miss Cordelia, I let a man in Boston have a lot of money. He said
+'twas goin' into an oil well out in Texas, and that when it came back
+there'd be a lot more with it a-comin' to me. So I let him have it. I
+liked Texas, anyhow--I'd been there as a boy."
+
+"Yes," nodded Cordelia, smiling as she remembered the prairie schooner
+that was Fred's "boat."
+
+"Well, for a while I did get money--dividends, he called 'em. Then it
+all stopped off short. They shut the man up in prison, and closed the
+office. And there's all my money! They do be sayin', too, that there
+ain't no such place as this oil well there--that is, not the way he said
+it was--so big and fine and promisin'. Well, now, of course I can't go
+to see, Miss Cordelia--an old man like me, all the way to Texas. But you
+are goin'. So I thought I'd just ask you to look around a little if you
+happened to hear anything about this well. Maybe you could go and see
+it, and then tell me. I've written down the name on this paper,"
+finished the man, thrusting his trembling fingers into his pocket, and
+bringing out a small piece of not over-clean paper.
+
+"Why, of--of course, Mr. Hodges," promised Cordelia, doubtfully, as she
+took the paper. "I'd love to do anything I could for you--anything! Only
+I'm afraid I don't know much about oil wells, you see. Do they look just
+like--water wells, with a pump or a bucket? Bertha's aunt has one of
+those on her farm."
+
+"I don't know, child, I don't know," murmured the old man, shaking his
+head sadly, as he turned away. "Sometimes I think there ain't any such
+things, anyhow. But you'll do your best, I know. I can trust _you_!"
+
+"Why, of course," returned Cordelia, earnestly, slipping the bit of
+paper into the envelope of Genevieve's letter in her hand.
+
+In her own room that night Cordelia Wilson got out her list marked
+"Things to do in Texas," and studied it with troubled eyes. She had now
+one more item to add to it--and it was already so long!
+
+She had started the list for her own benefit. Then had come the request
+from queer old Hermit Joe to be on the lookout for his son who had gone
+years ago to Texas. After that, commissions for others followed rapidly.
+So many people had so many things they wanted her to do in Texas!--and
+nobody wanted them talked about in Sunbridge.
+
+Slowly, with careful precision, she wrote down this last one. Then, a
+little dubiously, she read over the list.
+
+See the blue bonnet--the Texas state flower. Find out if it really is
+shaped like a bonnet.
+
+Bring home a piece of prairie grass.
+
+See a real buffalo.
+
+Find Hermit Joe's son, John, who ran away to Texas twenty years ago.
+
+See an Osage orange hedge.
+
+See a broncho bursted (obviously changed over from "busted").
+
+Find out for Mrs. Miller if cowboys do shoot at sight, and yell always
+without just and due provocation.
+
+See a mesquite tree.
+
+Inquire if any one has seen Mrs. Snow's daughter, Lizzie, who ran away
+with a Texas man named Higgins.
+
+Pick a fig.
+
+See a rice canal.
+
+Find out what has become of Mrs. Granger's cousin, Lester Goodwin, who
+went to Texas fourteen years ago.
+
+See cotton growing and pick a cotton boll, called "Texas Roses."
+
+See peanuts growing.
+
+Inquire for James Hunt, brother of Miss Sally Hunt.
+
+See a real Indian.
+
+Look at oil well for Mr. Hodges, and see if there is any there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now if I can just fix all those people's names in my mind," mused
+Cordelia, aloud; "and seems as if I might--there are only four. John
+Sanborn, Lizzie Higgins, Lester Goodwin, and James Hunt," she chanted
+over and over again. She was still droning the same refrain when she
+fell asleep that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE COMING OF GENEVIEVE
+
+
+Genevieve was to arrive in Sunbridge at three o'clock on the afternoon
+of the third of July. Her father was to remain in Boston until one of
+the evening trains. The Happy Hexagons, knowing Genevieve's plans,
+decided to give her a welcome befitting the club and the occasion. They
+invited Harold Day, of course, to join them.
+
+Harold laughed good-humoredly.
+
+"Oh, I'll be there all right, at the station," he assured them. "I've
+got Mrs. Kennedy's permission to bring her up to the house; but I don't
+think I'll join in on your show. I'll let you girls do that."
+
+The girls pouted a little, but they were too excited to remain long out
+of humor.
+
+"Don't our dresses look pretty! I know Genevieve'll be pleased," sighed
+Elsie Martin, as, long before the train was due that afternoon, the
+girls arrived at the station.
+
+"Of course she'll be pleased," cried Alma Lane. "She can't help it. I
+can hear her laugh and clap her hands now, when she sees us--and hears
+us!"
+
+"So can I," echoed Bertha. "And how her eyes will dance! I love to see
+Genevieve's eyes dance."
+
+"So do I," chorused the others, fervently.
+
+Sunbridge was a quiet little town in southern New Hampshire near the
+state line. It had wide, tree-shaded streets, and green-shuttered white
+houses set far back in spacious lawns. The station at this hour was even
+quieter than the town, and there were few curious eyes to question the
+meaning of the unusual appearance of five laughing, excited young girls,
+all dressed alike, and all showing flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+At one minute before three o'clock, a tall, good-looking youth drove up
+in a smart trap, and was hailed with shouts of mingled joy and relief.
+
+"Oh, Harold, we were just sure you were going to be late," cried
+Cordelia.
+
+"Late? Not I--to-day!" laughed the boy. Then, with genuine admiration:
+"Say, that is pretty slick, girls. I'll take off my hat to the Happy
+Hexagons to-day all right!" he finished, with an elaborate flourish.
+
+"Thank you," twittered Tilly, saucily. "Now don't you wish you had
+joined us? But then--_you_ couldn't have worn a white frock!"
+
+A prolonged bell-clanging and the rumble of an approaching train
+prevented Harold's reply, and sent the girls into a flutter of
+excitement. A moment later they stood in line, waiting, breathless with
+suspense.
+
+They made a wonderfully pretty picture. Each girl was in white, even to
+her shoes and stockings. Around each waist was a sash of a handsome
+shade of blue. The same color showed at the throat and on the hair.
+
+Quietly they watched the train roll into the station, and still quietly
+they stood until a tall, slender girl with merry brown eyes and soft
+fluffy brown hair appeared at a car door and tripped lightly down the
+steps to the platform. They waited only till she ran toward them; then
+in gleeful chorus they chanted:
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           GENEVIEVE!"
+
+What happened next was a surprise. Genevieve did not laugh, nor cry out,
+nor clap her hands. Her eyes did not dance. She stopped and fumbled with
+the fastening of her suit-case. The next minute the train drew out of
+the station, and the girls were left alone in their corner. Genevieve
+looked up, at that, and came swiftly toward them.
+
+They saw then: the brown eyes were full of tears.
+
+The girls had intended to repeat their Texas yell; but with one accord
+now they cried out in dismay:
+
+[Illustration: "A TALL, SLENDER GIRL ... APPEARED AT A CAR DOOR"]
+
+"Genevieve! Why, Genevieve, you're--crying!"
+
+"I know I am, and I could shake myself," choked Genevieve, hugging each
+girl in turn spasmodically.
+
+"But, Genevieve, what is the matter?" appealed Cordelia.
+
+"I don't know, I don't know--and that's what's the trouble," wailed
+Genevieve. "I don't know why I'm crying when I'm so g-glad to see you.
+But I reckon 'twas that--'Texas'!"
+
+"But we thought you'd like that," argued Elsie.
+
+"I did--I do," stammered Genevieve, incoherently; "and it made me cry to
+think I did--I mean, to think I do--so much!"
+
+"Well, we're glad you did, or do, anyhow," laughed Harold Day, holding
+out his hand. "And we're glad you're back again. I've got Jerry here and
+the cart. This your bag?"
+
+"Yes, right here; and thank you, Harold," she smiled a little mistily.
+"And girls, you're lovely--just lovely; and I don't know why I'm crying.
+But you're to come over--straight over to the house this very afternoon.
+I want to hear that 'T-Texas' again. I want to hear it six times
+running!" she finished, as she sprang lightly into the cart.
+
+On the way with Harold, she grew more calm.
+
+"You see, once, last fall, I said I hated Sunbridge, and that I wouldn't
+stay," she explained a little shame-facedly.
+
+"You said you hated it!" cried Harold. "You never told me that. Why, I
+thought you liked it here."
+
+"I do, now, and I did--very soon, specially after I'd met some one I
+could talk Texas to all I wanted to--_you_, you know! I reckon I never
+told you, but you were a regular safety valve for me in those days."
+
+"Was I?" laughed the lad.
+
+"Yes, even from that first day," nodded Genevieve, with a half-wistful
+smile. "Did I ever tell you the reason, the real reason, why Aunt Julia
+called you into the yard that afternoon?"
+
+"Why, no--not that I know of." Harold's face showed a puzzled frown.
+
+"Well, 'twas this. I'd been here a week, and I was so homesick and
+lonesome for father and the ranch and all. I was threatening to go back.
+I declared I'd walk back, if there was no other way. Poor Aunt Julia!
+She tried everything. Specially she tried to have me meet some nice
+girls, but I just wouldn't. I said I didn't want any girls that weren't
+Texas girls. I didn't want anything that wasn't Texas. That's what I'd
+been saying that very day out under the trees there, when Aunt Julia
+looked toward the street, saw you, and called you into the yard."
+
+"Is _that_ why she introduced me as the boy who was born in Texas?"
+laughed Harold.
+
+"Yes; and you know how I began to talk Texas right away."
+
+"But I couldn't help much--I left there when I was a baby."
+
+"I know, but you'd been there," laughed Genevieve, "and that helped.
+Then, through you, I met your cousin Alma, and the rest was easy, for I
+always had you for that safety valve, to talk Texas to. You see, it was
+just that I got homesick. All my life I'd lived on the ranch, and things
+here were so different. I didn't like to--to mind Mrs. Kennedy and Miss
+Jane, very well, I suspect. You see, at the ranch I'd always had my own
+way, and--I liked it."
+
+"Well, I'm sure that's natural," nodded Harold.
+
+"I know; but I wasn't nice about it," returned the girl, wistfully.
+"Father said I must do everything--everything they said. And I tried to.
+But Miss Jane had such heaps of things for me to do, and such tiresome
+things, like dusting and practising, and learning to cook and to sew!
+And it all was specially hard when you remember that I didn't want to
+come East in the first place. But I love it here, now; you know I do.
+Every one has been so good to me! Aunt Julia is a dear."
+
+"And--Miss Jane?" queried Harold, eyeing her a little mischievously.
+
+Genevieve blushed.
+
+"Miss Jane? Well, she's 'most a dear, too--sometimes. As for
+Sunbridge--I love both the East and the West now. Don't you see? But,
+to-day, coming up from Boston, I got to thinking about it--my dear
+prairie home; and how I had hated to leave it, and how now I was going
+back to it with Aunt Julia and the girls all with me. And I was so
+happy, so wonderfully happy, that a great big something rose within me,
+and I felt so--so queer, as if I could fly, and fly, and _fly_! And
+then, when I saw the girls all dressed alike so prettily, and heard the
+'Texas, Texas, Texas'--what did I do? I didn't do anything but
+cry--_cry_, Harold, just as if I didn't like things. And the girls were
+so disappointed, I know they were!"
+
+"Never mind; I guess you can make them understand--anyhow, you have me,"
+said Harold, trying to speak with a lightness that would hide the fact
+that her words had made him, too, feel "queer." Harold did not enjoy
+feeling "queer."
+
+A moment later they turned into the broad white driveway that led up to
+the Kennedy home.
+
+On the veranda of the fine old house stood a sweet-faced,
+motherly-looking woman with tender eyes and a loving smile. Near her was
+a taller, younger woman with eyes almost as interested, and a smile
+almost as cordial.
+
+"You dears--both of you!" cried Genevieve, running up the steps and
+into the arms of the two women.
+
+"Thank you, Harold," smiled Mrs. Kennedy over Genevieve's bobbing head;
+"thank you for bringing our little girl home."
+
+"As if I wasn't glad to do it!" laughed the boy, gallantly, as he picked
+up the reins and sprang into the cart. To the horse he added later, when
+quite out of earshot of the ladies: "Jerry, I'm thinking Genevieve isn't
+the only one in that house that has 'improved' since last August. It
+strikes me that Miss Jane Chick has done a little on her own account.
+Did you see that smile? That was a really, truly smile, Jerry. Not the
+'I-suppose-I-must' kind!"
+
+Genevieve and the two ladies were still on the veranda when the five
+white-clad girls turned in at the broad front walk.
+
+"We came around this way home," announced Tilly. "You _said_ you wanted
+us."
+
+"Want you! Well, I reckon I do," cried Genevieve, springing to her feet.
+"Come up here this minute! Now say it--say it again--that thing you did
+at the station. I want Aunt Julia to hear it--and Miss Jane."
+
+The change in Genevieve's voice and manner was unconscious, but it was
+very evident. No one noticed it apparently, however, but Tilly; and she
+only puckered her lips into an odd little smile as she formed in line
+with the other girls: Tilly was not without some experience herself with
+Miss Jane and her ways.
+
+"Now, one, two, three, ready!" counted Cordelia, sternly, her face a
+tragedy of responsibility lest this final triumph of their labors should
+be anything less than the glorious success the occasion demanded.
+
+Once more five eager, girlish countenances faced squarely front. Once
+more five fresh young voices chanted with lusty precision:
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           GENEVIEVE!"
+
+It was finished. Cordelia, with the expression of one from whom the
+weight of nations has been lifted, drew a happy sigh, and looked
+confidently about for her reward. Almost at once, however, her face
+clouded perplexedly.
+
+Genevieve was dancing lightly on her toes and clapping her hands softly.
+Mrs. Kennedy was laughing with her handkerchief to her lips. But Miss
+Jane Chick--Miss Jane Chick was sitting erect, her eyes plainly
+horrified, her hands clapped to her ears.
+
+"Children, children!" she gasped, as soon as there was a chance for her
+voice to be heard. "You don't mean to say that you did _that_--at a
+public railroad station!"
+
+Cordelia looked distressed. The other girls bit their lips and lifted
+their chins just a little: they did not like to be called "children."
+
+"But, Miss Chick," stammered Cordelia, "we didn't think--that is, we
+wanted to do something to welcome Genevieve, and--and--" Cordelia
+stopped, and swallowed chokingly.
+
+"But to shout like that," protested Miss Chick. "You--_young ladies_!"
+
+The girls bit their lips still harder and lifted their chins still
+higher: they were not quite sure whether they more disliked to be
+"children" or "young ladies"--in that tone of voice.
+
+"Oh, but Miss Jane," argued Genevieve, "you know Sunbridge station is
+just dead, simply dead at three o'clock in the afternoon. Nobody ever
+comes on that train, hardly, and there wasn't a soul around but that
+sleepy Mr. Jones and the station men, and that old Mrs. Palmer. And you
+know _she_ wouldn't hear a gun go off right under her nose."
+
+"Genevieve, my dear!" murmured Mrs. Kennedy--but her eyes were
+twinkling.
+
+Cordelia still looked troubled.
+
+"I know, Genevieve," she frowned anxiously, "but I never thought of it
+that way--what others would think. Maybe we ought not to have done it,
+after all. But I'm sure we didn't mean any harm."
+
+Promptly, now, Mrs. Kennedy came to the rescue.
+
+"Of course you did not, dear child," she said, smiling into Cordelia's
+troubled eyes; "and it was very sweet and lovely of you girls to think
+of giving Genevieve such a pretty welcome. Oh, of course," she added
+with a whimsical glance at her sister, "we shouldn't exactly advise you
+to make a practice of welcoming everybody home in that somewhat
+startling fashion. That really wouldn't do, you know. Sunbridge station
+might not be quite so dead next time," she finished, meeting Genevieve's
+grateful eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That really was dear of you, Aunt Julia," confided Genevieve some time
+later, after the girls had gone, and when she and Mrs. Kennedy were
+alone together. (Miss Jane had gone up-stairs.) "Only think of the pains
+they took--to get themselves up to look so pretty, besides learning to
+give that yell so finely. I was so afraid they'd be hurt at what Miss
+Jane said! And I wouldn't want them hurt--after all that!"
+
+"Of course you wouldn't," smiled Mrs. Kennedy; "and my sister wouldn't
+either, dear."
+
+Genevieve stirred restlessly.
+
+"I know she wouldn't, Aunt Julia; but--but the girls don't know it.
+They--they don't understand Miss Jane."
+
+"And do you--always?" The question was gently put, but its meaning was
+unmistakable.
+
+Genevieve colored.
+
+"Maybe not--quite always; but--Miss Jane is so--so shockable!"
+
+Mrs. Kennedy made a sudden movement. Apparently she only stooped to pick
+up a small thread from the floor, but when she came upright her face was
+a deeper red than just that exertion would seem to occasion.
+
+"Genevieve, have you been to your room since you came home?" she asked.
+There were times when Mrs. Kennedy could change the subject almost as
+abruptly as could Genevieve herself.
+
+"No, Aunt Julia. You know Nancy carried up my suit-case, and I've been
+too busy telling you all about my visit to think of anything else."
+
+"Oh," smiled Mrs. Kennedy. "I was just wondering."
+
+Genevieve frowned in puzzled questioning.
+
+"Well, I'm going up right away, anyhow," she said. "Mercy! I reckon I'll
+go up right now," she added laughingly, springing to her feet as there
+came through the open window behind her the sound of a clock striking
+half-past five. "I had no idea it was so late."
+
+Genevieve was not many minutes in her room before she ceased to wonder
+at Mrs. Kennedy's questioning; for in plain sight on her dressing-table
+she soon found a small white box addressed to Genevieve Hartley. The
+box, upon being opened, disclosed in a white velvet nest a beautiful
+little chatelaine watch in dark blue enamel and gold.
+
+          "To keep Genevieve's time.
+            With much love from
+              Jane Chick."
+
+read Genevieve on the little card that was with the watch.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh, how lovely!" breathed the girl, hovering over the watch in
+delight. "And to think what I said!" With a heightened color she turned,
+tripped across the room and hurried down the hall to Miss Jane's door.
+
+"Miss Jane!"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"I--I want to thank you--oh, I do want to thank you, but I don't know
+how." Genevieve's eyes were misty.
+
+"For the watch? You like it, then?"
+
+"Like it! I just love it; and I never, never saw such a beauty!"
+
+"I'm glad you like it."
+
+There was a moment's pause. Over by the dressing-table Miss Jane was
+carefully smoothing a refractory lock of hair into place. She looked so
+calm, so self-contained, so--far away, thought Genevieve; if it had been
+Aunt Julia, now!
+
+Suddenly the girl gave a little skipping run and enveloped the lady in
+two wide-flung young arms, thereby ruffling up more than ever the
+carefully smoothed lock of hair.
+
+"Miss, Jane, I--I've just got to hug you, anyway!"
+
+"Why, Genevieve, my dear!" murmured Miss Jane, a little dazedly.
+
+From the door Genevieve called back incoherently--the hug had been as
+short in duration as it had been sudden in action:
+
+"I don't think I can be late now, Miss Jane, ever--with that lovely
+thing to keep time for me. And I wanted you to know--next year, when I
+come back, I'm just sure I shall cook and sew beautifully, and do my
+practising and everything, without once being told. And if I do sprain
+my ankle I'll be a perfect angel--truly I will. And I won't ever keep
+folks waiting, either, or--mercy! there's Nancy's first ring now, and
+I'm not one bit ready!" she broke off, as the musical notes of a Chinese
+gong sounded from the hall below. The next moment Miss Jane was alone
+with her thoughts--and with the lock of hair that she was still trying
+to smooth.
+
+"Dear child!" smiled the lady. Then she turned abruptly and hastened
+from the room, her hair still unsmoothed. "I'll just tell Nancy to be a
+little slow about ringing that second gong," she murmured.
+
+When Genevieve came down-stairs to supper that night, she brought with
+her two books: one a small paper-covered one, the other a larger one
+bound in dark red leather.
+
+"Here's the latest 'Pathfinder'--only I call it 'Path_loser_,'" she
+laughed, handing the smaller book to Miss Jane Chick; "and here
+is--well, just see what is here," she finished impressively, spreading
+open the leather-covered book before Mrs. Kennedy's eyes.
+
+"'Chronicles of the Hexagon Club,'" read Mrs. Kennedy. "Oh, a journal!"
+she smiled.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Julia. Isn't it lovely?"
+
+"Indeed it is! Who will keep it?"
+
+"All of us. We are going to take turns. We shall write a day apiece--we
+six Happy Hexagons of the Hexagon Club."
+
+"Do the girls know about it?" asked Miss Jane.
+
+"Not yet. I just thought of it yesterday when I saw the book in the
+store. Father bought it for the club--of course _my_ money was gone long
+ago--at such a time as _this_," she explained with laughing emphasis.
+"I'm going to show the book to the girls to-morrow. Won't they be
+tickled--I mean pleased," corrected Genevieve, throwing a hasty glance
+into Miss Jane's smiling eyes.
+
+"I think they will," agreed that lady, pleasantly.
+
+The girls were pleased, indeed, when Genevieve told of her plan and
+showed the book the next day. But even so entrancing a subject as a
+journal kept by each in turn could not hold their attention long; for
+time was very short now, and in every household there were a
+dozen-and-one last things to be done before the momentous fifth of July.
+Even the Fourth, with its fun and its firecrackers had no charms for the
+Happy Hexagons. Of so little consequence did they consider it, indeed,
+that at last one small boy quite lost his patience.
+
+"You won't fire my crackers, you won't take me to the picnic, you won't
+play ball, you won't do anything," he complained to his absorbed sister.
+"I shall be just glad when this old Texas thing is over!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ON THE WAY
+
+
+All the girls' friends came to see them off at the station that fifth of
+July.
+
+"Mercy! it would never do to spring our Texas yell to-day," chuckled
+Tilly, eyeing the assembled crowd; "but wouldn't I like to, though!"
+
+"There's nothing dead about Sunbridge now, sure," laughed Genevieve.
+
+"I should say not," declared Harold Day, who had begged the privilege of
+going to Boston to see them aboard their train for Washington.
+
+"For you see," he had argued, "it's to my state, after all, that you are
+going, so I ought to be allowed to do the honors at this end of the trip
+as long as I can't at the other!"
+
+They were off at last, Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Hartley, the six girls, and
+Harold. But what a scrambling it was, and what a confusion of chatter,
+laughter, "good-byes," and "write soons"!
+
+In Boston there was a thirty-minute wait in the South Station before
+their train was due to leave; but long before the thirty minutes were
+over, the usually serene face of Mrs. Kennedy began to look flushed and
+worried.
+
+"Genevieve, my dear," she expostulated at last, "can't you keep those
+flutterbudget girls somewhere near together? It will be time, soon, to
+take our train, and only Cordelia is in sight. Not even Harold and your
+father are here!"
+
+Genevieve laughed soothingly.
+
+"I know, Aunt Julia; but they'll be here, I'm sure. There's still lots
+of time," she added, glancing proudly at her pretty new watch.
+
+"But where are they all?"
+
+"Tilly and Elsie have gone for some soda water, and Bertha for a
+sandwich at the lunch counter. She said she just couldn't eat a thing
+before she left home. Alma Lane has gone to a drug store across the
+street. I don't know where father and Harold are. They went off
+together, and--oh, here they are!" she broke off in relief, as the two
+wanderers appeared.
+
+"And now," summoned Mr. Hartley, "we'll be off to our car! Why, where
+are the rest of us?"
+
+"Well, they--they aren't all here," frowned Genevieve, a little
+anxiously.
+
+As at Sunbridge, it was a rush and a scramble at the last. Tilly, Elsie,
+and Bertha came back, but Genevieve went to look for Alma Lane; and when
+Alma returned without having seen Genevieve, Harold had to run
+post-haste for her.
+
+"Sure, dearie," said Mr. Hartley to his daughter, laughingly, when at
+last he had his charges all in the car, "this is a little worse than
+trying to corral a bunch of bronchos!"
+
+"Oh, but we won't be so bad again," promised the girl, waving her hand
+to Harold, who stood alone outside the window, watching them a little
+wistfully.
+
+They had a merry time getting settled, and more than one tired
+countenance in the car brightened at sight of the six eager young faces.
+
+"I couldn't get all five sections together," frowned Mr. Hartley. "I got
+three here, but the other two are down near the end of the car--you know
+the porter showed you. Do you think we can make them go, some way?" he
+questioned Mrs. Kennedy, anxiously. "I planned for you to have one of
+the sections down there by yourself, perhaps, with two of the young
+ladies in the other. Will that do?"
+
+"Of course it will--and finely, too," declared the lady. "Genevieve, you
+and I will go down there and take one of the girls with us--perhaps
+Bertha. That will leave your father for one up here, Elsie and Alma for
+another, and Tilly and Cordelia for the third."
+
+"I knew she'd put you with Cordelia," chuckled Bertha to Tilly, under
+cover of their scramble to pick out their suit-cases from the pile in
+which the porter had left them. "And I'm sure you ought to be," she
+laughed. "There'll be some hopes then that you'll be kept in order!"
+
+"Just look to yourself," retorted Tilly, serenely. "Mrs. Kennedy put
+_you_ down there near _her_--remember that!"
+
+"I declare, I felt just like an orange," giggled Elsie, "with all that
+talk about 'sections.'"
+
+"I don't see where the shelves are," whispered Cordelia, craning her
+short little neck to its full extent.
+
+"You'll see them all right," promised Tilly. "Just wait till it's dark,
+then--'The goblins'll get ye if ye don't watch out!'" she quoted, with
+mock impressiveness.
+
+"I feel as if I were ten years old, and playing house," chirped Alma
+Lane, as she happily frowned over just the proper place for her bag.
+
+"I feel as if it were all a dream, and that I shall wake up right at
+home," breathed Cordelia. "Seems as if it just couldn't be true--that
+we're really going to Texas! Oh, Genevieve, we can't ever thank you and
+your father enough," she finished, as Genevieve came up the aisle.
+
+"As if we wanted thanks, after what you've done for me!" cried
+Genevieve. "Besides, you girls can't be half so glad to go as I am to
+have you!"
+
+Some time later the porter began to make up the berths.
+
+Tilly nudged Cordelia violently.
+
+"There's shelf number one, Cordy. How do you think you'll like it?" she
+asked.
+
+Cordelia was too absorbed even to notice the hated "Cordy." With
+wide-eyed, breathless interest she was watching the porter.
+
+"I think--it's the most wonderful thing--I ever saw," she breathed in an
+awestruck voice.
+
+It was after the car was quiet that night that Genevieve, in her upper
+berth, pulled apart the heavy curtains and peeped out into the long
+narrow aisle between the swaying draperies.
+
+The train was moving very rapidly. The air was heavy and close. The
+night was an uncomfortably warm one. Genevieve had been too excited to
+sleep. Even yet it did not seem quite real--that the Happy Hexagons were
+all there with her, and that they were going to her far-away Texas home.
+
+With a sigh the girl fell back on her pillow, and tried to coax sleep to
+come to her. But sleep refused to come. Instead, the whole panorama of
+her Eastern winter unrolled itself before her, peopled with little fairy
+sprites, who danced with twinkling feet and smiled at her mockingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know you," murmured Genevieve, drowsily. "I know you all.
+You--you little black one--you're the cake I forgot in the oven, and let
+burn up. And you're the lessons I didn't learn--there are heaps of you!
+And you--you're those horrid scales I never could catch up with. My,
+how you run now! And you--you little shamed one over in the
+corner--you're the prank I played on Miss Jane.... Oh, you can dance
+now--but you won't, by and by! Next year there won't be any of you--not
+a one left. I'm going to be so good, so awfully good; and I'm not going
+to ever forget, or to cause anybody any trouble, or--"
+
+With a start Genevieve sat erect in her berth, fully awake.
+
+"Mercy! What a jounce that was!" she cried, just above her breath. "But
+we seem to be going all right now."
+
+Cautiously she parted her curtains and peeped out again. The next
+instant she almost gave a little shriek: she was looking straight into
+Bertha Brown's upraised, startled eyes, just below her.
+
+"Was that an accident?" chattered Bertha. "I told you there'd be one!
+I'm all dressed, anyhow--if 'tis!"
+
+"Sh-h! No, goosey," chuckled Genevieve.
+
+She would have said more but, at that moment, from up the aisle sounded
+a sibilant "S-s-s-s!" They turned to see a somewhat untidy fluff of red
+hair above a laughing, piquant face.
+
+"It's Tilly! She's motioning to us. Say, let's go," whispered Genevieve.
+And cautiously she began to let herself down from her perch.
+
+The next moment Bertha, fully dressed, and Genevieve in her long, dark
+blue kimono, were tripping softly up the aisle.
+
+"Why, you're both down here," exulted Genevieve, as she climbed into the
+lower berth.
+
+"Yes; Cordelia was afraid," giggled Tilly, "so I came down."
+
+"Tilly!--I was not," disputed Cordelia, in an indignant whisper. "You
+came of your own accord."
+
+"Pooh! Tilly's fooling, and we know it," soothed Bertha, climbing into
+the berth after Genevieve.
+
+"Why, Bertha Brown, you've got your shoes on!" gasped Tilly, forgetting
+to whisper.
+
+"Of course I have," retorted Bertha. "Do you suppose--sh!"
+
+There was a tug at the curtains, and Elsie Martin's round, good-natured
+face peered in.
+
+"Well, I like this," she bridled. "A special meeting of the Hexagon
+Club, and me not notified! I heard Genevieve and Bertha giggling in the
+aisle. Are you all here?"
+
+"All but Alma," rejoined Tilly, in an exultant whisper. "Say, get her,
+too!"
+
+"Well, now, if this isn't just a lark," crowed Bertha, gleefully, when
+the last of the six girls had crowded themselves into the narrow berth.
+
+"Ouch! my head," groaned Genevieve, as a soft thud threw the other girls
+into stifled laughter.
+
+"Pooh! I've been hitting my head against the up-stairs flat ever since I
+went to bed," quoth Elsie. "Isn't it fun! Now let's talk."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Texas, of course," cut in Tilly. "Girls, girls, wouldn't it be glorious
+to give our Texas yell, though, and see what happened!"
+
+"Tilly!" gasped the shocked Cordelia.
+
+"Oh, I wasn't going to, of course," chuckled Tilly, softly. "I was just
+imaginin', you know."
+
+"But even this--I'm not sure we ought--" began Cordelia.
+
+"No, of course not; you never are, Cordy," agreed Tilly, smoothly.
+
+"But let's talk Texas--we can whisper, you know. Tell us about Texas,
+Genevieve," cut in pacifier Alma, hurriedly. "What's it like--the
+ranch?"
+
+Genevieve drew a happy sigh.
+
+"Why, it's like--it's like nothing in Texas, we think," she breathed.
+"Of course we don't think any other ranch could come up to the Six
+Star!"
+
+Tilly gave a sudden cry.
+
+"The what?"
+
+"The Six Star--our ranch, you know."
+
+"You mean it's named the 'Six Star Ranch'?" demanded Tilly.
+
+"Sure! Didn't I ever tell you?" retorted Genevieve in plain surprise.
+
+Tilly clapped her hands softly.
+
+"_Did_ you! Well, I should say not! You've always called it just 'the
+ranch.' And now--why, girls, don't you see?--it's _our_ ranch. It
+couldn't have had a better name if we'd had it built to order. It's the
+Six Star Ranch--and we're the six star girls--the Happy Hexagons. And to
+think we never knew it before!"
+
+There was a chorus of half-stifled exclamations of delight; then
+Cordelia demanded anxiously:
+
+"But, Genevieve, will they be glad to see us, really--all your people
+out there?"
+
+"Glad! I reckon they will be," averred Genevieve, warmly. "The boys will
+give us a rousing welcome, and there won't be anything too good for Mr.
+Tim and Mammy Lindy to do."
+
+"Who are they?" asked Tilly.
+
+"Mr. Tim is the ranch foreman, 'the boss,' the boys call him. He's been
+with us ever since I can remember, and he's so good to me! Mammy Lindy
+is--well, Mammy Lindy is a dear! You'll love Ol' Mammy. She's been just
+a mother to me ever since my own mother died eight years ago."
+Genevieve's voice faltered a little, then went on more firmly. "She's a
+negro woman, you know. Her people were slaves, once."
+
+"And--the--boys?" asked Cordelia, dubiously. "Are they your--brothers,
+Genevieve?"
+
+Genevieve laughed--a little more loudly than perhaps she realized.
+
+"Brothers!--well, hardly! The boys are the cowboys--on the ranch, you
+know. My, but they'll give us a welcome! I reckon they'll ride into town
+to give it, too, in all their war paint. Just you wait till you see the
+boys--and hear them!" And Genevieve laughed again.
+
+All in the dark Cordelia looked distinctly shocked; but, being in the
+dark, nobody noticed it.
+
+"Well, I for one just can't wait," began Tilly, hugging herself with her
+arms about her knees. "Only think, it'll be whole days _now_ before we
+get there, and--"
+
+"Young ladies!"
+
+Tilly stopped with a little cry of dismay. A man's voice had spoken
+close to her ear.
+
+"Young ladies," came the mellow tones again. "I begs yo' pardon, but de
+lady what belongs down in number ten says maybe you done forgot dat dis
+am a _sleepin'_ car."
+
+"Aunt Julia!" breathed Genevieve. "She's number ten."
+
+"She sent the porter," gasped Cordelia. "How--how awful!--and you're in
+my house, too," she almost sobbed.
+
+"Now I know we're playing house," tittered Alma Lane, hysterically, as
+she followed Genevieve out of the berth.
+
+Once more in her own quarters, Genevieve lay back on her pillow with a
+remorseful sigh.
+
+"I don't see why it's so much easier to _say_ you'll never give anybody
+any trouble than 'tis to _do_ it," she lamented, as she turned over with
+a jerk.
+
+The girls began the "Chronicles of the Hexagon Club" the next morning.
+Genevieve made the first entry. She dwelt at some length on the
+confusion of the train-taking, both at Sunbridge and Boston. She also
+had something to say of Tilly Mack. She gave a full account, too, of the
+midnight session of the Hexagon Club in Cordelia's berth.
+
+"And I'm ashamed that Aunt Julia had to be ashamed of me so soon," she
+wrote contritely.
+
+Cordelia Wilson had agreed to make the second entry in the book; but the
+heat, the loss of sleep, and the strangeness and excitement added to her
+distress that "her house" should have been made to seem a disgrace in
+the eyes of the whole car, all conspired to make her feel so ill that
+she declared she could not think of writing for a day or two.
+
+"Very well, then, you sha'n't write; we'll hand the book to Tilly," said
+Genevieve, "and then we'll give it to some of the others. But I'll tell
+you what we will do, Cordelia; you shall make the last entry in the book
+just before we leave the train at Bolo. And you can make it a sort of
+retrospect--a 'review lesson' of the whole, you know."
+
+"But I thought the others--won't they each tell their day?"
+
+"That's _just_ what they'll tell--their day," retorted Genevieve,
+whimsically. "You _know_ what most of them are. Alma Lane would be all
+right, and would give a true description of everything; only she would
+go into particulars so, that she would tell everything she saw from the
+windows, and just what she had to eat all day, down to the last olive."
+
+"I know," nodded Cordelia, with a faint smile.
+
+"As for Tilly--you can't get real sense, of course, from her part. If
+there's any nonsense going, Tilly Mack will find it and trot it out.
+Bertha Brown will take up the most of her space by saying 'I always said
+that--' etc., etc. Bertha is a dear--but you know she does just love to
+say 'I told you so.' Elsie will write clothes, of course. We shall find
+out what everybody has on when Elsie writes."
+
+Cordelia laughed aloud--then clapped her hand to her aching head.
+
+"You poor dear! What a shame," sympathized Genevieve. "But, Cordelia,
+why does Elsie think so much of clothes? Mercy! for my part I think
+they're the most tiresome sort of things to bother with; and it's such a
+waste of time to be having to change your dress always!"
+
+Cordelia smiled; then her face sobered.
+
+"Poor Elsie! I'm sorry for Elsie. She does have such an unhappy time
+over clothes."
+
+"Why? How?--or isn't it fair to tell?" added Genevieve, with quick
+loyalty.
+
+"Oh, yes, it's fair. Everybody knows it, 'most, and I supposed you did.
+Elsie herself tells of it. You know she lives with her aunt, Mrs. Gale.
+Well, Mrs. Gale has three daughters, Fannie, about twenty-one, I guess,
+and the twins, nineteen; and she just loves to make over their things
+for Elsie--so she does it."
+
+"Are they so very--poor, then?"
+
+"Oh, no; they aren't poor at all. I don't think she really has to do it.
+Aunt Mary says she's just naturally thrifty, and that she loves to make
+them over. But you see, poor Elsie almost never has a new dress--of new
+material, I mean. Now Elsie loves red; but Fannie wears blue a lot, and
+the twins like queer shades like faded-out greens and browns which Elsie
+abhors. Poor Elsie--no wonder she's always looking at clothes!"
+
+"Hm-m; no wonder," nodded Genevieve, her pitying eyes on Elsie far down
+the aisle--Elsie, who, in a mustard-colored striped skirt and pongee
+blouse, was at that moment trying to perk up the loppy blue bows on a
+somewhat faded tan straw hat. "Well, anyhow," added Genevieve, with a
+sigh, "just remember, Cordelia, that you're to do the last day of the
+trip in the Chronicles. Now lie down and give your poor head a rest."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long before the last day of the journey came, Cordelia had quite
+recovered from her headache; but, in accordance with Genevieve's plan,
+she did not add her share to the Chronicles until the appointed time.
+Then, with almost a reverent air, she accepted the book and pen from
+Genevieve's hands, and returned to the seclusion of her seat, rejoicing
+that Tilly was playing checkers with Bertha, and so would not,
+presumably, disturb her--for a time, at least.
+
+"To-day, at noon, we are to arrive at Bolo," she wrote a little
+unevenly; then with a firmer hand she went on. "Genevieve says this
+ought to be a retrospect, and touch lightly upon the whole trip; so I
+will try to make it so.
+
+"It has been a beautiful journey. Nothing serious has happened, though
+Bertha has worn her shoes all the time expecting it. The best thing, so
+far, was our lovely day in Washington that Mr. Hartley gave us, and the
+President. (I mean, we saw him and he smiled.) And the worst thing
+(except that first night in my berth that Genevieve wrote of) was the
+time we lost Tilly for three whole hours, and Mrs. Kennedy got so
+nervous and white and frightened. We supposed, of course, she had fallen
+off, or jumped off, or got left off at some station. But just as we
+were talking with the porter about telegraphing everywhere, she danced
+in with two very untidy, unclean little Armenian children. It seems she
+had been in the emigrant car all the time playing with the children and
+trying to make the men and women talk their queer English. I never knew
+that gentle Mrs. Kennedy could speak so sharply as she did then to
+Tilly.
+
+"And now--since Tuesday, some time--we have really been in Texas. Some
+things look just like Eastern things, but others are so strange and
+queer. It is very hot--I mean, very warm, too. But then, we have just as
+warm days in Sunbridge, I guess. The windmills look so queer--there are
+such a lot of them; but they look pretty, too. Some of the towns are
+very pretty, also, with their red roofs and blue barns and houses.
+Genevieve says lots of them are German villages.
+
+"In some places lots of things are growing, but in others it is all just
+gray and bare-looking with nothing much growing except those queer
+prairie-dog cities with the funny little creatures sitting on top of
+their houses, or popping down into their holes only to turn around and
+look at you out of their bright little eyes. We had a splendid chance to
+see them once when our train stopped right in the middle of a prairie
+for a long time. We got off and walked quite a way with Mr. Hartley. I
+saw a rattlesnake, and I'm afraid I screamed. I screamed again when the
+horrid thing wiggled into one of the dog houses. Mr. Hartley says they
+live together sometimes, but if I were that dog he wouldn't live with
+me!
+
+"We have seen lots of cattle and goats and hogs--though Tilly says she
+hasn't seen any of the latter under any gate yet. I have seen a mesquite
+tree (so I have done one of my things), and it _does_ have thorns. We
+are on another prairie now, and oh, how big it is, and such a lot of
+grass as there is on it--just as far as you can see, grass, grass,
+grass! I guess there won't be any danger of my not having plenty of that
+to take home. I have seen lots of men on horseback, but I don't know
+whether they were cowboys or not. They did not shoot, anyway, but some
+of them did yell.
+
+"Genevieve says cowboys are to meet us, and that probably they will come
+away to Bolo in full war paint. I thought it was only Indians who
+painted--except silly ladies, of course--and I was going to say so; but
+Tilly was there, so I didn't like to. Of course I ought not to mind the
+cowboys--if Genevieve likes them, and they are her friends; but I can't
+help remembering what Mrs. Miller told me about their 'shooting up
+towns' in a very dreadful way when they were angry. I hope none of the
+men I want to find will turn out to be cowboys." (Here there were signs
+of an attempted erasure, but the words still stood, and immediately
+after them came another sentence.) "That is, I mean I should hate to
+find that any friends of mine had become cowboys.
+
+"I have just been reading over what I have written, and I am
+disappointed in it. I am sure I ought to have mentioned a great many
+things about which I have been silent. But there were so many things,
+and they all crowded at once before me, so that I had to just touch on
+the big things and the tall things--like windmills, for instance.
+
+"We are getting nearer Bolo now, and I must stop and eat some luncheon,
+Genevieve says, as we sha'n't have anything else till supper on the
+ranch. Oh, I am so excited! Seems as if I couldn't draw a breath deep
+enough. And the idea of trying to eat when I feel like this!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BOYS PREPARE A WELCOME
+
+
+On the back gallery of the long, low ranch house, the boys were waiting
+for Teresa to ring the bell for supper. Comfortably they lolled about on
+hammocks, chairs, and steps, with their shirts open at the neck and
+plentifully powdered with the dust of the corral.
+
+From the doorway, Tim Nolan, the ranch foreman, spoke to them hurriedly.
+
+"See here, boys, I'm right sorry, but I've got to see Benson to-morrow
+about those steers. That means that I've got to go as far as Bolo
+to-night, and that I sha'n't be back in time to start with the rest of
+you to meet the folks. But I'll see you in Bolo day after to-morrow at
+noon. The train is due then. Now be on hand, all of you that can. We
+want Miss Genevieve and her friends to have a right royal welcome. I
+reckon now I'd better be off. So long! Now remember--day after to-morrow
+at noon!" he finished, turning away.
+
+"As if we'd be a-forgettin' it," grinned Long John, a tall, lank fellow
+sprawled in a hammock, "when the little mistress hain't set her pretty
+foot on the place since last August!"
+
+"If only she wa'n't bringin' all them others," groaned the short,
+sandy-haired man on the steps. "I'd just like to rope the whole bunch
+and send 'em back East again, old lady and all--all but the little
+mistress, of course. Boys, what are we a-goin' to do with an old
+lady--even though she ain't so awful old--and five tom-fool girls on the
+Six Star Ranch?"
+
+"Ees not the Señorita a gurrl, also?" laughed a dark-eyed Mexican from
+his perch on the gallery railing. "Eh, Reddy?"
+
+"Sure, Pedro," retorted the sandy-haired man, testily. (Pedro was the
+only Mexican cowboy at the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.)
+"But the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't howl at a
+rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog; and she knows how to ride, and
+which end of a gun goes off!"
+
+There was a general laugh, followed by a long silence--the boys did not
+usually talk so much together, but to-night a curious restlessness
+pervaded them all. Suddenly the tall man in the hammock pulled himself
+erect.
+
+"Look a-here, boys, that's jest it," he began in a worried voice. "What
+if the little mistress has changed? What if she hain't no use for us and
+the ranch any more? I never told ye, but at the first, last August,
+'fore she went away, I heard the boss and Mr. Hartley a-talkin'. They
+was sayin' she'd got to go East to learn how to live like a lady
+should--to know girls, and books, and all that. They said she was
+runnin' wild here with only us for playmates, and that they had just got
+ter pasture her out where the grass was finer, and the fences nearer
+tergether."
+
+"Did they say--that?" gasped half a dozen worried voices.
+
+"They sure did--and more. They said two real ladies was a-goin' ter take
+her and make her like themselves--a lady. And, boys, I was
+wonderin'--how is a lady goin' ter like us, and the ranch?"
+
+There was a moment's tense silence. The boys were staring, wide-eyed and
+appalled, into each other's faces.
+
+From somewhere came a deep sigh.
+
+"Gorry!--she can't, she just can't, after all her book-learnin' and
+culturin'," groaned a new voice.
+
+For a time no one spoke; then Reddy cleared his throat.
+
+"Look a-here, there ain't but jest one thing to do. If she don't like
+the ranch--and us--we'll jest have to make the ranch--and us--so she
+will like 'em."
+
+"How?" demanded a skeptical chorus.
+
+"Slick 'em up--and us," retorted the sandy-haired man, with finality. "I
+was raised East, and I know the sort of doin's they hanker after.
+To-morrow mornin' we'll begin. I'll show you; you'll see," he finished
+in a louder tone, as Teresa's clanging supper bell sent them in a
+stampede through the long covered way that led to the dining-room which,
+with the cook room, occupied the large, low building thirty feet to the
+rear of the ranch house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Tim Nolan arrived at the Bolo station a little before noon two days
+later, he stared in open-mouthed wonder at the sight that greeted his
+eyes. In a wavering, straggling line stood ten stiff, red-faced,
+miserable men, dressed in what was, to Tim Nolan, the strangest
+assortment of garments he had ever seen.
+
+Two of the men were in dead black, from head to foot. Four wore stiff,
+not over-clean white shirts. Six sported flaming red neckties. One had
+unearthed from somewhere a frock coat three sizes too small for him,
+which he wore very proudly, however, over a flannel shirt adorned with a
+red-and-green silk handkerchief knotted at the throat. Another displayed
+a somewhat battered silk hat. But, whatever they wore, each showed a
+face upon which hope, despair, pride, shame, and physical misery were
+curiously blended.
+
+For an instant Tim Nolan peered at them with unrecognizing eyes; then
+he gave a low ejaculation.
+
+"Reddy! Carlos! Jim! Boys!" he gasped. "What in the world is the meaning
+of this?"
+
+"Eet ees that we welcome the little Señorita an' her frien's," bowed
+Pedro, doffing his sombrero which was the only part of his usual costume
+that he had retained.
+
+"But--I don't understand," demurred the foreman; "these rigs of yours!
+Reddy, where in time did you corral that coat?"
+
+Reddy shifted from one uneasy foot to the other.
+
+"Pedro's told you--we're here to welcome the little mistress, of course.
+We've slicked up. We--we didn't want the shock too sudden--from the
+East, you know."
+
+For another moment Tim Nolan stared; then he threw back his head and
+laughed--laughed till the faces of the men before him grew red with
+something more than discomfort.
+
+At that moment a pretty young girl in khaki and a cowboy hat made her
+appearance astride a frisky little mustang. She wore a cartridge belt
+about her waist--though there was no revolver in her holster.
+
+"Is Genevieve coming to-day, sure?" she called out joyfully. "I heard
+she was, and I've come to meet her."
+
+"There, boys," bantered the ranch foreman, "now here's a young lady who
+knows how to welcome the mistress of the Six Star Ranch!" Then, to the
+girl: "Sure, Miss Susie, we do expect Genevieve, and we're here to
+welcome her, as you see," he finished with a sweep of his broad-brimmed
+hat.
+
+It looked, for a moment, as if the wavering, straggling men would break
+ranks and run; but a sudden distant whistle, and a sharp command from
+Reddy brought them right about face.
+
+"Buck up, boys," he ordered sharply. "I reckon the little mistress ain't
+a-goin' ter turn us down! She'll like it. You'll see!"
+
+The train had scarcely come to a stop before Genevieve was off the car
+steps.
+
+"Mr. Tim, Mr. Tim--here I am! Oh, how good you look!" she cried, holding
+out both her hands. A minute later she turned to introduce the
+embarrassed foreman to Mrs. Kennedy and the girls, who, with her father,
+were following close at her heels. This task was not half completed,
+however, when she spied the red-faced, anxious-eyed men.
+
+As Mr. Tim had done, she stared dumbly for a moment; then, leaving the
+rest of the introductions to her father, she ran toward them.
+
+"Why, it's the boys--our boys! Carlos, Long John, Reddy! But what _is_
+the matter? How queer you look! Is anybody sick--or--dead?" she
+stammered, plainly in doubt what to say.
+
+"Sure, it's for you--we're a-welcomin' you," exploded Long John,
+jerking at his collar which was obviously too small for him.
+
+Genevieve's face showed a puzzled frown.
+
+"But these clothes!--why are you like this?--and after all I've promised
+the girls about you, too!"
+
+"You mean--you don't like it--this?" demanded Reddy, incredulous hope in
+his eyes and voice.
+
+"Of course I don't like it! I've been promising the girls all the way
+here that you'd give them a welcome that _was_ a welcome! And now--but
+why did you do it, boys?"
+
+Long John drew himself to his full height.
+
+"Why? 'Cause Reddy said to," he answered. "Reddy said we'd better ease
+up on the shock it would be to you--here, after all you'd been used to
+back East--fine clothes, fine feed, and fine doin's all around, to say
+nothin' of books and learnin' in between times; so we--we tried to break
+ye in easy. That's all," he finished, a little lamely.
+
+"And then these clothes mean--that?" demanded the girl.
+
+Long John nodded dumbly.
+
+Genevieve gave a ringing laugh, but her eyes grew soft as she extended
+her hand to each man in turn.
+
+"What old dears you are--every one of you!" she exclaimed. "Now go home
+quick, and get comfortable." She would have said more, but some one
+called her and she turned abruptly. Cordelia Wilson, looking half
+frightened, half exultant, but wholly excited, was pulling at her
+sleeve.
+
+"Genevieve, Genevieve, quick," she was panting; "is that a cowboy--that,
+over there--talking to your father?"
+
+Genevieve turned with a wondering frown. The next moment she burst into
+a merry laugh.
+
+"Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia, you will be the death of me, yet! No, that
+isn't a cowboy. It's Susie Billings. She lives on a ranch near here."
+
+"A girl--dressed like that--and carrying a revolver! Just a common
+'Susie!'" gasped Cordelia.
+
+"Yes--just a common 'Susie,'" twinkled Genevieve.
+
+"But I thought she was a--a cowboy," quavered Cordelia. "You _said_
+they'd be here in--in all their war paint!"
+
+From behind them sounded a muffled snort and a low-voiced:
+
+"Boys, she thinks that's a cowboy! Come on--say we show 'em! Eh?"
+
+Genevieve laughed softly at what Cordelia had said, and at the
+disappointment in her voice.
+
+"Cowboys? Well, they _are_ here," she acknowledged with twitching lips,
+"and in their war paint, too--of a kind! They're right here--Why,
+they're _gone_," she broke off. "Never mind," she laughed, as she
+caught sight of a silk hat and a black coat hurrying toward a group of
+saddled ponies. "I reckon you'll see all the cowboys you want to before
+you go back East again. Now come up and meet Susie--and she hasn't,
+really, any revolver there, Cordelia, in spite of that cartridge belt
+and holster. She's always rigging up that way. She likes it!"
+
+Susie proved to be "a girl just like us," as Cordelia amazedly expressed
+it to Alma Lane. She was certainly a very pleasant one, they all
+decided. But even Susie could not keep their eyes from wandering to the
+unfamiliar scene around them.
+
+It was a bare little station set in the midst of a bare little prairie
+town, and quite unlike anything the Easterners had ever seen before.
+Broad, dusty streets led seemingly nowhere. Low, straggling houses
+stretched out lazy lengths of untidiness, except where a group of
+taller, more pretentious buildings indicated the stores, a hotel or two,
+several boarding houses, and numerous saloons and dance halls.
+
+From the station doorway, a blanketed Indian looked out with stolid,
+unsmiling face. Leaning against a post a dreamy-eyed Mexican in tight
+trousers, red sash, and tall peaked hat, smoked a cigarette. Halfway
+down the platform a tired-looking man in heavy cowhide boots and rough
+clothes, watched beside a huge canvas-topped wagon beyond which could
+be seen the switching tails of six great oxen.
+
+"There's Fred's 'boat,'" remarked Bertha, laughingly, to Cordelia.
+
+"Where? What?" Cordelia had been trying to look in all directions at
+once.
+
+"That prairie schooner down there."
+
+"Now that looks like the pictures," asserted Cordelia. "I wonder if the
+cowboys will."
+
+"I declare, the whole thing is worse than a three-ring circus," declared
+Tilly, aggrievedly, to Genevieve. "I simply can't see everything!"
+
+"All aboard for the ranch," called Mr. Hartley, leading the way around
+to the other side of the station; and like a flock of prairie chickens,
+as Genevieve put it, they all trooped after him.
+
+"Why, what funny horses!" cried Tilly, as Mr. Hartley stopped before a
+large, old-fashioned three-seated carriage drawn up to the platform.
+
+At Genevieve's chuckling laugh, Tilly threw a sharper glance toward the
+two gray creatures attached to the carriage.
+
+"Why, they aren't horses at all--yes, they are--no, they aren't,
+either!"
+
+"I always heard young ladies were a bit changeable," grinned Tim Nolan,
+mischievously; "but do they always change their minds as often as that,
+Miss?"
+
+"Yes, they do--when the occasion demands it," retorted Tilly, with a
+merry glance; and Tim Nolan laughed appreciatively.
+
+"Well, they aren't horses," smiled Mr. Hartley, as he gave his hand to
+help Mrs. Kennedy into the carriage. "They happen to be mules. Now, Miss
+Tilly, if you'll come in here with Mrs. Kennedy, we'll put two other
+young ladies and myself in the other two seats, and leave Genevieve to
+do the honors in one of the ranch wagons with the rest of you. The
+baggage, the boys are already putting in the other wagon, I see," he
+added, looking back to where two men were busy with a pile of trunks and
+bags. "They'll come along after us. Mr. Tim is on his horse, of course.
+We'll let him show us the way. Now stow yourselves comfortably," he
+admonished his guests. "You know we have an eighteen-mile ride ahead of
+us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CORDELIA SEES A COWBOY
+
+
+Through the broad, dusty streets, by the straggling houses, and out on
+to the boundless sea of grass trailed the carriage and the ranch wagons,
+with Mr. Tim in the lead.
+
+Five pairs of eyes grew wide with wonder and awe.
+
+"I didn't suppose anything in the world could be so--so far," breathed
+Cordelia, who was with Mr. Hartley on the front seat of the carriage.
+
+"No wonder Genevieve was always talking about 'space, wide, wide
+space,'" cried Bertha. "Why, it's just like the ocean--only more so,
+because there aren't any waves."
+
+"As if anything could be more like the ocean than the ocean itself,"
+giggled Tilly.
+
+Mr. Hartley laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"Never mind, Miss Bertha," he nodded. "Just you wait till there's a
+little more wind, and you'll see some waves, I reckon. It's mighty still
+just now; and yet--there, look! Over there to the right--see?"
+
+They all looked, and they all saw. They saw far in the distance the
+green change to gray, and the gray to faint purple, and back again to
+green, while curious shifting lights and shadows glancing across the
+waving blades of grass, made them ripple like water in the sunlight. At
+the same time, from somewhere, came a soft, cool wind.
+
+"Why, it is--it is just like the ocean," exulted Cordelia. "I've seen it
+look like that down to Nantasket, 'way, 'way off at sea."
+
+"I told you 'twas," triumphed Bertha.
+
+"Well, anyway," observed Tilly, demurely, "they must be awfully dry
+waves--not much fun to jump!"
+
+"Tilly, how can you?" protested Cordelia. "How you do take the poetry
+out of anything! I believe you'd take the poetry out of--of Shakespeare
+himself!"
+
+"Pooh! Never saw much in him to take out," shrugged Tilly.
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia.
+
+"Tilly can't see poetry in anything that doesn't jingle like 'If you
+love me as I love you, no knife can cut our love in two,'" chanted
+Bertha.
+
+"My dears!" remonstrated Mrs. Kennedy, feebly.
+
+Tilly turned with swift pacification.
+
+"Don't you worry, Mrs. Kennedy. I'm used to it. They can't trouble me
+any!"
+
+It was Mr. Hartley who broke the silence that followed.
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia," he asked laughingly, "what is the matter? You've
+been peering in all directions, and you look as if you hadn't found what
+you were hunting for. You weren't expecting to find soda fountains and
+candy stores on the prairie, were you?"
+
+Cordelia smiled and shook her head.
+
+"Of course not, Mr. Hartley! I was looking for the blue bonnets--the
+flowers, you know. Genevieve said they grew wild all through the prairie
+grass."
+
+"And so they do--specially, early in the spring, my dear. I wish you
+could see them, then."
+
+"I wish I could--Genevieve has told me so much about them. She says
+they're the state flower. I thought they had such a funny name; I wanted
+to pick one, if I could. She says they're lovely, too."
+
+"They are, indeed, and I wish you could see them when they are at their
+best," rejoined Mr. Hartley; then he turned to Bertha, who had been
+listening with evident interest. "In the spring it's a blue ocean, Miss
+Bertha--I wish you could see the wind sweep across it then! And I wish
+you could smell it, too," he added with a laugh. "I reckon you wouldn't
+think it much like your salty, fishy east wind," he finished,
+twinkling.
+
+"Oh, but we just love that salty, fishy east wind, every time we go near
+the shore," retorted a chorus of loyal Eastern voices; and Mr. Hartley
+laughed again.
+
+In the ranch wagon behind them, Genevieve was doing the honors of the
+prairie right royally. Here, there, and everywhere she was pointing out
+something of interest. In the ranch wagon, too, the marvelous hush and
+charm of limitless distance had wrought its own spell; and all had
+fallen silent.
+
+It was Alma Lane who broke the pause.
+
+"What are all those deep, narrow paths, such a lot of them, running
+parallel to the wheel tracks?" she asked curiously. "I've been watching
+them ever since we left Bolo. They are on both sides, too."
+
+"They're made by the cattle," answered Genevieve; "such a lot of them,
+you know, traveling single file on their way to Bolo. Bolo is a 'cow
+town'--that is, they ship cattle to market from there."
+
+"Poor things," sighed Elsie, sympathetically. "I saw some yesterday from
+the train. I thought then I never wanted to eat another piece of
+beefsteak--and I adore beefsteak, too."
+
+Genevieve sobered a little.
+
+"I know it; I know just how you feel. I hate that part--but it's
+business, I suppose. I reckon I hate business, anyhow--but I love the
+ranch! I can't get used to the branding, either."
+
+"What's that?" asked Elsie.
+
+Genevieve shook her head. A look of pain crossed her face.
+
+"Don't ask me, Elsie, please. You'll find out soon enough. Branding is
+business, too, I suppose--but it's horrid. Mammy Lindy says that the
+first time I saw our brand on a calf and realized what it meant and how
+it got there, I cried for hours--for days, in fact, much of the time."
+
+"Why, Genevieve," cried Elsie, wonderingly. "How dreadful! What is a
+brand? I thought 'brand' meant the kind of coffee or tea one drank."
+
+Alma frowned and threw a quick look into Genevieve's face.
+
+"What a funny little town Bolo is!" she exclaimed, with a swift change
+of subject. "I declare, it looked 'most as sleepy as Sunbridge."
+
+"Sleepy!" laughed Genevieve, her face clearing, much to Alma's
+satisfaction. "You should see Bolo when it's really awake--say when some
+association of cattlemen meet there. And there's going to be one next
+month, I think. There's no end of fun and frolic and horse-racing then,
+with everybody there, from the cowboys and cattle-kings to the trappers
+and Indians. You wouldn't think there was anything sleepy about Bolo
+then, I reckon," nodded Genevieve, gayly.
+
+"Genevieve, quick--look!--off there," cried Elsie, excitedly.
+
+"Some more of Fred's 'boats'--three of them this time," laughed Alma,
+her eyes on the three white-topped wagons glistening in the sunlight.
+
+"Boats?" questioned Genevieve.
+
+"That's what little Fred Wilson told us we were going to ride in,"
+explained Alma. "He said they had prairie schooners here, and schooners
+were boats, of course."
+
+Genevieve laughed merrily.
+
+"I wish Fred could see these 'boats,'" she said.
+
+"Well, I don't know; I feel as if they were boats," declared Alma,
+stoutly. "I'm sure I don't think anybody on the ocean could be any more
+glad to see a sail than I should be to see one of these, if I were a
+lonely traveler on this sea of grass!"
+
+"But where are they going?" questioned Elsie.
+
+"I don't know--nor do they, probably," rejoined Genevieve, with a
+quizzical smile. "They're presumably emigrants hunting up cheap land for
+a new home. There used to be lots of them, Father says; but there aren't
+so many now. See--they're going to cross our way just ahead of us. We'll
+get a splendid view of them."
+
+Nearer and nearer came the curiously clumsy, yet curiously airy-looking
+wagons. Sallow-faced women looked out mournfully, and tow-headed
+children peeped from every vantage point. Brawny, but weary-looking men
+stalked beside their teams.
+
+"Look at the men--_walking_!" cried Elsie.
+
+"They're 'bull-whackers,'" nodded Genevieve, mischievously.
+
+"Bull-whackers!"
+
+"Yes, because their teams happen to be oxen; if they were mules, now,
+they'd be 'mule-skinners.'"
+
+"Is that what you are, then?" asked Elsie, with a demureness that
+rivaled Tilly's best efforts. "You're driving mules, you know."
+
+"Well, you better not call me that," laughed Genevieve. "See, they've
+stopped to speak to Father. I reckon we'll have to stop, too."
+
+"I 'reckon' we shall," mimicked Elsie, good-naturedly.
+
+"They've got all their household goods and gods in those wagons," said
+Genevieve, musingly. "I can see a tin coffeepot hanging straight over
+one woman's head."
+
+"I shouldn't think they had anything but children," laughed Alma, as
+from every wagon there tumbled a scrambling, squirming mass of barefoot
+legs, thin brown arms, and touseled hair above wide, questioning eyes.
+
+Long minutes later, from the carriage, Cordelia Wilson followed with
+dreamy eyes the slow-receding wagons, now again upon their way.
+
+"I feel just like 'ships that pass in the night,'" she murmured.
+
+"I don't. I feel just like supper," whispered Tilly. Then she laughed
+at the frightened look Cordelia flung at Mr. Hartley.
+
+On and on through the shimmering heat, under the cloudless sky, trailed
+the carriage and the ranch wagons. Mr. Tim had long ago galloped out of
+sight.
+
+It was when they were within five miles of the ranch that Cordelia,
+looking far ahead, saw against the horizon a rapidly growing black
+speck. For some time she watched it in silence; then, suddenly, she
+became aware that, large as was the speck now, it had broken into other
+specks--bobbing, shifting specks that promptly became not specks at all,
+but men on horseback.
+
+Spasmodically she clutched Mr. Hartley's arm.
+
+"What--are--those?" she questioned, with dry lips.
+
+Mr. Hartley gave an indifferent glance ahead.
+
+"Cowboys, I should say," he answered.
+
+Cordelia caught her breath. At that moment a shot rang out, then
+another, and another.
+
+Mr. Hartley looked up now, sharply, a little angrily. The indifference
+was quite gone from his face.
+
+It was then that Genevieve's voice came clear and strong from the wagon
+behind.
+
+"It's the boys, Father--our boys!" she called. "I know it's the boys. I
+told them I'd promised the girls a welcome, and they're giving it to
+us!"
+
+"By George! it is our boys," breathed Mr. Hartley. And the scowl on his
+face gave way to a broad smile.
+
+"Is it really all--fun?" quavered Cordelia, breathlessly.
+
+"Every bit," Mr. Hartley assured her. And then--though still
+breathlessly--Cordelia gave herself up to the excitement of the moment.
+
+They were all about them soon--those lithe, supple figures, swaying
+lightly, or sitting superbly erect in their saddles. From the top of
+their broad-brimmed hats to the tips of their high-heeled cowboy boots
+they were a wonder and a joy to the amazed eyes of Cordelia. With
+stirrups so long the chains clanked musically, they galloped back and
+forth, shouting, laughing, and shooting wildly into the air. With their
+chaparejos, or leather overalls, their big revolvers, their spurs, their
+bright silk handkerchiefs knotted loosely around their necks over the
+open collar of their flannel shirts, they made a brave show, indeed. Nor
+was the least of the wonders about them the graceful swirls of
+loosely-coiled lariats hanging from the horns of their saddles.
+
+After all, it lasted only a minute before the revolvers were thrust into
+the waiting holsters, and before the men, bareheaded, were making a
+sweeping bow from their saddles.
+
+It was Genevieve who led the clapping.
+
+"Oh, boys, thank you! That was fine--just fine!" she crowed. "Now I
+reckon Cordelia thinks she has seen a cowboy all right!"
+
+And Cordelia did. A little white, but bravely smiling, she was sitting
+erect, apparently serene. And only Mr. Hartley knew that one of her
+hands was clutched about his arm in a grasp that actually hurt.
+
+"They did that--all that shooting and yelling--just for a joke, then?"
+she asked Mr. Hartley, a little later.
+
+"Only that. They were giving you a welcome to the Six Star Ranch."
+
+"Then they don't act like that all the time?"
+
+"Hardly!" laughed the man. "I reckon they wouldn't get much work done if
+they did."
+
+Cordelia drew a relieved sigh. Her eyes, a little less fearful, rested
+on the erect figure of the nearest cowboy, just to the right of the
+carriage.
+
+"I'm so glad," she murmured. "I'll tell Mrs. Miller. She thought they
+did, you know--yell always without just and due provocation, and shoot
+at sight."
+
+The man's lips twitched; but the next moment they grew a bit stern at
+the corners.
+
+"That's exactly it, Miss Cordelia--exactly the idea that some people
+have of the boys, and I'll grant that when they--they drink too much
+whiskey, they aren't exactly what you might call peaceable, desirable
+companions--though three-fourths of their antics then are caused by
+reckless high spirits rather than by real ugliness--with exceptions, of
+course. But when sober they are quiet, straightforward, generous-hearted
+good fellows, hard-working and honest; certainly my boys are."
+
+Mr. Hartley hesitated, then went on, still gravely.
+
+"There's just as much difference in ranches, of course, Miss Cordelia,
+as there is in folks; and all the ranches are changing fast, anyway,
+nowadays. Lots of the owners are quitting living on them at all. They've
+gone into the towns to live. On the Six Star the boys take their meals
+with the family; and in many places they don't do that, I know, even
+where the owner lives on the ranch. Our boys are very loyal to us, and
+very much interested in all that concerns us. They fairly worship
+Genevieve, and have, all the way up."
+
+"I'm so glad," murmured Cordelia, again; and this time there was a look
+very much like admiration in the eyes that rested on Long John just
+ahead.
+
+It was some time later that Mr. Hartley said, half turning around:
+
+"Look straight ahead, a little to the right, young ladies, and you'll
+get a very good view of the Six Star Ranch."
+
+"Oh, and you've got a windmill," cried Tilly. "I can see it against the
+sky; I know I can!"
+
+"Yes, we've got a windmill," nodded Mr. Hartley.
+
+"I love windmills," exulted Cordelia.
+
+"So does Genevieve," observed Mr. Hartley, raising his eyebrows a
+little.
+
+Only Cordelia noticed the odd smile he gave as he spoke, and she did not
+know what it meant. Later, however, she remembered it. She was too much
+excited now to think of anything but the fact that the Six Star Ranch
+was so near.
+
+Bertha craned her neck to look ahead.
+
+"Only think, we haven't passed a house, not a house since we left Bolo,"
+she cried.
+
+Mr. Hartley smiled.
+
+"You see, Miss Bertha, Bolo, eighteen miles away, is our nearest
+neighbor; and you'll have to go even farther than that in any other
+direction to strike another neighbor."
+
+"My stars!" gasped Bertha. "How awful lonesome it must be, Mr. Hartley."
+
+"Anyhow, you can't be much bothered with neighbors running in to borrow
+two eggs and a little soda, can you?" giggled Tilly.
+
+"No; that isn't one of the difficulties we have to deal with," smiled
+Mr. Hartley; but Bertha bridled visibly.
+
+"Well, really, Tilly Mack," she exclaimed in pretended anger, "I should
+like to know if you mean anything special! You see," she added
+laughingly to Mr. Hartley, "I happen to live next to Tilly, myself!"
+
+From both carriage and wagon, now, came a babel of eager chatter. There
+was so much to be seen on the one hand, so much to be explained on the
+other. The buildings and corrals were plainly visible by this time, and
+each minute they became more clearly defined.
+
+"Do you mean that all that belongs to just one ranch?" demanded Tilly.
+
+"Sure!" twinkled Mr. Hartley. "You see, if folks can't borrow of us, we
+can't borrow of them, either; so it's rather necessary that we have all
+the comforts of home ourselves."
+
+"Well, I guess you've got them," laughed Tilly, looking wonderingly
+about her.
+
+"I reckon we have," nodded Mr. Hartley, as he began to point out one and
+another of the buildings.
+
+There was the long, low ranch house facing the wide reach of the
+prairie. Behind it, and connected with it by a covered way, were the
+dining room and the cook room. Beyond that was the long bunk house where
+the men slept, flanked by another building for the Mexican servants.
+There were stables, sheds, a storehouse and saddle-room, and a
+blacksmith's shop. Below the house an oblong bit of fenced ground showed
+a riot of color--Genevieve's flower garden. Below that was a vegetable
+garden. There was a large corral for the cattle, and a smaller one,
+high and circular, for the horses. There were three or four green trees
+near the house--tall, thin cottonwoods that had grown up along the
+slender streams of waste water from the windmill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE RANCH HOUSE
+
+
+"And here we are at the Six Star Ranch," cried Mr. Hartley, as he leaped
+from the carriage before the wide-open door of the ranch house. "Well,
+Mammy Lindy," he added, as the kindly, wrinkled old face of a colored
+woman appeared in the doorway, "I've corralled the whole bunch and
+brought them West with me!"
+
+A little stiffly the girls got down from their seats--all but Genevieve.
+She, in the space of a breath, seemingly, had leaped to the ground and
+run up on to the wide gallery where the negress, with adoring eyes,
+awaited her.
+
+"Laws, chil'e," Tilly, who was nearest, heard a tenderly crooning voice
+say, "but I am jes' pow'ful glad to see ye, honey!"
+
+"Mammy, you old darling!" cried Genevieve, giving the rotund, gayly-clad
+figure a bear-like hug. "You look just as good as you used to--and my,
+my! just see all this new finery to welcome me," she added, holding off
+her beaming-faced old nurse at arms' length. "I reckon you'll think
+something has come, Mammy Lindy, when we all get settled," she added
+laughingly, as she turned to present the old woman to Mrs. Kennedy and
+the girls.
+
+A little later, Tilly, in the wide, center hallway, was looking
+wonderingly about her.
+
+"Well, Genevieve Hartley, I didn't think you _could_ have room enough
+for us all," she declared; "but I'll give it up. I should think you
+might entertain the whole state of Texas in this house!"
+
+"We try to, sometimes," laughed Genevieve. "You know we Texans pride
+ourselves on always having room for everybody."
+
+"Well, I should think you did--and, only think, all on one floor, too!"
+
+Genevieve did not answer. She was looking around her with a thoughtful
+little frown between her eyebrows as if she saw something she did not
+quite understand.
+
+The girls were standing in the wide center hallway that ran straight
+through the house. On one side, through a wide archway, could be seen a
+large living-room with piano, bookshelves, comfortable chairs, a couch,
+and a good-sized table. Beyond that there was a narrow hall with two
+large rooms leading from it. From the other side of the center hall
+opened another narrow hall at right angles, from which led the six
+remaining rooms of the house.
+
+"This is more fun than getting settled in the sleepers," declared Elsie
+Martin, as Genevieve began to fly about arranging her guests.
+
+The boys made quick work of bringing in the trunks and bags; and then
+for a brief half-hour there was quiet while eight pairs of hurried hands
+attempted to remove part of the dust of travel and to unearth fresh
+blouses and clean linen from long-packed trunks.
+
+It was a hungry, merry crowd, a little later, that trooped through the
+long covered way leading to the dining-room.
+
+"Now I know why this house has got so much room in it," declared Tilly.
+"We could have room in the East if we banished our dining-rooms and
+kitchens and pantries to the neighbors like this!"
+
+Genevieve did not answer. They had reached the long narrow room with the
+big table running lengthwise of it. Only one end of the table was set
+with places for eight.
+
+"Why, where are the boys?" questioned Genevieve.
+
+Mammy Lindy shook her head.
+
+"Dey ain't here, chil'e."
+
+"But, Mammy, you are mistaken. They are here. They came home with us."
+
+"Yas'm, dey done come home, sure 'nuf, but dey ain't eatin' now, honey."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Again the old woman shook her head. She did not answer. She turned
+troubled eyes first on the two young Mexican maids by the doorway, then
+on Mr. Hartley.
+
+"Father, do you know what this means?" demanded Genevieve.
+
+"No, dearie, I must say I don't," frowned Mr. Hartley.
+
+"Then I shall find out," avowed the mistress of the Six Star Ranch.
+"Mammy Lindy, please seat my guests, and have the supper served right
+away. I'll find Mr. Tim."
+
+"But, my dear," remonstrated Mrs. Kennedy, gently, "wouldn't it be
+better if you ate your own supper first--with your guests?"
+
+Genevieve shook her head. Her face flushed painfully.
+
+"I know, Aunt Julia, of course, what you mean. You don't think it's
+civil in me to run off like this. But it's the boys--something is the
+matter. They always eat with us. Why, they may be thinking we don't
+_want_ them, Aunt Julia. Please, please excuse me, everybody," she
+entreated, as she ran from the room.
+
+Halfway to the bunk house Genevieve met the ranch foreman.
+
+"Why, Mr. Tim, supper is ready. Didn't you know?" she called, hurrying
+toward him. "Where are the boys?"
+
+An odd expression crossed the man's kindly, weather-beaten face.
+
+"Oh, they're 'round--in spots."
+
+"Why don't they come to supper?"
+
+Mr. Tim's eyebrows went up.
+
+"Well, as near as I can make out, that's part of the welcome they're
+giving you."
+
+"Welcome!--to stay away from supper!"
+
+Mr. Tim laughed.
+
+"I reckon maybe I'll have to explain," he replied. "Long John told me
+they'd got it all fixed up that, after your fine doings back East, you
+wouldn't take to things on the ranch very well. So for two days the
+whole bunch has been slicking things up, including themselves. They
+hunted up every stiff hat and b'iled shirt in this part of Texas, I
+reckon, for that splurge at Bolo; and Mammy Lindy says they've been
+pestering the life out of her, slicking up the house."
+
+Genevieve drew in her breath with a little cry.
+
+"There! That's what was the matter with the rooms," she ejaculated.
+"Nothing looked natural--but some things weren't exactly 'slicked up,'
+Mr. Tim. I couldn't turn around without finding a book at my elbow.
+There's scarcely one left on the shelves!"
+
+"Maybe I can explain that," returned the man, with a twinkle in his
+eyes. "Reddy said the East was mighty strong on books and culturing, so
+I s'pose he thought he'd have 'em 'round handy. It's lucky your father
+had all them books come out while you was studying, or else I reckon the
+boys would have hit the trail for the nearest book-store and roped every
+book in sight."
+
+Genevieve laughed appreciatively.
+
+"But, the supper?" she frowned again.
+
+"Oh, that's part of the outfit--and Reddy said it was 'dinner,' too. He
+said that he was raised back East, and that he knew; and that 'twas more
+seemly that you ate it without their company."
+
+"Humph! Well, it isn't, and I sha'n't," settled Genevieve, emphatically.
+"Where is Reddy? Go in to supper," she laughed, "and I'll round up the
+boys--I mean, I'll find them," she corrected demurely. "Miss Jane
+doesn't like me to say 'round up,' Mr. Tim."
+
+Mr. Tim smiled, but his eyes grew tender--almost anxious.
+
+"I reckon they haven't spoiled you back East, after all, little girl.
+You're the same true blue, like you was, before."
+
+Genevieve laughed and colored a little.
+
+"Of course I am," she declared. "Now I'm going for the boys."
+
+Mr. Tim laid a detaining hand on her arm.
+
+"Not to-night; it's late, and it would make no end of fuss all around.
+But I'll tell them. They'll be on hand for breakfast, all right. Now go
+back to your own supper, yourself."
+
+"All right," agreed Genevieve, reluctantly. "But--to-morrow, remember!"
+
+"I ain't forgetting--to-morrow," nodded the man.
+
+In the dining-room Genevieve was greeted with a merry clamor, under
+cover of which she said hurriedly to her father:
+
+"It's all right. They'll come to-morrow."
+
+"I guess you won't find we've left you much to eat," gurgled Elsie
+Martin, her mouth full of fried chicken.
+
+"Oh, yes, I shall--in Texas," retorted Genevieve.
+
+"But I'm so ashamed," apologized Cordelia. "I don't think we ought to
+eat so much."
+
+"I do," disagreed Tilly, "when everything is so perfectly lovely as this
+is. They are just the nicest things! And just guess how many hot
+biscuits I've eaten with this delicious plum sauce! Mr. Hartley says
+they're wild--the plums, I mean, not the biscuits."
+
+"And it's all such a surprise, too," interposed Alma Lane; "milk, and
+butter, and all."
+
+Genevieve stared frankly.
+
+"Surprise!--_milk and butter!_" she exclaimed. "Didn't you suppose we
+had milk and butter?"
+
+Alma blushed.
+
+"Why, Genevieve, I--I didn't mean anything, you know, truly I didn't,"
+she stammered. "It's only that--that ranches don't usually have them,
+you know."
+
+"Don't usually have them!" frowned Genevieve. "Alma Lane, what _are_ you
+talking about?"
+
+"Why, we read it, you know, in a book," explained Cordelia, hastily,
+coming to the rescue. "They said in spite of there being so many cows
+all around everywhere, there wasn't any butter or milk, and that the
+cowboys wouldn't like to be asked to milk, you know."
+
+"You read it? Where?" Genevieve's forehead still wore its frown.
+
+Mr. Hartley gave a chuckling laugh.
+
+"I reckon Genevieve doesn't know much about such ranches," he observed.
+"As I was telling you, Miss Cordelia, coming out this afternoon, there's
+just as much difference in ranches as there is in folks; and ours
+happens to be the kind where we like all the comforts of home pretty
+well. To be sure, I wouldn't just like to ask Reddy or Long John to
+milk, maybe," he added, with a whimsical smile; "but I don't have to,
+you see. I've got Carlos for just such work. He looks after the
+vegetable garden, too, and Genevieve's flowers. By the way, dearie,"--he
+turned to his daughter--"Tim says Carlos has been putting in his
+prettiest work on your garden this summer. Be sure you don't forget to
+notice it."
+
+"As if I could help noticing it," returned Genevieve. She was about to
+say more when there came an earnest question from Cordelia.
+
+"Mr. Hartley, please, what did you call those two men?"
+
+"What men?"
+
+"The ones you--you wouldn't wish to ask to milk."
+
+"Oh, the boys? I don't remember--I reckon 'twas Reddy and Long John that
+I mentioned, maybe."
+
+"Yes, sir; that's the one I mean--the John one. What is his other name,
+please?"
+
+"His surname? Why, really, Miss Cordelia, I reckon I've forgotten what
+it is. The boys all go by their first names, mostly, else by a nickname.
+Why? Found a long-lost friend?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir. Well, I mean--that is--he may be lost, but he isn't mine,"
+stammered Cordelia, who was always very literal.
+
+"Then don't blush so, Cordy," bantered Tilly, wickedly, "else we shall
+think he is yours."
+
+Cordelia blushed a still deeper pink, but she said nothing; and in the
+confusion of leaving the dining-room she managed to place herself as far
+from Tilly as possible. On the back gallery she saw the ranch foreman.
+As the others went chattering through the hall to the gallery beyond,
+she lingered timidly.
+
+"Mr. Nolan, would--would you please tell me Mr.--Mr. John's other name?"
+
+"John? Oh, you mean 'Long John,' Miss?"
+
+"Yes; but--'John' what?"
+
+Tim Nolan frowned.
+
+"Why, let me see,"--he bit his lip in thought--"'Pierce'--no, 'Proctor.'
+Yes, that's it--'John Proctor.'"
+
+A look of mingled disappointment and relief crossed Cordelia's face.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Nolan, very much," she faltered, as she hurried after
+her companions.
+
+"I don't know whether I'm glad or sorry," she was thinking. "Of course
+'twould have been nice if he'd been John Sanborn, only I'm afraid Hermit
+Joe wouldn't like a cowboy for a son, specially as there wouldn't be
+anything for him to do in Sunbridge at his trade."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy announced soon after supper that she should take matters in
+hand very sternly that night and insist upon an early bedtime hour.
+
+"It has been a long, hot, fatiguing day," she said, "but you are all so
+excited you'd sit up half the night asking questions and telling
+stories; so I shall take advantage of my position as chaperon, and send
+you to bed very soon."
+
+"O dear!" sighed Tilly. "If only it would come morning quick! Just
+think, we've got to wait a whole night before we can do any of the
+things we're dying to do!"
+
+"Never mind; there are lots of days coming," laughed Mr. Hartley. "What
+a fine family of young folks I have, to be sure," he gloried, looking
+around him contentedly.
+
+They were all about him on the front gallery, in hammocks and chairs, or
+sitting on the steps; and a very attractive group they made, indeed.
+
+"I think it would help the waiting if Genevieve would go in and sing to
+us," suggested Bertha, after a moment's silence. "It will be so heavenly
+to sit out here and listen to it!"
+
+"Oh, sing that lovely Mexican 'Swallow Song,'" coaxed Elsie. "'_La
+Gol--_' _--Gol_-something, anyhow."
+
+"Don't swear, Elsie," reproved Tilly, with becoming dignity.
+
+"_'La Golondrina'?_" laughed Genevieve.
+
+"Yes, it's a dear," sighed Elsie.
+
+"I'd rather have that Creole Love Song that you say Mammy Lindy taught
+you," breathed Cordelia. "That would be perfect for such a scene as
+this."
+
+"Pooh! I'd rather have one of those tinkly little tunes where you can
+hear the banjos and the tambourines," averred Tilly.
+
+"Indeed! At this rate I don't see how I'm going to sing at all," laughed
+Genevieve, "with so many conflicting wishes. Anything different anybody
+wants?"
+
+"Yes," declared Mr. Hartley, promptly. "I want them all."
+
+"Of course!" cried half a dozen voices.
+
+"All right!" rejoined Genevieve, laughingly, springing to her feet.
+
+And so while everybody watched the stars in the far-reaching sky,
+Genevieve, in the living room, played and sang till the back gallery and
+the long covered way at the rear of the house were full of the moving
+shadows of soft-stepping Mexican servants and cowboys. And everywhere
+there was the hush of perfect content while from the living room there
+floated out the clear, sweet tones, the weird, dreamy melodies, and the
+tinkle of the tambourines.
+
+One by one, an hour later, the lighted windows in the long, low ranch
+house became dark. The last to change was the one behind which sat
+Cordelia Wilson in the room she shared with Tilly.
+
+"Cordelia, why don't you put out that light and go to bed?" demanded
+Tilly at last, drowsily. "Morning will never come at this rate!"
+
+"Yes, Tilly, I'm going to bed in just a minute," promised Cordelia, as
+carefully she wrote in the space opposite Mrs. Miller's name on her list
+of "things to do":
+
+"Cowboys are good, kind gentlemen; but they are noisy, and some
+rough-looking."
+
+Five minutes later, Cordelia, from her little bed on one side of the
+room called a soft "good night" across to Tilly. But Tilly was already
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MISTRESS OF THE SIX STAR RANCH
+
+
+Breakfast was an early matter at the Six Star Ranch. It came almost with
+the sunrise, in fact. Genevieve had assured her guests, on the night of
+their arrival, however, that their breakfast might be hours later--that
+it might, indeed, be at any hour they pleased. But on this first morning
+at the ranch, there was not one guest that did not promptly respond to
+the breakfast-bell except Mrs. Kennedy. The stir of life out of doors
+had proved an effectual rising-bell for all; and it was anything but a
+sleepy-looking crowd of young people that tripped into the dining-room
+to find the boys already waiting for them--a little quiet and shy, to be
+sure, but very red and shiny-looking as to face and hands, speaking
+loudly of a vigorous use of soap and water.
+
+Before the meal was half over, Mrs. Kennedy came in, only to meet a
+chorus of remonstrances that she should have disturbed herself so early.
+
+Genevieve, however, assumed a look of mock severity.
+
+"Aunt Julia," she began reprovingly in so perfect an imitation of Miss
+Jane Chick's severest manner that Mrs. Kennedy's lips twitched; "didn't
+you hear the rising-bell, my dear? How often must I ask you not to be
+late to your meals?"
+
+For one brief moment there was a dazed hush about the table; then, at
+sight of Cordelia's horrified face, Genevieve lost her self-control and
+giggled.
+
+"Oh, but that was such a good chance," she chuckled. "Please, Aunt
+Julia, I just couldn't help it. I had to!"
+
+"I don't doubt it," smiled back Mrs. Kennedy; and at the meaning
+emphasis in her voice there was a general laugh.
+
+"Well, what shall we do first?" demanded Tilly, when breakfast was over.
+
+Genevieve put her finger to her lips.
+
+"I wonder, now. Oh, I know! Let's go out and see if they've driven in
+the saddle band yet; then we'll watch the boys rope them and start to
+work."
+
+"What's a saddle band?--sounds like a girth," frowned Tilly.
+
+"Humph! I reckon it isn't one, all the same," laughed Genevieve. "It's
+the horses the boys ride. Each one has his own string, you know."
+
+"No, I don't know," retorted Tilly, aggrievedly. "And you needn't use
+all those funny words--'string' and 'saddle band' and 'rope
+them'--without explaining them, either, Genevieve Hartley. You've been
+talking like that ever since we came. Just as if we knew what all that
+meant!"
+
+Genevieve laughed again.
+
+"No, you don't, of course," she admitted, "any more than I understood
+some of your terms back East. But come; let's go out and watch the boys.
+One of the sheds has a lovely low, flat roof, and we can see right over
+into the horse corral from there. It's easy; there's a ladder. Come on!"
+
+"Why, what a lot of horses!" cried Tilly, a moment later, as they
+stepped out of doors. "Do they ride all those?"
+
+"Not this morning," laughed Genevieve. "You see, each man has his own
+string of horses, and he picks out some one of the bunch, and lets the
+rest go. That's Reddy, now, driving them into the corral. The other boys
+will be here pretty quick now, and the fun will begin. You'll see!"
+
+The horse corral was high and circular, and there was a fine view of it
+from the shed roof. A snubbing post was in the middle of the corral, and
+a wing was built out at one side from the entrance gate, so that the
+horses could be driven in more easily; yet Reddy quite had his hands
+full as it was. At last they were all in, and a merry time they were
+having of it, racing in a circle about the enclosure, heads up, and
+tails and manes flying.
+
+"Regular merry-go-round, isn't it?" giggled Tilly. But Cordelia clutched
+Genevieve's arm.
+
+"Genevieve, look--they've got ropes! Genevieve, what _are_ they going to
+do?" she gasped, her eyes on the boys who were running from all
+directions now, toward the corral. "Why, Genevieve, they're going _in_
+there, with all those horses!"
+
+"I reckon they are," rejoined the mistress of the Six Star Ranch. "Now
+watch, and you'll see. There!--see there?--in the middle by that post!
+Each man will pick out one of his own horses and rope him; then he'll
+lead him out and saddle him, and the deed's done."
+
+"I guess that's easier to say than to do," observed Bertha, dryly. "I
+notice there aren't any of those horses just hanging 'round waiting to
+be caught!"
+
+"No, there aren't, to-day," laughed Genevieve; "though some of the
+horses will do just that, at times--specially Long John's. They're
+pretty lively now, however, and it _does_ take some skill to make a nice
+job of it when they're jamming and jostling like that. But the boys are
+equal to it. We've got some splendid ropers!" This time there was a note
+of very evident pride in the voice of the mistress of the Six Star
+Ranch.
+
+It was a brief but exciting time that followed, filled, as it was, with
+the shouts of the boys--the jeers at some failure, the cheers at some
+success--the thud of the horses' hoofs, the swirl of the skillfully
+flung ropes. It was almost as exciting when the boys, their horses once
+caught, led out, and saddled, rode off for their morning's work. To
+Cordelia, especially, it was an experience never to be forgotten.
+
+"Going to turn cowboy, Miss Cordelia?" asked Mr. Hartley, with a smile,
+as he met the girl coming into the house a little later. Mr. Hartley, in
+his broad-brimmed hat, and his gray tweed trousers tucked into his high
+boots, looked the picture of the prosperous ranchman at home.
+
+Cordelia showed a distinctly shocked face.
+
+"Oh, no, sir!" she cried.
+
+"Don't think you could learn to swing the rope--eh?" he teased.
+
+"Mercy, no!"
+
+A half-proud, wholly-gratified smile crossed the man's face.
+
+"It isn't as easy as it looks to be," he said. "Once in a while we get a
+tenderfoot out here, though, who thinks he's going to learn it all in a
+minute--or, rather, do it without any learning. But to be a good roper,
+one has to give it long, hard practice. The best of 'em begin young.
+Reddy, the crack roper in my outfit, tells me he began with his mother's
+clothes-line at the age of four years, with his rocking-horse for a
+victim. It seems there was a picture in one of his books of a cowboy
+roping a pony, and--"
+
+Mr. Hartley stopped, as if listening. From the rear of the house had
+sounded the creak of the windmill crank. The man turned, entered the
+hall, and crossed to the window. Then he shook his head with a smile.
+
+"I'm afraid Genevieve is up to her old tricks," he said. "She's stopping
+the windmill so she can climb to the top of the tower, I reckon."
+
+"Genevieve!--at the top of that tower!" exclaimed Cordelia.
+
+Mr. Hartley's lips twitched.
+
+"Yes. That used to be a daily stunt of hers, and--I let her," added the
+man, a little doggedly. "It made her well and strong, anyhow, and helped
+to develop her muscle. You see, we--we don't have gymnasiums on the
+ranch," he concluded whimsically, as they stepped together out on to the
+back gallery.
+
+A babel of gleeful shouts and laughter greeted their ears. A moment
+later Mr. Hartley and Cordelia came in sight of the windmill. At its
+base four chattering, shrieking girls were laughing and clapping their
+hands. Above their heads, Genevieve, in a dark blue gymnasium suit, was
+swinging herself gracefully from cross-piece to cross-piece in the
+tower.
+
+"You see," smiled Mr. Hartley; but he was interrupted by a shocked,
+frightened voice behind him.
+
+"Genevieve, my dear!" gasped Mrs. Kennedy, hurrying forward.
+
+Genevieve did not hear, apparently. To the girls she waved a free hand,
+joyously. She was almost at the top.
+
+"It's fine--mighty fine up here," she caroled. "I can see 'way, 'way
+over the prairie!"
+
+"Genevieve! Genevieve Hartley, come down this instant," commanded Mrs.
+Kennedy. Then her voice shook, and grew piteously frightened, as she
+stammered: "No, no--don't come down, dear! Genevieve, how _can_ you come
+down?" Mrs. Kennedy was wringing her hands now.
+
+This time Genevieve heard.
+
+"Why, Aunt Julia, what is it? What is the matter?" The girl's voice
+expressed only concerned surprise.
+
+"What is the matter?" echoed Mrs. Kennedy, faintly. "Genevieve, how can
+you come down?"
+
+"Come down? Why, that's easy! But I don't want to come down."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy's lips grew stern.
+
+"Genevieve," she said, with an obvious effort to speak quietly; "if you
+can come down, I desire you to do so at once."
+
+Genevieve came down. Her eyes flashed a little, and her cheeks were
+redder than usual. She did not once glance toward the girls, clustered
+in a silent, frightened little group. She did not appear to notice even
+her father, standing by. She went straight to Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"I've come down, Aunt Julia."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy had been seriously disturbed, and genuinely frightened. To
+her, Genevieve's climb to the top of the windmill tower was very
+dangerous, as well as very unladylike. Yet it was the fright, even more
+than the displeasure that made her voice sound so cold now in her effort
+to steady it.
+
+"Thank you, Genevieve. Please see that there is no occasion for you to
+_come down_ again," she said meaningly. Then she turned and went into
+the house.
+
+Just how it happened, Genevieve did not know, but almost at once she
+found herself alone with her father on the back gallery. The girls had
+disappeared.
+
+Genevieve was very angry now.
+
+"Father, it wasn't fair, to speak like that," she choked, "before the
+girls and you, when I hadn't done a thing--not a thing! Why, it--it was
+just like Miss Jane! I never knew Aunt Julia to be like that."
+
+For a moment her father was silent. His face wore a thoughtful frown.
+
+"I know it, dearie," he said at last. "But I don't think Mrs. Kennedy
+quite realized, quite understood--how _you'd_ feel. She didn't think it
+just right for you to be there."
+
+"But I was in my gym suit, Father. I skipped in and put it on purposely,
+while the others were doing something else; then I climbed the tower.
+I'd planned 'way ahead how I'd surprise them."
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"I know, dearie," he nodded, after a moment; "but I reckon it was just a
+little too much of a surprise for Mrs. Kennedy. You know she isn't used
+to the West; and--do Boston young ladies climb windmill towers?"
+
+In spite of her anger, Genevieve laughed. The mention of Boston had put
+her in mind of some Boston friends of Mrs. Kennedy's, whom she knew. She
+had a sudden vision of what Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield's faces
+would have been, had their stern, sixty-year-old eyes seen what Mrs.
+Kennedy saw.
+
+"I reckon, too," went on Mr. Hartley, with a sigh, "that I have sort of
+spoiled you, letting you have your own way. And maybe Mammy Lindy and I,
+in our anxiety that you should be well and strong, and sit the saddle
+like a Texas daughter should, haven't taught you always just the dainty
+little lady ways--that you ought to have been taught."
+
+"You've taught me everything--everything good and lovely," protested the
+girl, hotly.
+
+He shook his head. A far-away look came into his eyes.
+
+"I haven't, dearie--and that's why I sent you East."
+
+Genevieve flushed.
+
+"But I didn't want to go East, in the first place," she stormed. "I
+wanted to stay here with you. Besides, Aunt Julia isn't really any
+relation,--nor Miss Jane, either. They haven't any right to--to speak to
+me like that."
+
+A dull red stole to John Hartley's cheek.
+
+"Tut, tut, dearie," he demurred, with a shake of the head. "You mustn't
+forget how good they've been to you. Besides--they have got the right. I
+gave it to them. I told them to make you like themselves."
+
+There was a long silence. Genevieve's eyes were moodily fixed on the
+floor. Her father gave her a swift glance, then went on, softly:
+
+"I suspect, too, maybe we're both forgetting, dearie. After all, Mrs.
+Kennedy did it every bit through--love. She was frightened. She was so
+scared she just shook, dearie."
+
+"She--was?" Genevieve's voice was amazed.
+
+"Yes. I reckon that's more than half why she spoke so stern, and why
+she's in her room crying this minute--as I'll warrant she is. I saw her
+eyes, and I saw how her hands shook. And I saw it was all she could do
+to keep from falling right on your neck--because she had you back safe
+and sound. Maybe you didn't see that, dearie."
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"You see, their _ways_ back East, and ours, aren't alike," resumed the
+man, after a time; "but I reckon their--_love_ is."
+
+Genevieve drew a long breath. Her brown eyes were not clear.
+
+"I reckon maybe I'll go and find--Aunt Julia," she said in a low voice.
+
+The next moment her father sat alone on the back gallery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+REDDY AND THE BRONCHO
+
+
+There was no lack of interesting things to do that first day at the
+ranch. There was one half-hour, to be sure, when five of the Happy
+Hexagons sat a little quietly on the front gallery and tried to talk as
+if there were no such thing as a windmill, and no such person as a girl
+who could climb to the top of it; but after Genevieve and Mrs. Kennedy,
+arm in arm, came through the front door--with eyes indeed, a little
+misty, but with lips cheerfully smiling--every vestige of constraint
+fled. Genevieve, once more in her pretty linen frock, was again the
+alert little hostess, and very soon they were all off to inspect the
+flower garden, the vegetable garden, the cow corral, the sheds, the
+stables, and the blacksmith's shop, not forgetting Teresa, the cook, who
+was making tamales in the kitchen for them, nor Pepito, Genevieve's own
+horse that she rode before she went East.
+
+"And we'll have the boys pick out some horses for you, too," cried
+Genevieve, smoothing Pepito's sleek coat in response to his welcoming
+whinny of delight. "I'm sure they can find something all right for us."
+
+Tilly's eyes brightened, so, too, did Bertha's; but Cordelia spoke
+hastily, her eyes bent a bit distrustfully on the spirited little horse
+Genevieve was petting.
+
+"Oh, but I don't believe they'll have time to hunt up horses for us,
+Genevieve. Really, I don't think we ought to ask them to."
+
+"Maybe we won't, then--for _you_," teased Tilly, saucily. "We'll just
+let them take time for ours."
+
+It is a question, however, if that afternoon, even Tilly wanted to ride;
+for, according to Cordelia's notes that night in "Things to do," they
+saw a broncho "bursted."
+
+It was Mr. Tim who had said at the dinner table that noon:
+
+"If you young people happen to be on hand, say at about four o'clock,
+you'll see something doing. Reddy's got a horse or two he's going to put
+through their paces--and one of 'em's never been saddled."
+
+Privately, to Mr. Hartley, Mrs. Kennedy objected a little.
+
+"Are you sure, Mr. Hartley, the girls ought to witness such a sight?"
+she asked uneasily. "Of course I don't want to be too strict in my
+demands," she went on with a little twinkle in her eyes that Mr. Hartley
+thoroughly understood. "I realize the West isn't the East. But, will
+this be--all right?"
+
+"I think it will--even in your judgment," he assured her. "It's no
+professional broncho-buster that they'll see to-day. I seldom hire them,
+anyway, as I prefer to have our own men break in the horses--specially
+as we're lucky enough to have three or four mighty skillful ones right
+in our own outfit. There'll be nothing brutal or rough to-day, Mrs.
+Kennedy. Only one beast is entirely wild, and he's not really vicious,
+Reddy says. Genevieve tells me the girls have heard a lot about
+broncho-busting, and that they're wild to see it. They wouldn't think
+they'd been to Texas, I'm afraid, if they didn't see something of the
+sort."
+
+"Very well," agreed Mrs. Kennedy, with visible reluctance.
+
+"Oh, of course," went on Mr. Hartley, his eyes twinkling, "you mustn't
+expect that they'll see exactly a pony parade drawing baby carriages
+down Beacon Street; but they will see some of the best horsemanship that
+the state of Texas can show. I take it you never saw a little beast
+whose chief aim in life was to get clear of his rider--eh, Mrs.
+Kennedy?"
+
+"No, I never did," shuddered the lady; "and I'm not sure that I'd want
+to," she finished decisively, as she turned away.
+
+The new horse proved to be a fiery little bay mustang, and the fight
+began from the first moment that the noose settled about his untamed
+little neck. As Tilly told of the affair in the Chronicles of the
+Hexagon Club, it was like this:
+
+"We saw a broncho busted this afternoon. Reddy busted it, and he was
+splendid. Mercy! I shall never think anything my old Beauty does is bad
+again. Beauty is a snail and a saint beside this jumping, plunging,
+squealing creature that never by any chance was on his feet
+properly--except when he came down hard on all four of them at once with
+his back humped right up in the middle in a perfectly frightful
+fashion--and I suppose that wasn't 'properly.' Anyhow, I shouldn't have
+thought it was, if I had had to try to sit on that hump!
+
+"But that wasn't the only thing that he did. Dear me, no! He danced, and
+rolled, and seesawed up and down--'pitching,' Mr. Hartley called it. And
+I'm sure it looked like it. First he'd try standing on his two fore
+feet, then he'd give them a rest, and take the other two. And sometimes
+he couldn't seem to make up his mind which he wanted to use, or which
+way he wanted to turn, and he'd change about right up in the air so he'd
+come down facing the other way. My, he was the most uncertain creature!
+
+"It didn't seem to make a mite of difference where the horse was, or
+what he did with his feet, though. Reddy was right there every time, and
+all _ready_, too. (Yes, I know a pun is the lowest order of wit. But I
+don't care. I couldn't help it, anyway--it was such a _ready_ one!)
+There he sat, so loose and easy, too, with his quirt (that's a whip),
+and it looked sometimes just as if he wasn't half trying--that he didn't
+need to. But I'm sure he was trying. Anyhow, I know I couldn't have
+stayed on that horse five minutes; and I don't believe even Genevieve
+could. (I said that to Mr. Tim Nolan, and he laughed so hard I thought
+I'd put it in here, and let somebody else laugh.)
+
+"Of course every one of us was awfully excited, and the boys kept
+shouting and cheering, and yelling 'Stay with him!' and telling him not
+to 'go to leather'--whatever that may mean! And Reddy did stay. He
+stayed till the little horse got tired out; then he got off, and led the
+horse away, and some of the other boys went through a good deal the same
+sort of thing with other horses, only these had all been partly broken
+before, they told us. But, mercy, they were bad enough, anyhow, I
+thought, to have been brand-new. Reddy did another one, too, and this
+time he put silver half-dollars under his feet in the stirrups: And when
+the little beast--the horse, I mean, not Reddy--got through his antics,
+there the half-dollars were, still there in the same old place. How the
+boys did yell and cheer then!
+
+"After that, they all just 'showed off' for us, throwing their ropes
+over anything and everything, and playing like a crowd of little boys on
+a picnic, only Mr. Hartley said they were doing some 'mighty fine
+roping' with it all. Their ropes are mostly about forty feet long, and
+it looked as if they just slung them any old way; but I know they don't,
+for afterward, just before we went in to supper, Reddy let me take his
+rope, and I tried to throw it. I aimed for a post a little way ahead of
+me, but I got Pedro, the Mexican cowboy, behind me, right 'in the neck,'
+as Mr. Tim said. Pedro grinned, and of course everybody else laughed
+horribly.
+
+"And thus endeth the account of how the bronchos were busted. (P.S. I
+hope whoever reads the above will own up that for once Tilly Mack got
+some sense into her part. So there!) I forgot to say we took a nap after
+dinner. Everybody does here. 'Siestas' they call them, Genevieve says."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was after supper that Genevieve said:
+
+"Now let's go out on to the front gallery and watch the sunset. Supper
+was too late last night for us to see much of it, but to-night it will
+be fine--and you've no idea what a sunset really can be until you've
+seen it on the prairie!"
+
+Tilly pursed her lips.
+
+"There, Genevieve Hartley, there's another of those mysterious words of
+yours; and it isn't the first time I've heard it here, either."
+
+"What word?"
+
+"'Gallery.' What is a gallery? I'm sure I don't see what there can be
+about a one-story house to be called a 'gallery'!"
+
+Genevieve laughed.
+
+"You call them 'verandas' or 'piazzas,' back East, Tilly. We call them
+'galleries' in Texas."
+
+"Oh, is that it?" frowned Tilly. "But you never called Sunbridge piazzas
+that."
+
+Genevieve shook her head.
+
+"No; it's only when I get back here that the old names come back to me
+so naturally. Besides--when I was East, I very soon found out what you
+called them; so I called them that, too."
+
+"Well, anyhow," retorted Tilly, saucily, "I've got my opinion of folks
+that will call a one-story piazza a 'gallery.' I should just like to
+show them what we call a 'gallery' at home--say, the top one in the
+Boston Theater, you know, where it runs 'way back."
+
+Genevieve only laughed good-naturedly.
+
+On the front gallery all settled themselves comfortably to watch the
+sunset. Already the sun was low in the west, a huge ball of fire just
+ready to drop into the sea of prairie grass.
+
+"It doesn't seem nearly so hot here as I thought it would," observed
+Bertha, after a time. "Oh, it's been warm to-day, of course--part of
+the time awfully warm," she added hastily. "But I've been just as hot in
+New Hampshire."
+
+"We think we've got a mighty fine climate," spoke up Mr. Hartley. "Now,
+last year, you in the East, had heaps of prostrations from the heat.
+Texas had just three."
+
+"I suppose that was owing to the Northers," murmured Cordelia,
+interestedly. "Now, feel it!" She put up her hand. "There's a breeze,
+now. Is that a Norther?"
+
+Mr. Hartley coughed suddenly. Genevieve stared.
+
+"What do you know about Northers?" she demanded.
+
+"Why, I--I read about them. It said you--you had them."
+
+Genevieve broke into a merry laugh.
+
+"I should think, by the way you put it, that they were the measles or
+the whooping cough! We do have them, Cordelia--in the winter, specially,
+but not so often in July. Besides, they don't feel much like this little
+breeze--as you'd soon find out, if you happened to be in one."
+
+For a moment there was silence; then Genevieve spoke again.
+
+"See here, where'd you find out all these things about Texas--that we
+didn't have butter, and did have Northers?"
+
+Before Cordelia could answer, Tilly interposed with a chuckling laugh:
+
+"I'll tell you, Genevieve, just where they found out," she cut in,
+utterly ignoring her own share of the "they." "Now, listen! How do you
+suppose they spent all the time you were in New Jersey? I'll tell you.
+They were digging up Texas every single minute; and they dug, and dug,
+and dug, until there wasn't a mean annual temperature, or a mean
+anything else that they didn't drag from its hiding-place and hold up
+triumphantly, and shout: 'Behold, this is Texas!'"
+
+"Girls--you didn't!" cried Genevieve, choking with laughter.
+
+"They did!" affirmed Tilly.
+
+"Yes, _we_ did--including Tilly," declared Cordelia, with unexpected
+spirit.
+
+Everybody laughed this time, but it was Alma, the peacemaker, who spoke
+next.
+
+"Oh, look--look at the sun!" she exclaimed. "Aren't those rose-pink
+clouds gorgeous?"
+
+"My, wouldn't they make a lovely dress?" sighed Elsie.
+
+"Yes, and see the golden pathway the sun has made, straight down to the
+prairie," cried Bertha Brown.
+
+"Oh, look, look, Mr. Hartley! Is that grass on fire?" gasped Cordelia.
+
+Mr. Hartley shook his head.
+
+"No--I hope not."
+
+"But you do have prairie fires?"
+
+"Sometimes; but not so often nowadays--though I've seen some bad ones,
+in my time."
+
+There was a long silence. All eyes were turned toward the west. Above, a
+riot of rose and gold and purple flamed across the sky. Below, more
+softly, the colors seemed almost repeated in the waving, shifting,
+changing expanse of fairylike loveliness that the prairie had become.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful it all is, and how I do love it," breathed Genevieve,
+after a time, as if to herself.
+
+Gradually the gorgeous rose and gold and purple changed, softened, and
+faded quite away. The slender crescent of the moon appeared, and one by
+one the stars showed in the darkening sky.
+
+"It's all so quiet, so wonderfully quiet," sighed Cordelia; then,
+abruptly, she cried: "Why, what's that?"
+
+There had sounded a far-away shout, then another, nearer. On the breeze
+was borne the muffled tread of hundreds of hoofs. A dog began to bark
+lustily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, they swept into view--a troop of cowboys, and a thronging,
+jostling mass of cattle.
+
+"On the way to a round-up, probably," explained Mr. Hartley, as he rose
+to his feet and went to meet the foreman, who was coming toward the
+house.
+
+Still later, he explained more fully.
+
+"They've put them in our pens for the night. The boys have gone into
+camp a mile or so away."
+
+Genevieve shuddered.
+
+"I hate round-ups," she cried passionately.
+
+"What are round-ups?" asked Bertha Brown.
+
+"Where they brand the cattle," answered Genevieve, quickly, but in a low
+voice.
+
+Cordelia, who was near her, shuddered. She seemed now to see before her
+eyes that seething mass of heads and horns, sweeping on and on
+unceasingly.
+
+Cordelia had two dreams that night. She wondered, afterward, which was
+the worse. She dreamed, first, that an endless stream of cattle climbed
+the windmill tower and jumped clear to the edge of the prairie, where
+the sun went down. She dreamed, secondly, that she was very hungry, and
+that twenty feet away stood a table laden with hot biscuits and fried
+chicken; but that the only way she could obtain any food was to "rope
+it" with Reddy's lariat. At the time of waking up she had not obtained
+so much as one biscuit or a chicken wing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CORDELIA GOES TO CHURCH
+
+
+"We're going to have church to-morrow," Genevieve had announced on the
+first Saturday night at the ranch. "A minister is coming from Bolo, and
+he holds the service out of doors. Everybody on the place comes, and we
+sing, and it's lovely!"
+
+As it happened, Cordelia had not been present when Genevieve made this
+announcement. It was left for Tilly, therefore, to tell her.
+
+"Oh, Cordelia, I forgot. We're going to have church to-morrow," she said
+that night, as she was brushing her hair in their room.
+
+Cordelia, who was taking off her shoes, looked up delightedly.
+
+"Oh, Tilly--church? We're going to church?"
+
+Tilly laughed; then an odd little twist came to her mouth.
+
+"Yes, Cordelia; we're--going to church," she answered.
+
+"What time?"
+
+"Eleven o'clock, Genevieve said."
+
+"Oh, won't that be fun--I mean, I'm very glad," corrected Cordelia,
+hastily, a confused red in her cheeks.
+
+In Cordelia's bed that night, Cordelia thought happily:
+
+"Maybe now I can get some new ideas for Uncle Thomas to put in his
+services. They do everything so differently here in the West, and
+Uncle's audiences get so small sometimes, specially Sunday evenings."
+
+In Tilly's bed, Tilly, a little guilty as to conscience, was trying to
+excuse herself.
+
+"Well, anyhow," she was arguing mentally, "Genevieve said 'everybody
+comes,' and if they 'come' they must 'go'; so of course we're 'going' to
+church."
+
+Not until Cordelia was dropping off to sleep did something occur to her.
+She sat up, then, suddenly.
+
+"Tilly," she called softly, "where is that church? Do we have to ride
+eighteen miles to Bolo?"
+
+Tilly did not answer. She was asleep, decided Cordelia--it was dark, and
+Cordelia could not see the pillow Tilly was stuffing into her mouth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just after breakfast Sunday morning, Elsie Martin said a low word in
+Genevieve's ear, and drew her out of earshot of the others. Her eyes
+were anxious.
+
+"Genevieve, do you have to dress up much for this kind of--of church?"
+she questioned.
+
+"Not a bit, dear. Don't worry. Anything you have will be lovely."
+
+"I know; but--well, you see, it's just this," she quavered. "Aunt Kate
+fixed up the girls' green chambray for me just before we came. I saw
+then it didn't look just right, but we were in such an awful hurry there
+wasn't time to do anything; and I was so excited, anyway, that I didn't
+seem to mind, much. But out here, in the bright light, it looks
+awfully!"
+
+"Nonsense! That's all your own notion, Elsie," rejoined Genevieve,
+comfortingly. "I'm sure it looks lovely. Anyhow, it wouldn't matter if
+it didn't--here."
+
+Elsie shook her head despondently.
+
+"But you don't understand," she said. "You know the twins dress alike,
+and this was their green chambray. Aunt Kate always likes to use their
+things, she says, because there's always double quantity; but this time
+it didn't work so well. You see, Cora was sick a lot last summer, when
+they had this dress, and she didn't wear hers half so much as Clara did,
+so hers wasn't faded hardly any. It was an awful funny color to begin
+with; but it's worse now, with part of it one shade, and part another.
+You see, one sleeve's made of Cora's, and one of Clara's; and the front
+breadth is Cora's and the back is Clara's. Of course Aunt Kate cut it
+out where she could do it best, and didn't think but what they were
+alike; but you don't know what a funny-looking thing that dress is! I--I
+don't know whether to turn Clara toward folks, or Cora," she finished
+with a little laugh.
+
+Genevieve heard the laugh--but she saw that it came through trembling
+lips.
+
+"Well, I just wouldn't fret," she declared, with an affectionate little
+hug. "If you don't want to wear it, wear something else. What a nuisance
+clothes are, anyhow! I've always said I wished we didn't have to change
+our dress every time we turned around!"
+
+Elsie's eyes became wistful. She shook her head sadly.
+
+"You don't know anything about it, Genevieve. Your clothes _haven't_
+been a nuisance to you--even if you think they have. You see, you don't
+realize how nice it is to have such a lot of pretty things--and all
+new," she sighed as she turned away.
+
+When Genevieve went to her room to dress for "church" that morning, she
+looked a little thoughtfully at the array of pretty frocks hanging in
+her closet.
+
+"I wish I could give some to Elsie," she sighed; "but Elsie isn't poor,
+of course, and I suppose she--she wouldn't take them. But I suspect I
+don't half appreciate them myself--just as Elsie said," she finished, as
+she took down a fresh, white linen.
+
+At quarter before eleven Cordelia Wilson knocked at Genevieve's door.
+Genevieve opened it to find Cordelia in a neat jacket suit, hat on, and
+gloves in hand.
+
+"Am I all right, Genevieve?" she asked. "I wasn't quite sure just what
+to wear."
+
+"Why, y-yes--only you don't need the hat, nor the gloves, dear; and I
+shouldn't think you'd want that coat, it's so warm!"
+
+"Not want a hat, or gloves," burst out Cordelia, looking distinctly
+shocked. "Why, Genevieve Hartley! I know you do very strange things here
+in the West, but I did suppose you--you dressed properly to go to
+church!"
+
+"But it isn't really church, Cordelia," smiled Genevieve. "I only call
+it so, you know. And of course we don't 'go' at all--only as far as the
+back gallery."
+
+Cordelia stared, frowningly.
+
+"You mean you don't drive off--anywhere?" she demanded. "That you have a
+service right here?"
+
+"Yes. I thought you knew."
+
+"But Tilly said--why, I don't know what she did say, exactly, but she
+let me think we were going to drive off somewhere. And look at
+me--rigged out like this! You know how she'll tease me!" There were
+almost tears in Cordelia's sensitive eyes.
+
+"Has she seen you--in this?"
+
+"No; but she will when I go back. I saw her whisk through the hall to
+our room just as I crossed through to come in here."
+
+"Then we won't let her see you," chuckled Genevieve. "Here, let's have
+your hat and gloves and coat. I'll hide them in my closet. You can get
+them later when Tilly isn't around. Now run back and put a serene face
+on it. Just don't let her suspect you ever thought of your hat and
+gloves."
+
+"But, do you think I ought to do--that? Won't it be--deceit?"
+
+"No, dear, it won't," declared Genevieve, emphatically; "not any sort of
+deceit that's any harm. It will just be depriving Miss Tilly of the
+naughty fun she expected to have with you. You _know_ how Tilly loves to
+tease folks. Well, she'll just find the tables turned, this time. Now
+run back quick, or she'll suspect things!" And, a little doubtfully,
+Cordelia went.
+
+As she had expected, she found Tilly in their room.
+
+"Why don't you get ready for church, Cordy?" demanded Tilly, promptly.
+
+"I am ready. I dressed early, before you came in," returned Cordelia,
+trying to speak very unconcernedly. "Why? Don't you think this will do?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. You look very nice," murmured Tilly, a little
+hastily, sending a furtive glance into Cordelia's face. There was
+nothing, apparently, about Cordelia to indicate that anything
+unexpected had occurred, or was about to occur; and she herself could
+not, of course, ask why no preparations for an eighteen-mile journey
+were being made, specially when she had pretended to be asleep the night
+before when Cordelia asked her question about that same journey. "You
+look very nice, I'm sure," murmured Tilly, again. And Cordelia, hearing
+the vague disappointment in Tilly's voice, was filled with joy--that yet
+carried a pang of remorse.
+
+It was a little later, just as Tilly was leaving the room, that Cordelia
+turned abruptly.
+
+"Tilly, I did have on my hat and coat," she burst out hurriedly. "I did
+think we were going to drive 'way off somewhere to church. But I found
+out and hid them in Genevieve's room, so you would not know and--and
+tease me," she finished breathlessly.
+
+Tilly turned back with a laugh.
+
+"You little rogue!" she began; then she stopped short. Her face changed.
+"But--why in the world did you tell me now?" she demanded curiously.
+
+"I thought I ought to."
+
+"Ought to!--ought to let me tease you!" echoed the dumfounded Tilly.
+
+Cordelia stirred restlessly.
+
+"Not that, of course, exactly," she stammered. "It's only that--that it
+seemed somehow like--deceiving you."
+
+For a moment Tilly stared; then, suddenly, she darted across the room
+and put both arms around the minister's niece. Cordelia was not quite
+sure whether she was hugging her, or shaking her.
+
+"Oh, you--you--I don't know _what_ you are!" Tilly was exclaiming. "But
+you're a dear, anyhow!" And it was actually a sob that the astounded
+Cordelia heard as Tilly turned and fled from the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Sunbridge eyes, "church" that morning was something very new and
+novel. At eleven o'clock Genevieve and her father piloted their guests
+to the back gallery where seats had been reserved for them. The
+minister, a dark-haired, tired-looking man with kind eyes, had arrived
+some time before on horseback. To Mrs. Kennedy, especially, he looked a
+little too unconventional in his heavy boots and coarse garments which,
+though plainly recently brushed, still showed the dust of the prairie in
+spots. He sat now at one side talking with Mr. Tim while his
+"congregation" was gathering.
+
+And what a congregation it was! As Genevieve had said, everybody on the
+ranch came, except those whose duties prohibited them from coming.
+Singly, or in picturesque groups, they settled themselves comfortably on
+the back gallery, or along the covered way leading to the dining-room.
+Even Teresa, in a huge fresh apron that made her great bulk look even
+greater, sat just outside the dining-room door, where she could easily
+run in from time to time, to see that the roast chickens in the oven
+were not burning, nor the beets on the stove boiling dry.
+
+The "pulpit" was a little stand placed at the house-end of the covered
+way. The "choir" was the piano in the living-room drawn up close to the
+window, with Genevieve herself seated at it. Nor was the "church" itself
+devoid of beauty, with its growing vines and flowers, and its shifting
+lights and shadows as the soft clouds sailed slowly through the blue sky
+overhead. As to the audience--no scholarly orator in a Fifth Avenue
+cathedral found that day more attentive listeners than did that
+tired-looking minister find in the curiously-assorted groups before
+him--the swarthy Mexicans, the picturesque cowboys, the eager-eyed,
+fresh-faced young girls from a far-away town in the East.
+
+They sang first, Genevieve's own clear voice leading; and even Tilly,
+who seldom sang in church at home, found herself joining heartily in
+"Nearer my God to Thee," and "Bringing in the Sheaves." There was
+something so free, so whole-souled about the music in that soft outdoor
+air, that she, as well as some of the others, decided that never before
+had any music sounded so inspiring.
+
+For the first two minutes after the preacher arose to begin his sermon,
+Mrs. Kennedy saw nothing but the dust on the right shoulder of his coat.
+But after that she saw nothing but his earnest eyes. She had fallen
+then quite under the sway of his clear, ringing voice.
+
+"'While Josiah was yet young, in the sixteenth year of his age, he began
+to seek the God of his fathers,'" announced the clear, ringing voice as
+the text; and Genevieve, hearing it, wondered if the minister could have
+known that at least a part of his audience that day would be so exactly,
+or so very nearly, "in the sixteenth year" of their own age.
+
+It was a good sermon, and it was well preached. The time, the place, the
+occasion, the atmosphere all helped, too. All the Happy Hexagons paid
+reverent attention. Tilly, fresh from her somewhat amazing experience
+with Cordelia, made many and stern resolutions to be everything that was
+good and helpful, nothing that was bad and hateful. Genevieve, who had
+slipped off her piano stool to an easier chair, sat with dreamy, tender
+eyes. She was thinking of the dear mother, who, as she could so well
+remember, had told her that she must always be good and brave and true
+first, before anything else.
+
+"Good and brave and true!" She wondered if she could--always. It seemed
+so easy to do it now, with this good man's earnest voice in her ears.
+But it was so hard, so strangely hard, at other times. And there were so
+many things--so many, many _little_ things--that to Aunt Julia and Miss
+Jane looked so big!--things, too, that to her seemed eminently all
+right.
+
+"'When Josiah was yet young, in the sixteenth year of his age, he began
+to seek the God of his fathers,'" quoted the minister again,
+impressively; and Genevieve realized then, with misty eyes, that the
+sermon was done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The minister stayed to dinner, of course; and, in spite of her interest
+in the sermon, Teresa had seen to it that the dinner was everything that
+one could ask of it. The minister had the place of honor at the table,
+and proved to be a most agreeable talker. Genevieve had not caught his
+name distinctly, but she thought it was "Jones." He lived in Bolo, he
+said, having recently moved there from a distant part of the state. He
+hoped that he might be able to do good work there. Certainly there was
+need that somebody do something. In response to Mr. Hartley's cordial
+invitation to stay a few days at the ranch, he answered with visible
+regret:
+
+"Thank you, sir. Nothing would please me more, but it is quite out of
+the question. I must go back this afternoon. I have a service in Bolo
+this evening."
+
+"You must be a busy man," observed Mr. Hartley, genially.
+
+The minister sighed.
+
+"I am--yet I can't do half that I want to. This outside work among the
+ranches I shall try to carry on as best I can. But you're all so afraid
+you'll have a neighbor nearer than a score of miles," he added with a
+whimsical smile, "that I can't get among you very often."
+
+It was after dinner that the minister chanced to hear Genevieve speak of
+herself as a Happy Hexagon.
+
+"Hexagon?--Hexagon?" he echoed smilingly. "And are you, too, a Happy
+Hexagon?" he asked, turning to the mistress of the Six Star Ranch.
+
+"Why, yes. Do you mean you know another one?" questioned the girl, all
+interest immediately. "It's the name of our girls' club--the Hexagon
+Club."
+
+"No, but I heard of one, once," rejoined the man. "And it isn't usual,
+you know, so it attracted my attention."
+
+"But where was it? When was it? We supposed we were the only Happy
+Hexagons in the world," cried Genevieve.
+
+The minister smiled.
+
+"I found my Happy Hexagons at the bottom of a letter from the East."
+
+"A letter from the East?" Genevieve's voice held now a curious note of
+wild unbelief.
+
+"Yes. It came before we moved to Bolo. My elder daughter was teaching
+in the East, and was taken ill. Some of her girls wrote to us."
+
+Genevieve sprang to her feet.
+
+"Are you--you can't be--the Rev. Luke Jones!" she cried.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"And is Quentina your daughter?"
+
+It was the minister's turn to look amazed.
+
+"Why, yes; but--how do you know? Are you--you can't be--_my_ Happy
+Hexagons!" he ejaculated.
+
+She nodded laughingly. She spoke, too; but what she said was not heard.
+All of the Happy Hexagons were talking by that time. The Rev. Mr. Jones,
+indeed, found himself besieged on all sides with eager questions and
+amazed comments.
+
+Under cover of the confusion, Mr. Hartley turned in puzzled wonder to
+Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"_Will_ you tell me what all this is about?" he begged.
+
+Mrs. Kennedy smiled.
+
+"Of course! I think perhaps it is all new to you. Last winter Miss Alice
+Jones, a Texas lady and the girls' Latin teacher, was taken ill. The
+girls were very attentive, and did lots of little things for her; but
+she grew worse and had to leave. Just before she went, the mother wrote
+a letter thanking the girls, and in the letter was a note signed
+'Quentina Jones.' Quentina was a younger sister, it seemed, and she,
+too, wished to thank the girls. Of course the girls were delighted, and
+immediately answered it, signing themselves 'The Happy Hexagons.' The
+teacher went away then, and the girls heard nothing more. But they have
+talked of Quentina Jones ever since."
+
+"But it's all so wonderful," cried Genevieve, her voice rising dominant
+at last. "Where is Miss Alice Jones, and how is she?"
+
+"She is better, thank you, though not very strong yet. She is teaching
+in Colorado."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad," cried Genevieve, "but I wish we could see her, too.
+Only think, girls, of Quentina Jones being right here, only eighteen
+miles away!"
+
+"One would think eighteen miles were a mere step!" laughed Tilly.
+
+"They are--in Texas," retorted Genevieve. Then, to the minister she
+said: "Now tell us, please, Mr. Jones, what we can do. We want to see
+Quentina right away, quick. We can't wait! Can she come over? _Can't_
+she? We'd love to have her!"
+
+The minister shook his head slowly.
+
+"I'm afraid not, Miss Genevieve--thank you just the same. I'd love to
+have her. It would do her such a world of good, poor little girl, to
+have one happy time with all you young people! But my wife has a lame
+foot just now, and Quentina simply cannot be spared. You know she has
+several brothers, so we have quite a family. But, I'll tell you
+what--you young ladies must all come to see us."
+
+"Oh, thank you! We'd love to--and we will, too." (Back in her ranch
+home, it was easy for Genevieve to slip into her old independent way of
+consulting no one's will but her own.) "When do you want us?"
+
+"But, my dear," interposed Mrs. Kennedy, hastily, "if Mrs. Jones is not
+well, surely we cannot ask her to take in six noisy girls as guests!"
+
+"Why, no--of course not," stammered Genevieve. The rest of the Happy
+Hexagons looked suddenly heartbroken. But the minister smiled
+reassuringly.
+
+"My wife isn't ill--only lame; and she loves young people. She'll be
+just as eager for you to come as Quentina will be--and Quentina just
+simply won't take 'no' for an answer, I'm sure. She talked for days of
+the Happy Hexagons, after your letter came. You must come, only--" he
+hesitated, "only I'm afraid you'll be a little cramped for room. A
+village parsonage isn't a ranch, you know. But, if you don't mind sort
+of--picnicking, and having to stand up in the corner to sleep--" he
+paused quizzically.
+
+"We adore standing up and sleeping in corners," declared Genevieve,
+promptly.
+
+"Then shall we call it Tuesday?" smiled Mr. Jones.
+
+"But how can they go?" questioned Mrs. Kennedy, in an anxious voice.
+
+"Why, they might ride it," began Mr. Hartley, slowly; "still, that would
+hardly do--even should the ponies come in time--such a long trip when
+they haven't ridden any here, yet. I'll tell you. We'll let Carlos drive
+them over in the carriage early Tuesday morning. I reckon the seven of
+them can stow themselves away, somehow--it holds six with room to spare
+on every seat. Then, Wednesday afternoon, he can drive them back.
+Meanwhile, he can stay himself in the town and get some supplies that
+I'm needing."
+
+"But seems to me that gives us a very short visit," demurred Mr. Jones,
+as he rose to take his leave.
+
+"Quite long enough--for the good wife," declared Mrs. Kennedy,
+decisively. And thus the matter was settled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+QUENTINA
+
+
+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," chuckled 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,
+saucily.
+
+Cordelia frowned, hesitated, then spoke.
+
+"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 ranch. 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,
+afterward, 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 wry face.
+
+"I'm afraid Carlos remembers that I was never on time, girls," she
+pouted. "But you don't know, Carlos, what a marvel of promptness I've
+become back East--specially 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
+herds of cattle they met, and the groups of cowboys they saw galloping
+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 outright.
+
+"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," shrugged 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 homely--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 Rev. 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 petunias.
+
+"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 literally to tumble out upon
+the steps several boys of "assorted sizes," as Tilly expressed it
+afterward. Then the girls saw her in the doorway--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," giggled 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 stammered; "and I'm
+so glad you're not fat and homely, too--er--that is," she corrected
+feverishly, "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 implored
+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 lame 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, fervently, "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 giggle 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 poetic license."
+
+Genevieve laughed frankly. Tilly giggled. Cordelia looked nervously from
+them to Quentina.
+
+"I'm sure, that--that's very pretty," she faltered.
+
+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 jingles, 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, most
+angelic expression, but Genevieve knew very well the naughtiness behind
+it. Quentina, however, accepted it as pure gold.
+
+"Yes, wasn't it?" she rejoined cheerfully. "I felt right bad,
+particularly as I was going to send you all a copy when it was
+published."
+
+"You can give us a manuscript copy, Quentina. We would love that,"
+interposed Genevieve, hurriedly. Behind Quentina's back she gave Tilly
+then a frowning shake of the head--though it must be confessed that her
+dancing eyes rather spoiled the effect of it.
+
+"Maybe it's because her name rhymes--'Clorinda Dorinda,'" suggested
+Tilly, interestedly; "maybe that's why she likes to write poetry so
+well."
+
+Mrs. Jones laughed.
+
+"That's what her father says. But Clorinda herself changed her own name
+about as soon as she could talk. She couldn't manage the hard 'Clorinda'
+very well, and I had a Mexican nurse girl, Quentina, whose name she much
+preferred. So very soon she was calling herself 'Quentina,' and
+insisting that every one else should do the same."
+
+"But it's so much prettier," declared the minister's daughter,
+fervently. "Of course 'Clorinda Dorinda' are some pretty, because they
+rhyme so, but I like 'Quentina' better. Besides, there are lots more
+pretty words to make that rhyme with--Florena, Dulcina, Rowena, and
+verbena, you know."
+
+"And 'you've seen her,'" suggested Tilly, gravely.
+
+Quentina frowned a moment in thought.
+
+"Y-yes," she admitted; "but I don't think that's a very pretty one."
+
+It was Genevieve this time who choked a giggle into a cough, and who, a
+moment later, turned very eagerly to welcome an interruption in the
+person of the Rev. Mr. Jones.
+
+Soon after this Quentina suggested a trip through the house.
+
+"You see I want to show you where you're going to sleep," she explained.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Jones told us that," observed Tilly, as the seven girls trooped
+up the narrow stairway. "He said we were to stand up in the corners."
+Tilly spoke with the utmost gravity.
+
+Quentina turned, wide-eyed.
+
+"Why, you couldn't! You'd never sleep a bit," she demurred concernedly.
+"Besides, it isn't necessary."
+
+All but Tilly and Genevieve tittered audibly. Tilly still looked the
+picture of innocence. Genevieve frowned at her sternly, then stepped
+forward and put her arm around Quentina's waist.
+
+"Tilly was only joking, Quentina," she explained. "When you know Tilly
+better you'll find she never by any chance talks sense--but always
+nonsense," she finished, looking at Tilly severely.
+
+Tilly wrinkled up her nose and pouted; but her eyes laughed.
+
+"There, here's my room," announced Quentina, a moment later. "We've put
+a couch in it, and if you don't mind my sleeping with you, three can be
+here. Then across the hall here is the twins' room, and two more can
+sleep in this; and Paul and Ned's room down there at the end of the hall
+will take the other two. There! You see we've got it fixed right well."
+
+"Oh, yes--well for us; but how about the boys?" cried Genevieve. "Where
+will they sleep?"
+
+Quentina's lips parted, but before the words were uttered, a new thought
+seemed to have come to her. With an odd little glance at Tilly, she
+drawled demurely:
+
+"Oh, they are going to sleep in the corners."
+
+They all laughed this time.
+
+"Well, now we've done the whole house, and we'll take the yard,"
+proposed Quentina, as, a little later, she led the way down-stairs and
+out of doors. "There! aren't my nasturtiums beautiful?" she exulted,
+with the air of a fond mother displaying her first-born. She was
+pointing to a bed of straggling, puny plants, beautifully free from
+weeds, and showing here and there a few brilliant blossoms.
+
+Tilly turned her back suddenly. Cordelia looked distressed. Bertha cried
+thoughtlessly:
+
+"Oh, but you ought to see Genevieve's, Quentina, if you want to see
+nasturtiums!"
+
+"Oh, but I have Carlos," cut in Genevieve, hurriedly, "and Carlos can
+make anything grow. What a pretty dark one this is," she finished,
+bending over one of the plants.
+
+Quentina's face clouded.
+
+"I don't suppose they are much, really," she admitted. "But I've worked
+so hard over them! Father says the earth isn't good at all. I was so
+pleased when that big red one came out! I made a poem on it right off:
+
+          "'O nasturtium, sweet nasturtium,
+            Did you blossom just for me?
+            Where, oh, where did you unearth 'em--
+            All those colors that I see?'
+
+That's the way it began. Wasn't I lucky to think of that 'unearth 'em?'
+Besides, it's really true, you know. They do unearth 'em, and 'twas such
+a nice rhyme for nasturtium. Now there's petunia; I think that's a
+perfectly beautiful sounding word, but I've never been able to find a
+single thing that rhymed with it. I do love flowers so," she added,
+after a moment; "but we've never had many. They always burn up, or dry
+up, or get eaten up, or just don't come up at all. Of course we've never
+had a really pretty place. Ministers like us don't, you know," she
+finished cheerfully.
+
+There was no reply to this. Not one of the Happy Hexagons could think of
+anything to say. For once even Tilly was at a loss for words. It was
+Quentina herself who broke the silence.
+
+"Now tell me all about the East. Let's go up on the gallery and sit
+down. I do so want to go East to school; but of course I can't."
+
+"Why not?" asked Bertha.
+
+"Oh, it costs too much," returned Quentina. "You know ministers don't
+have money for such things." Her voice was still impersonally cheerful.
+
+"How old are you?" asked Elsie, as they seated themselves on chairs and
+steps.
+
+"Sixteen last month."
+
+"Oh, I wish you could go," cried Genevieve. "Wouldn't it be just lovely
+if you could come to Sunbridge and go to school with us!"
+
+"Where is Sunbridge? I always thought of it as just 'East,' you know."
+
+"In New Hampshire."
+
+"Oh," said Quentina, with a sigh of disappointment. "I hoped it was in
+Massachusetts, near Boston, you know. I thought Alice said it was near
+Boston."
+
+"Well, we aren't so awfully far from Boston," bridled Tilly. "It only
+takes an hour and a half or less to go there. I go with mother every
+little while when I'm home."
+
+Quentina sprang to her feet.
+
+"Boston! Oh, girls, you don't know how I want to see Boston, and Paul
+Revere's grave, and the Common, and the old State House, and Bunker
+Hill, and that lovely North Church where they hung the lantern, you
+know.
+
+          'Listen, my children, and you shall hear
+           Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,'"
+
+she began to chant impressively. "Oh, don't you just love that poem?"
+
+"Who was Paul Revere?" asked Tilly, pleasantly.
+
+"Paul Revere!" exclaimed Quentina, plainly shocked. "Who was _Paul
+Revere_!"
+
+"Tilly!" scolded Genevieve, as soon as she could command her voice.
+"Quentina, that's only some of Tilly's nonsense. Tilly knows very well
+who Paul Revere was."
+
+"Yes, of course she does; and we all do," interposed Elsie Martin. "But
+I'll own right up, I don't know half as much about all those historical
+things and places as I ought to."
+
+"Neither do I," chimed in Bertha. "Just because they're right there
+handy, and we can go any time, we--"
+
+"We _don't_ go any time," laughed Alma Lane, finishing the sentence for
+her.
+
+"I know it," said Elsie. "We had a cousin with us for two weeks last
+summer, and she just doted on old relics and graveyards. She made us
+take her into Boston 'most every day, and she asked all sorts of
+questions which I couldn't answer."
+
+"Yes, I know; but excuse me, please," put in Tilly, flippantly. "I don't
+want any graveyards and relics in mine."
+
+"That's slang, Tilly," reproved Cordelia.
+
+"Is it?" murmured Tilly, serenely.
+
+"Besides, people come from miles and miles just to see those things that
+we neglect, right at our doors, almost."
+
+"But how can you neglect them?" remonstrated Quentina. "Why, if I ever
+go to Boston, I sha'n't sleep nor eat till I've seen Paul Revere's
+grave!"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't sleep nor eat if I did," shuddered Tilly.
+
+"You mean you've _never_ seen it?" gasped Quentina, unbelievingly.
+
+"Guilty!" Tilly held up her hand unblushingly.
+
+"Never you mind, Quentina," soothed Genevieve. "We are interested in
+those things, really."
+
+"Then you have seen it?"
+
+"Er--n-no, not that one," confessed Genevieve, coloring. "But I've seen
+heaps of other graves there," she assured her hopefully, as if graves
+were the only open door to Quentina's favor.
+
+"Oh, you've had such chances," envied Quentina. "Just think--Boston! You
+_said_ you were near Boston?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Less than two hours away?"
+
+"Why, yes," exclaimed Tilly, "I told you. We're less than an hour and a
+half away."
+
+"And are you a D. A. R., and Colonial Dames, and Mayflower Society
+members, and all that?"
+
+"Dear me! I don't know," laughed Genevieve. "Why?"
+
+"And do you read the _Atlantic Monthly_, and eat beans Saturday night,
+and fishballs Sunday morning?" still hurried on Quentina. "You don't any
+of you wear glasses, and I don't think you speak very low."
+
+"Anything else?" asked Tilly politely.
+
+"Oh, yes, lots of things," answered Quentina, "but I've forgotten most
+of them."
+
+"Quentina, what _are_ you talking about?" laughed Genevieve.
+
+Quentina smiled oddly, then she sighed.
+
+"It wasn't true, of course. I knew it couldn't be."
+
+"What wasn't true?"
+
+"Something I found in one of father's church papers about Rules for
+Living in New England. I cut it out. Wait a minute--it's here,
+somewhere!" And, to the girls' amazement, she dived into a pocket at the
+side of her dress, pulling out several clippings which seemed, mostly,
+to be verse. One was prose, and it was on this she pounced. "Here it is.
+Listen." And she read:
+
+"'Rules for Living in New England. You must be descended from the
+Puritans, and should belong to the Mayflower Society, or be a D. A. R.,
+a Colonial Dame, or an S. A. R. You must graduate from Harvard, or
+Radcliffe, and must disdain all other colleges. You must quote Emerson,
+read the _Atlantic Monthly_, and swear by the _Transcript_. You must
+wear glasses, speak in a low voice, eat beans on Saturday night, and
+fishballs on Sunday morning. Always you must carry with you a green bag,
+and you should be a professional man, or woman, preferably of the
+literary variety. You should live not farther away from Boston than two
+hours' ride, and of course you will be devoted to tombstones, relics,
+and antiques. You may tolerate Europe, but you must ignore the West. You
+must be slow of speech, dignified of conduct, and serene of temper. You
+must never be surprised, nor display undue emotion. Above all, you must
+be _cultured_.'
+
+"Now you see you haven't done all those things," she declared, as she
+finished the article.
+
+"I reckon there are a few omissions--specially on my part," laughed
+Genevieve.
+
+"But you are happy there?"
+
+"Indeed I am!"
+
+"How I do wish I could go," sighed Quentina. "I should love Boston, I
+know. Alice did--though she still liked Texas better."
+
+"Well, I know Boston would love you," chuckled Tilly, unexpectedly.
+"Girls, wouldn't she be a picnic in Sunbridge? She'd be more of a circus
+than you were, Genevieve!"
+
+"Thank you," bowed Genevieve, with mock stiffness.
+
+"Oh, we loved you right away--and we should Quentina, of course."
+
+"Thank you," bowed Quentina, in her turn, laughingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE OPENING OF A BARREL
+
+
+It was a merry afternoon and evening that the Happy Hexagons spent at
+Quentina's home, and it was still a merrier time that they had getting
+settled for the night. Even Tilly said at last:
+
+"Well, Quentina, it's lucky a lame foot doesn't have ears. I don't know
+what your mother will say to us!"
+
+"Only fancy if Miss Jane were here," shivered Genevieve.
+
+It was just as the family were finishing breakfast the next morning that
+there came a knock at the door, and a man rolled in a large barrel.
+
+"Oh, it's the missionary barrel--our barrel from the East!" cried
+Quentina. "I wonder now--what do you suppose there is in it?"
+
+"There isn't anything, I reckon, except old things," piped up Rob,
+shrilly.
+
+Mrs. Jones colored painfully.
+
+"Robert, my son!" she remonstrated, in evident distress.
+
+"Well, mother, you _know_ there isn't--most generally," defended
+Robert.
+
+"And if they _are_ new, they're the sort of things we couldn't ever
+use," added Ned.
+
+"Boys, boys, that will do," commanded the minister, quickly.
+
+The minister, with Paul's help, had the barrel nearly open by this time.
+
+"It isn't from Sunbridge, is it?" asked Genevieve.
+
+"No--though we get them from there sometimes; but this is from a little
+town in Vermont," replied Mrs. Jones. "We had a letter last week from
+the minister. He--he apologized a little; said that times had been hard,
+and that they'd had trouble to fill it. As if it wasn't hard enough for
+us to take it, without that!" she finished bitterly, with almost a sob.
+
+"Rita, my dear!" murmured her husband, in a low, distressed voice.
+
+Mrs. Jones dashed quick tears from her eyes.
+
+"I know; I don't mean to be ungrateful. But--times have been a little
+hard--with _us_!"
+
+Silent, and a little awed, the Happy Hexagons stood at one side.
+Genevieve, especially, looked out from troubled eyes. Very slowly
+Genevieve was waking up to the fact that not every one in the world had
+luxuries, or even what she would call ordinary comforts of living. Mrs.
+Jones, seeing her face, spoke hurriedly.
+
+"There, there, girls, please forget what I said! It was very kind of
+those good people to send the barrel--very kind; and I am sure we shall
+find in it just what we want."
+
+"I know what you hope will be there," cried Bob, "a new coat for Father,
+and a dress for you, and some underclothes for us boys. I heard you say
+so last night."
+
+"Yes; and Quentina wants a ribbon--not dirty ones," observed Rob.
+
+"Robert!" cried Quentina, very red of face. "You know I don't _expect_
+anything of the sort."
+
+The barrel was open now, and eagerly the family gathered around it. Even
+Mrs. Jones's chair was drawn forward so that she, too, might peep into
+it.
+
+First there was a great quantity of newspapers--the people had, indeed,
+found trouble to fill it, evidently. Next came a pincushion--faded pink
+satin, frilled with not over-clean white lace.
+
+"I can use the lace for a collar," cried Quentina, taking prompt
+possession of the cushion. "I'm right glad of this!"
+
+A picture came next in a tarnished gilt frame--evidently somebody's
+early attempts to paint nasturtiums in oil.
+
+"There's a rival for your posies out in the yard," murmured Tilly in
+Quentina's ear.
+
+A pair of skates was pulled out next, then three dolls, one minus an
+arm.
+
+"These might be good--on ice," remarked Paul, who had picked up the
+skates.
+
+"Do you ever have any ice to skate on, here?" asked Bertha.
+
+"Not in the part of Texas I've ever been in," he sighed.
+
+Mrs. Jones was ruefully smoothing the one-armed doll's flimsy dress.
+
+"I--I _told_ them there were no little girls in the family," she said,
+her worried eyes seeking her husband's face. "It--it's all right, of
+course; only--only these dolls did take space."
+
+Some magazines came next, and a few old books, upon which the boys fell
+greedily--though the books they soon threw to one side as if they were
+of little interest.
+
+Undergarments appeared then, plainly much worn and patched. To Genevieve
+they looked quite impossible. She almost cried when she saw how eagerly
+Mrs. Jones gathered the motley pile into her arms and began to sort them
+out with little exclamations of satisfaction.
+
+Next in the barrel were found an ink-stained apron, a bath-robe, nearly
+new--which plainly owed its presence to its hideous colors--two or three
+tin dishes (not new), a harmonica, a box containing a straw hat trimmed
+with drooping blue bows, several fans, a box of dominoes, a pocket-knife
+with a broken blade, several pairs of new hose, marked plainly
+"seconds," some sheets and pillow-cases (half-worn, but hailed with joy
+by Mrs. Jones), a kimono, an assortment of men's half-worn
+shoes--pounced upon at once by Paul and his father, and not abandoned
+until it was found that only two were mates, and only one of these good
+for much wear.
+
+It was at this point that there came a muffled shout from Ned, whose
+head was far down in the barrel.
+
+"Here's a package--a big one--and it's marked 'dress for Mrs. Jones.'
+Mother, you did get it, after all!" he cried, tumbling the package into
+his mother's lap.
+
+Tremblingly half a dozen pairs of hands attempted to untie the strings
+and to unwrap the coverings; then, across Mrs. Jones's lap there lay a
+tawdry dress of pale-blue silk, spotted and soiled. Pinned to it was a
+note in a scrawling feminine hand: "This will wash and make over nicely,
+I think, if you can't wear it just as it is."
+
+"We have so many chances to wear light-blue silk, too," was all that
+Mrs. Jones said.
+
+In the bottom of the barrel were a few new towels, very coarse, and some
+tablecloths and small, fringed napkins, also very coarse.
+
+"Well, I'm sure, these are handy," stammered the minister, who had not
+found his coat.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered his wife, wearily; "only--well, it so happens that
+every box for the last five years has held tea-napkins--and I don't give
+many teas, you know, dear."
+
+Genevieve choked back a sob.
+
+"I--I never saw such a--a horrid thing in all my life, as that barrel
+was," she stormed hotly. "I don't see what folks were thinking of--to
+send such things!"
+
+"They weren't thinking, my dear, and that's just what the trouble was,"
+answered Mrs. Jones, gently. "They didn't think, nor understand.
+Besides, there are very many nice things here that we can use
+beautifully. There always are, in every box, only--of course, some
+things _aren't_ so useful."
+
+"I should say not!" snapped Genevieve.
+
+"Well, I didn't suppose anything could make me glad because Aunt Kate
+makes over the girls' things for me," spoke up Elsie Martin; "but
+something has now. She can't send them in any missionary boxes, anyhow!"
+
+Mrs. Jones laughed, though she looked still more disturbed.
+
+"But, girls, dear girls, please don't say such things," she
+expostulated. "We are very, very grateful--indeed we are; and it is
+right kind of them to remember us far-away missionaries with boxes and
+barrels!"
+
+"'Missionary'!" sputtered Genevieve. "'Missionary'! I should think
+somebody had better be missionary to them, and teach them what to send.
+Dolls and skates, indeed!"
+
+"But, my dear," smiled Mrs. Jones, "those might have been just the
+things--in some places; and besides, some of the boxes are--are better
+than this. Indeed they are!"
+
+It was at this point that Cordelia came forward hurriedly, and touched
+Mrs. Jones's arm. Her face was a little white and strained looking.
+
+"Mrs. Jones," she faltered, "I think I ought to tell you. I'm a
+minister's niece, and I've seen lots of missionary boxes packed. I know
+just how they do it, too. I know just how thoughtless they--I mean
+we--are; and I just wanted to say that I'm very, very sure the next time
+we pack a box for any missionary, we'll--we'll see that our old shoes
+are mates, and that we don't send dolls to boys!"
+
+There was a shout of gleeful appreciation from the boys, but there were
+only troubled sighs and frowns on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Jones.
+
+"Dear me! I--I wish the barrel hadn't come when you were here,"
+regretted the minister's wife; "for indeed the things are all very, very
+nice. Indeed they are!"
+
+"And now let's go out to the flowers," proposed Quentina. "Maybe a new
+nasturtium has blossomed."
+
+All but one of the girls had left the room when Mr. Jones felt a timid
+touch on his arm.
+
+"Mr. Jones, could I speak to you--just a minute, please?" asked a low
+voice. "I'm Cordelia Wilson, you know."
+
+"Why, certainly, Miss Cordelia! What can I do for you?" he answered
+genially, leading the way to the tiny study off the sitting room.
+
+"Well, I'm not sure you can do anything," replied Cordelia, with
+hesitating truthfulness. "But I wanted to ask: _do_ you know anybody in
+Texas by the name of Mr. John Sanborn, or Mrs. Lizzie Higgins, or Mr.
+Lester Goodwin, or Mr. James Hunt?"
+
+The minister looked a little surprised.
+
+"N-no, I can't say that I do," he said, slowly.
+
+Cordelia's countenance fell.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry! You see I thought--being a minister out here,
+so,--you might know them."
+
+"But--Texas is quite a large state," he reminded her, with a smile.
+
+"I know," sighed the girl. "I've found that out."
+
+"Are these people friends of yours?"
+
+"Oh, no; they're just a son, and a brother, and a cousin, and a runaway
+daughter that I'm looking up for Sunbridge people."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" The minister hoped his voice was politely steady.
+
+"Yes, sir. Of course I haven't had a chance to ask many people,
+yet--only one or two of the cowboys. One of them was named 'John,' but
+he wasn't my John--I mean, he wasn't the right John," corrected
+Cordelia with a pink blush.
+
+The minister coughed a little spasmodically behind his hand. As he did
+not speak Cordelia went on, her eyes a little wistful.
+
+"Would you be willing, please, to take those names down on paper, Mr.
+Jones?"
+
+"Why, certainly, Miss Cordelia," agreed the man, reaching for his
+notebook.
+
+"You see you _are_ a minister, and you do meet people, so you might find
+them. I'd be so glad if you could, or if I could. They're all needed
+very much--indeed they are. You see, Hermit Joe is so lonesome for his
+son, and Mrs. Snow so worried about Lizzie, and Mrs. Granger has lost
+her husband, so she hasn't anybody left but her cousin, now, and Miss
+Sally is so very poor and needs her brother so much."
+
+"Of course, of course," murmured the minister.
+
+A few moments later his notebook bore this entry, which had been made
+under Cordelia's careful direction:
+
+          "Wanted:--Information about--
+
+          John Sanborn          whose father is lonesome,
+          Mrs. Lizzie Higgins     "   mother "  worried,
+          Lester Goodwin          "   cousin "  a widow,
+          and
+          James Hunt              "   sister "  very poor."
+
+"If I find any of these people I'll convey all your messages to the best
+of my ability," promised the minister.
+
+"Thank you. Then I'll go out now to the nasturtiums," sighed the girl,
+contentedly.
+
+All too soon the visit came to a close, and all too soon Carlos appeared
+with the carriage. Then came hurried good-byes, full of laughter, tears,
+and promises, with all the Jones family except the mother, grouped upon
+the steps--and the mother's chair was close to the window.
+
+          "Oh, Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons,
+           Come again another day.
+           Oh, don't forget me, Happy Hexagons,
+           When you are so far away!"
+
+chanted Quentina, waving one handkerchief, and wiping her eyes with
+another.
+
+"Girls, quick!--give her the Texas yell," cried Genevieve in a low
+voice; "only say 'Quentina' at the end instead of my name. Now,
+remember--'Quentina'!" she finished excitedly.
+
+"Good!" exulted Tilly. "Of course we will! Now count, Cordelia."
+
+A moment later, Quentina's amazed, delighted ears heard:
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           Quentina!"
+
+Then, amidst a chorus of shouts and laughter, the carriage drove away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, young ladies," demanded Mr. Hartley, when the tired but happy
+Hexagon Club trooped up the front steps of the ranch house late that
+afternoon, "how about it? What did you think of the fair Quentina?"
+
+"Think of her! O Quentina, you should 'seen her!" sang Tilly, in so
+perfect an imitation of the minister's daughter that the girls broke
+into peals of laughter.
+
+"She's lovely, Father--honestly, she is," declared Genevieve, as soon as
+she could speak.
+
+"And so pretty!" added Cordelia, "and has such a sweet, slow way of
+speaking!"
+
+"Such lovely dark eyes!"--this from Alma.
+
+"And such glorious hair--all golden and kinky!" breathed Bertha.
+
+"And she looks just as pretty in her high-necked apron as she does in
+her white dress," cried Elsie.
+
+"Well, well, upon my soul! What is this young lady--a paragon?" laughed
+Mr. Hartley, raising his eyebrows.
+
+"I'll tell you just what she is, sir," vouchsafed Tilly, confidentially.
+"She _is_ a rhyming dictionary, Mr. Hartley, just as I said in the first
+place; and I'd be willing to guarantee any time that she'd find a rhyme
+for any word in this or any other language within two seconds after the
+gun is fired. If you don't believe it, you should hear her 'unearth 'em'
+on the 'nasturtium.'"
+
+"Tilly, Tilly!" choked Genevieve, convulsively.
+
+"Oh, but she _said_ she couldn't find one for petunia," broke in the
+exact Cordelia.
+
+"You don't mean she actually writes--_poetry_!" ejaculated Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"Writes it!--my dear lady!" (Tilly had assumed her most superior air.)
+"If that were all! But she talks it, day in and day out. Everything is a
+poem, from a letter to a scraggly nasturtium. She carries an unfailing
+supply of her own verses in her head, and of other people's in her
+pocket. If you ask for the butter at the table, you're never sure she
+won't strike an attitude, and chant:
+
+          "'Butter, Butter, Oh, good-by!
+            Better butter ne'er did--er--fly.'"
+
+"I think I should like to see this young person," observed Mrs. Kennedy,
+when the laughter at Tilly's sally had subsided.
+
+"Maybe you will sometime. She wants to go East," rejoined Tilly.
+
+"She does? What for?"
+
+"Principally to see Paul Revere's grave, I believe; incidentally to go
+to school."
+
+"Oh, I wish she could come East to school!" exclaimed Genevieve.
+
+"So do I--if she'd come to Sunbridge," laughed Tilly. "She takes things
+even more literally than Cordelia does. Sometime I'm going to tell her
+the moon _is_ made of green cheese, and ask her if she doesn't want a
+piece. Ten to one if she won't answer that she doesn't care for cheese,
+thank you. Oh, I wouldn't ask to go to _another_ show for a whole year
+if she should come to Sunbridge!"
+
+"Tilly! I don't think you ought to talk like that," remonstrated
+Cordelia. "One would think that Quentina was a--a vaudeville show."
+
+Tilly considered this gravely.
+
+"Why, Cordelia, do you know?--I believe that is _just_ what she is.
+Thank you so much for thinking of it."
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, horrified.
+
+Genevieve frowned.
+
+"Honestly, Tilly, I don't think you are quite fair," she demurred.
+"Quentina isn't one bit of a show. She's sweet and dear and lovely, with
+just some funny ways to make her specially interesting."
+
+"All right; we'll let it go at that, then," retorted Tilly, merrily.
+"She's just specially interesting."
+
+"She must be," smiled Mrs. Kennedy. "In fact, I should very much like to
+see her, and--I don't believe Tilly means her comments to be quite so
+unkind as perhaps they sound," she finished with a gentle emphasis that
+was not lost on her young audience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE PRAIRIE--AND MOONLIGHT
+
+
+One by one the long, happy July days slipped away. There was no lack of
+amusement, no time that hung heavy--there was so much to be seen, so
+much to be done!
+
+Very soon after the trip to Quentina's home, Mr. Tim produced from
+somewhere five stout little ponies, warranted to be broken to
+"skirts"--which Genevieve had said would be absolutely necessary, as the
+girls would never consent to ride astride.
+
+It was a nervous morning, however, for five of the Happy Hexagons when
+the horses were led up to the door. Cordelia was frankly white-faced and
+trembling. Even Tilly looked a little doubtful, as she said, trying to
+speak with her usual lightness:
+
+"Oh, we _know_, of course, Genevieve, that these little beasts won't
+teeter up and down like Reddy's broncho; and we hope they'll bear in
+mind that Westerners ought to be politely gentle with Easterners, who
+aren't brought up to ride jumping jacks. But still, we can't help
+wondering."
+
+"Genevieve, I--I really think I won't ride at all to-day," stammered
+Cordelia, faintly; "that is, if you don't mind."
+
+"But I do mind," rejoined Genevieve, looking much distressed. "Of
+course, girls, I wouldn't urge you against your will, for the world; but
+we can't have half the fun here unless you ride, for we go everywhere,
+'most, in the saddle. And, honestly, Mr. Tim says these horses are
+regular cows. Father told him he must get steady ones. Won't you
+please--try it? It will break my heart, if you don't. You see I've said
+so much to the boys, since I came, about your riding! They were so
+surprised to think you could ride, and I was so proud to say you did!"
+
+"You--you were?" stammered Cordelia.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, young ladies," called Mr. Tim, at that moment, "here's the
+steadiest little string of horses going! Who'll have the first pick?"
+
+"I will," cried Cordelia, wetting her dry lips, and speaking with a
+stern determination that yet did not quite hide the shake in her voice.
+"That is--I don't care about my pick, but I'm going to ride--right
+away--quick!" she finished, determined that at least Genevieve should
+not be ashamed--of her.
+
+After all, it was only the first five minutes that were hard. The little
+horses were politeness itself, and seemed fully to realize the
+responsibilities of their position. The girls, determined not to shame
+Genevieve, acquitted themselves with a grace and ease that brought forth
+an appreciative cheer from the boys as the young people rode away.
+
+"Now I feel as if I were in Texas," exulted Tilly, drawing in a full
+breath of the fresh, early morning air.
+
+"I'm so glad--so glad we're all in Texas," cried Genevieve, looking
+about her with shining eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+According to Tilly, there was always "something doing" at the ranch
+house. The boys--much to their own surprise, it must be confessed--had
+adopted "the whole bunch" (as Long John called the young people), and
+were never too busy or too tired to display their skill as ropers or
+riders. Always there was the fascinating morning start to work to watch,
+and frequently there was in the afternoon some wild little broncho that
+needed to be broken to the saddle, or to be trained to stop, wheel
+instantly, stand motionless, or to start at top speed, according to his
+master's wishes; all of which was a never-ending source of delight to
+unaccustomed Eastern eyes.
+
+For pleasant days there were, too, rides, drives to Bolo, picnic
+luncheons, and frolics of every sort. For rainy days there were games
+and music in the living room, to say nothing of letters from home to be
+read and answered. Most of the twilights--if fair--were spent by
+everybody on the front gallery watching the golden ball in the west set
+the whole prairie, as well as the sky itself, on fire. In the early
+afternoon, of course, there was the inevitable siesta--Tilly's abhorred
+"naps."
+
+There were callers at the ranch house, too. Sometimes a cowboy from a
+neighboring ranch came to look after a lost pony, or to see if his
+cattle had strayed off the range through a broken fence. Sometimes a
+hunter or trapper would stop for a chat on his way to or from Bolo. Once
+Susie Billings in her khaki suit and cowboy hat came to spend the day;
+and once, on Sunday, Mr. Jones came to hold service again. Much to the
+girls' disappointment, Quentina did not come with him. The mother's foot
+was better, Mr. Jones said, but the twins had come down with the
+whooping cough, and poor Quentina could not be spared to leave home.
+
+Sometimes a score of men and teams and cowboys with their strings of
+horses would pass on their way to a round-up; and once two huge prairie
+schooners "docked in the yard," as Tilly termed it; and their weary
+owners, at Mr. Hartley's invitation, stopped for a night's rest.
+
+That was, indeed, a time of great excitement for the Happy Hexagons, for
+under Genevieve's fearless leadership they promptly made friends with
+the sallow-faced women and the forlorn children, and soon were shown
+the mysteries of the inside of the wagon-homes.
+
+"Mercy! it looks just like play housekeeping; doesn't it?" gurgled
+Tilly.
+
+"But it isn't play at all, my dear," replied one of the women, a little
+sadly. "Seems now like as if I ever had a home again what stayed put,
+that I'd be happy, no matter where 'twas. Ain't that the way you feel,
+Mis' Higgins?"
+
+"Yes," nodded the other woman, dully, from her perch on the driver's
+seat. "But I reckon my man ain't never goin' ter quit wheelin', now."
+
+Even Genevieve seemed scarcely to know what to reply to this; but a few
+minutes later she had succeeded in gaining the confidence of the several
+children hanging about their mothers' skirts. Laughingly, then, the
+young people trooped away together to look at the flowers--all but
+Cordelia Wilson. Cordelia remained behind with the two women.
+
+"Please--I beg your pardon--but did you say your name was 'Mrs.
+Higgins'?" she asked eagerly, turning to the woman on the driver's seat.
+
+"Why, no--I didn't, Miss. But that's my name."
+
+"Yes, I know; 'twas the other lady who called you that, of course; but
+it doesn't matter, so long as I know 'tis that."
+
+"Oh, don't it?" murmured the woman, a little curiously.
+
+"No; and--you came from New Hampshire, once, didn't you?"
+
+An odd look crossed the woman's face.
+
+"Well, I ain't sayin' that."
+
+"But you did--please say that you did," begged Cordelia. "You see, I'm
+so anxious to find you!"
+
+A look that was almost terror came to the woman's eyes now.
+
+"I don't know nothin' what you're talkin' about, and I don't want to
+know, neither," she finished coldly, turning squarely around in her
+seat.
+
+Cordelia hesitated; then she stammered:
+
+"If--if you think it's because your mother will scold you, I can assure
+you that she will not. She is very anxious to hear from you--that's all.
+She's been so worried! She wants to know if you're doing well, and all
+that."
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?" demanded the woman, turning sharply back
+to Cordelia.
+
+"Your--mother."
+
+"My mother is--dead, Miss."
+
+"Oh-h!" gasped Cordelia. "You mean you _aren't_ Mrs. Lizzie Higgins--she
+that was Lizzie Snow of Sunbridge, New Hampshire, who eloped with Mr.
+Higgins and ran away to Texas years ago?"
+
+The woman laughed. Her face cleared. Whatever it was that she had
+feared--she evidently feared it no longer.
+
+"No, Miss. My name isn't 'Lizzie,' and it wa'n't 'Snow,' and I never
+heard of Sunbridge, New Hampshire."
+
+"O dear!" quavered Cordelia. "Mrs. Snow will be so sorry--that is, of
+course she'll be glad, too; for you aren't--" With a little gasp of
+dismay Cordelia pulled herself up before the words were uttered, but not
+before their meaning was quite clear to the woman.
+
+"Oh, yes, she'll be glad, too, no doubt," she cut in bitterly; "because
+I'm not exactly what a woman would want for a lost daughter, now, am I?"
+
+Cordelia blushed painfully.
+
+"Oh, please, please don't talk like that! I am sure Mrs. Snow would be
+glad to find any one for a daughter--she wants her so! And she's
+her--mother, you know."
+
+The woman's face softened.
+
+"All right," she smiled, a little bitterly. "If I find her I'll send her
+to you."
+
+"Oh, will you? Thank you so much," cried Cordelia. "And there are some
+others, too, that I'm hunting for. Maybe you can find them--traveling
+around so much as you do. If you've got a little piece of paper and a
+pencil, I'll just write them down, please."
+
+Thus it happened that when the prairie schooners "sailed away" (again
+to quote Tilly), one of them carried a bit of paper on which had been
+written full instructions how to proceed should the wife of its owner
+ever run across John Sanborn, Lizzie Higgins, Lester Goodwin, or James
+Hunt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was soon after this that the Happy Hexagons and Mr. Tim, returning on
+horseback from a long day on the range, met with a delay that would
+prevent their reaching the ranch house until some time after dark.
+
+"Oh, goody! I don't care a bit," chuckled Genevieve, when she realized
+the facts of the case. "There is a perfectly glorious moon, and now you
+can see the prairie by moonlight. And you never really have seen the
+prairie until you do see it by moonlight, you know!"
+
+"But we have seen it by moonlight--right from your steps," cried Tilly.
+
+"Oh, but not the same as it will be out here--away from the ranch
+house," cried Genevieve. "You just wait! You'll see."
+
+And they did wait. And they did see.
+
+It did seem, indeed, that they never before had really seen the prairie;
+they all agreed to that, as they gazed in awed delight at the vast,
+silvery wonder all about them, some time later.
+
+"Why, it looks more than ever like the ocean," cried Bertha.
+
+"That grass over there actually ripples like water in the moonlight,"
+declared Elsie.
+
+"I didn't suppose anything could be so beautiful," breathed Cordelia.
+"But, Genevieve, won't Mrs. Kennedy be dreadfully worried, at our being
+so late?"
+
+Genevieve gave a sigh.
+
+"Yes, I'm afraid so," she admitted. "Still, she has Father to comfort
+her, and he'll remind her that Mr. Tim is with us, and that delays are
+always happening on a day's run like ours."
+
+"I wish she could see this beautiful sight herself," cried Alma. "She
+wouldn't blame us, then, for going wild over it and not minding if we
+are a little hungry."
+
+Tilly, for once, was silent.
+
+"Well?" questioned Genevieve, after a time, riding up to her side.
+
+"I don't know any one--only Quentina--who could do justice to it,"
+breathed Tilly. And, to Genevieve's amazement, the moonlight showed a
+tear on Tilly's cheek.
+
+There was a long minute of silence. The moon was very bright, yet the
+many swift-flying clouds brought moments of soft darkness, and cast
+weird shadows across the far-reaching prairie.
+
+"I think I smell a storm coming--sometime," sniffed Mr. Tim, his face to
+the wind.
+
+"Wouldn't it be lovely to have it come while we were out here," gurgled
+Tilly.
+
+"Hardly!" rejoined Mr. Tim with emphasis. "I reckon you needn't worry
+about that storm for some hours yet. I'll have you all safely corralled
+long before it breaks--never fear."
+
+"I wasn't fearing. I was hoping," retorted Tilly in a voice that brought
+a chuckle to the man's lips.
+
+A moment later Mr. Tim stopped his horse and pointed to the right.
+
+"Do you see that black shadow over there?" he asked Bertha Brown, who
+was nearest him.
+
+"Yes. From a cloud, isn't it?" Bertha, too, stopped to look.
+
+"I think not. It's a bunch of cattle, I reckon. I think I make out the
+guards riding round them."
+
+"What is it, Mr. Tim?" Genevieve and the other girls had caught up with
+them now.
+
+"Cattle--over there. See?" explained Mr. Tim, briefly.
+
+At that moment the moon came out unusually clear.
+
+"I can see two men on horseback, passing each other," cried Bertha.
+
+Mr. Tim nodded.
+
+"Yes--the guard. They ride around the bunch in opposite ways, you know."
+
+"Let's go nearer! I want to see," proposed Tilly, trying to quiet the
+restless movements of her pony.
+
+[Illustration: "'FOLLOW ME--QUICK!' HE ORDERED"]
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"I reckon not, Miss Tilly. A stampede ain't what I'm looking for to
+amuse you all to-night."
+
+"What's a stampede?" asked Tilly.
+
+"Mr. Tim, look--quick!" Genevieve's voice was urgent, a little
+frightened. But the man had not needed that. With a sharp word behind
+his teeth, he spurred his horse.
+
+"Follow me--quick!" he ordered. And with a frightened cry they obeyed.
+
+Genevieve obeyed, too--but she looked back over her shoulder.
+
+The moon was very bright now. The black shadow to the right had become a
+wedge-shaped, compact, seething mass, sweeping rapidly toward them.
+There was a rushing swish in the air, and the sound of hoarse shouts. A
+few moments later the maddened beasts swept across their path, well to
+the rear.
+
+"I'll answer your question, now, Miss Tilly," said Mr. Tim, as they
+reined in their horses and looked backward at the shadowy mass. "That
+was a stampede."
+
+"But what will they do with them?" chattered Cordelia, with white lips.
+"How can they ever stop them?"
+
+"Oh, they'll head them off--get them to running in a circle, probably,
+till they can quiet them and make them lie down again."
+
+"And will they be all right--then?" shivered Elsie.
+
+"Hm-m; yes," nodded Mr. Tim, "--till the next thing sets them going.
+Then they'll be again on their feet, every last one of them--heads and
+tails erect. Oh, they're a pretty sight then--they are!"
+
+"They must be," remarked Tilly. "Still--well, I sha'n't ask you again
+what a stampede is--not to-night."
+
+Mr. Tim laughed.
+
+"Well, Miss Tilly, 'tain't likely I could show you one if you did. I
+don't always keep 'em so handy! And now I reckon we'd better hit the
+trail for the Six Star, and be right lively about it, too," he added,
+"or we'll be having Mis' Kennedy out here herself on a broncho after
+ye!"
+
+Half an hour later a white-faced, teary-eyed little woman at the Six
+Star Ranch was trying to get her joyful arms around six girls at once.
+
+It was the next morning, and just before Mr. Tim's predicted storm
+broke, that the girls found the injured man almost hidden in the tall
+grass near the ranch house. They had gone out for a short ride, but had
+kept near shelter owing to the threatening sky. Tilly saw the man first.
+
+"Genevieve, there's a man down there," she cried softly. "He's hurt, I
+think."
+
+Genevieve was off her horse at once. The man was found to be breathing,
+but apparently unconscious. He lay twisted in a little huddled heap,
+with one of his legs bent under him. He groaned faintly when Genevieve
+spoke to him.
+
+Genevieve was a little white when she straightened up.
+
+"I think we'll have to get a wagon, or something, and two of the boys,"
+she said. "I'll ride back to the house if some of you girls will stay
+here."
+
+"We'll all stay," promised Cordelia; "only be quick," she added,
+slipping from her pony's back, and giving the reins to Bertha. "Maybe if
+I could hold his poor head he'd be more comfortable."
+
+Cautiously she sat down on the ground and lifted the man's head to her
+lap. He groaned again faintly, and opened his eyes. They were large and
+dark. For a moment there was only pain in their depths; then, gradually,
+there came a look of profound amazement.
+
+"Where am I?" he asked feebly.
+
+"Sh! Don't talk. You are on the prairie. You must have got hurt, some
+way."
+
+He tried to move, and groaned again.
+
+"Please be still," begged Cordelia. "You'll make things worse. We've
+sent for help, and they'll be here right away."
+
+The man closed his eyes now. He did not speak again.
+
+It seemed a long time, but it was really a very short one, before
+Genevieve came with Carlos and Pedro and one of the ranch wagons. The
+man groaned again, and grew frightfully white when they lifted him
+carefully into the wagon. Then he fainted. He was still unconscious when
+they reached the ranch house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A MAN AND A MYSTERY
+
+
+August came. The first few days of the month were particularly busy ones
+as some of the boys were off to a round-up on the fifth, and Mr. Hartley
+was going with them for a week. To the girls the big four-horse wagon
+for the food and bedding--the "wheeled house" that was to be home for
+the boys--was always an object of great interest. Then there was the
+excitement of the start on the day itself, which this time was made
+particularly momentous by the going of Mr. Hartley.
+
+The ranch house seemed very lonely without its genial, generous-hearted
+owner, and everybody was glad that he had promised to come back in a
+week. Meanwhile, of course, there was "the man."
+
+The man was he who had been found by the girls in the prairie grass. He
+was still almost as much of a mystery as ever. Mr. Hartley had insisted
+upon his staying--and, indeed (though no bones were broken), he was
+quite too badly injured to be moved for a time. He was able now to sit
+in the big comfortable chairs on the back gallery; and he spent hours
+there every day, sometimes reading, more often sitting motionless, with
+his dark eyes closed, and his hands resting on his crutches by his side.
+
+He had not seemed to care to talk of himself. He had merely said that
+his horse had thrown him, and that he had lain in the grass for some
+time before he was found. He was quiet, had good manners, and used good
+language. He said that his name was John Edwards. He seemed deeply
+grateful for all kindness shown him, but was plainly anxious to be well
+enough to be on his way again. Mr. Hartley, however, had won his promise
+to remain till he himself returned from the round-up.
+
+All the young people did their best to make the injured man's time pass
+as pleasantly as possible; and very often one or another of them might
+be found reading to him, or playing a game of checkers or chess with
+him.
+
+It was on such an occasion that Cordelia Wilson, at the conclusion of a
+game of checkers, found the courage to say something that had long been
+on her mind.
+
+"Mr. Edwards, do--do you know Texas very well?"
+
+The man smiled a little.
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia, Texas is rather large, you know."
+
+Cordelia sighed almost impatiently.
+
+"Dear me! I--I wish every one wouldn't always say that," she lamented.
+"It's so discouraging!"
+
+"Dis--couraging?"
+
+"Yes--when you're trying to find some one."
+
+"Oh! And are you trying to find some one?"
+
+"Yes, sir; four some ones."
+
+"Well, I should think that might be difficult--in Texas, unless you know
+where they are," smiled the man.
+
+"I don't; and that's what's the matter," sighed Cordelia. "That's why I
+was going to ask you, to see if you didn't know, perhaps."
+
+"Ask _me_?"
+
+"Yes. That is, if you had been around any--in Texas. You see I ask
+everybody, almost. I have to," she apologized a little wistfully. "And
+even then it looks as if I should have to go back to Sunbridge without
+finding one of them. And I'd so hate to do that!"
+
+The man started visibly.
+
+"Go back--where?"
+
+"To Sunbridge."
+
+"Sunbridge--?"
+
+"Sunbridge, New Hampshire; home, you know."
+
+An odd expression crossed the man's face.
+
+"No--I didn't know," he said, after a moment.
+
+"Why, didn't any of us ever tell you we were from the East?" cried
+Cordelia.
+
+"Oh, yes, lots of times. But you never happened to mention the town
+before, I think."
+
+"Why, how funny!" murmured Cordelia.
+
+The man did not speak. He seemed to have fallen into a reverie. Cordelia
+stirred restlessly in her seat.
+
+"Did you say you would help me?" she asked at last, timidly.
+
+"Help you?" The man seemed to have forgotten what she had been speaking
+of.
+
+"Help me to find them, you know--those people I'm looking for."
+
+"Why, of course," laughed the man, easily. "Who are--" He stopped
+abruptly. For the second time an odd expression crossed his face. "Are
+they--Sunbridge people?" he asked, stooping to pick up a dried leaf from
+the gallery floor.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Edwards. There are four of them--three men and one woman. They
+are John Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt, and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins.
+Maybe you know some of them. Do you?"
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia,"--the man stopped a minute, as he reached for a
+leaf still farther away--"is that quite to be expected?" he asked then,
+lightly.
+
+"No, I suppose not," she sighed; "for, of course, Texas _is_ big. But if
+you would please just put their names down on paper same as the others
+have, that would help a great deal."
+
+"Why, certainly," agreed the man, reaching into his pocket and bringing
+out a little notebook not unlike the minister's. "Now suppose you--you
+give me those names again, Miss Cordelia."
+
+"John Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt, and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins. And
+I am Cordelia Wilson, you know. Just 'Sunbridge, New Hampshire,' would
+reach me--if you found any of them."
+
+"I'll remember--if I find any of them," murmured the man, as he wrote
+the last name.
+
+"And thank you so much!" beamed Cordelia.
+
+There was a moment's silence. The man was playing with his pencil.
+
+"Did you say you were _asked_ to find these people?" he inquired at
+last, examining the lead of his pencil intently.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"Indeed! And may I inquire who asked you?"
+
+"Why, of course! The people who belong to them--who are so anxious for
+them to come back, you know."
+
+"Oh, then they want them?" The man was still examining the point of his
+pencil.
+
+"Indeed they do, Mr. Edwards," cried Cordelia, glad to find her new
+audience so interested. "Mrs. Lizzie Higgins eloped years ago, and her
+mother, Mrs. Snow, is terribly worried. She's never heard a word from
+her. Mrs. Granger is a widow, and very poor. Her husband died last year.
+She hasn't any one left but her cousin, Lester Goodwin, now, and she so
+wishes she could find him. Lester's had some money left him, but if he
+isn't found this year, it'll go to some one else."
+
+"Oh!" The man gave a short little laugh that sounded not quite pleasant,
+as he lifted his head suddenly. "I begin to see. Mrs. Granger thinks if
+she had Lester, and Lester had the money, why she'd get the money, too,
+eh?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir--not exactly," objected Cordelia. "You see, if he _isn't_
+found the money goes to _her_, so she thinks she ought to make a special
+effort to find him. She says she wouldn't sleep a wink if she took all
+that money _without_ trying to find him; so she asked me. Of course the
+lawyers are hunting, anyway."
+
+"Oh-h!" said the man again; but this time he did not laugh. "Hm-m;
+well--are there any fortunes left the other two?" he asked, after a
+moment's silence. He had gone back to his pencil point.
+
+"Oh, no, sir," laughed Cordelia, a little ruefully. "I'm afraid they
+won't think so. _They're_ wanted to _help_ folks."
+
+"To help folks!"
+
+"Yes, sir. You see John Sanborn's father is very poor, and he lives all
+alone in a little bit of a house in the woods. He's called 'Hermit
+Joe.'"
+
+"Yes--go on," bade the man, as Cordelia stopped for breath. The man's
+voice was husky--perhaps because he had stooped to pick up another dried
+leaf.
+
+"There isn't much more about him, only he's terribly lonesome and wants
+his boy, he says. You see, the boy ran away years and years ago. I don't
+think that was very nice of him. Do you?"
+
+There was no answer. The man sat now with his hand over his eyes.
+Cordelia wondered if perhaps she had tired him.
+
+"And that's all," she said hurriedly; "only Sally Hunt's brother, James.
+If he isn't found she'll have to go to the Poor Farm, I'm afraid."
+
+"What?"
+
+Cordelia started nervously. The man had turned upon her so sharply that
+his crutches fell to the floor with a crash.
+
+"Oh, sir, I beg your pardon," she apologized, springing to her feet.
+"I'm so afraid you were asleep, and I startled you. I--I will go now.
+And--and thank you ever so much for writing down those names!"
+
+The man shook his head decidedly.
+
+"Don't go," he begged. "You have not tired me, and I like to hear you
+talk. Now sit down, please, and tell me all about these people--this
+James Hunt's sister, and all the rest."
+
+"Oh, do you really want to know about them?" cried Cordelia, joyfully.
+"Then I will tell you; for maybe it would help you find them, you know."
+
+"Yes, maybe it would," agreed the man, in a curiously vibrant voice, as
+Cordelia seated herself again at his side. "Now talk."
+
+And Cordelia talked. She talked not only then, but several times after
+that, and she talked always of Sunbridge. Mr. Edwards seemed so
+interested in everything and everybody there, though specially, of
+course, in the relatives of the four lost people she was trying to
+find--which was natural, certainly, thought Cordelia, inasmuch as he,
+too, was going to search for them in the weeks to come.
+
+Mr. Edwards improved in health very rapidly these days. He discarded his
+crutches, and seemed feverishly anxious to test his strength on every
+occasion. Upon Mr. Hartley's return from the round-up, the injured man
+insisted that he was quite well enough to go away; and, in spite of the
+kind ranchman's protests, he did go the next day after Mr. Hartley's
+return. Carlos drove him to Bolo, and the Happy Hexagons stood on the
+ranch-house steps and gave him their Texas yell as a send-off,
+substituting a lusty "MR. EDWARDS" for Genevieve's name at the end.
+
+"That is the most convenient yell," chuckled Tilly, as the ranch wagon
+with Carlos and Mr. Edwards drove away. "It'll do for anything and
+anybody. And didn't Mr. Edwards like it!"
+
+"Of course he did! He couldn't help it," cried Genevieve.
+
+"I think Mr. Edwards is a very nice man," observed Cordelia, with
+emphasis, "and I wish he could have stayed for the party."
+
+"Why, of course he's a nice man," chimed in the other girls, eyeing her
+earnest face a little curiously.
+
+"Who said he wasn't?" laughed Tilly. "My! but it is hot, isn't it?" she
+added, dropping into one of the big wicker chairs near her.
+
+"Oh, of course we have to have some warm weather," bridled Genevieve,
+"else you'd be homesick for New Hampshire!"
+
+"The mean annual temperature of the country near--" began Tilly,
+mischievously; but Genevieve put her hands to her ears and fled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fourteenth of August was to be a gala occasion at the Six Star
+Ranch, for there was to be a supper and dance to entertain the friends
+from the East.
+
+"But where'll you get your guests?" demanded Tilly, when she first heard
+of the plan. "Whom can you have, 'way off here like this?--all will
+please take notice that I said '_whom_'!"
+
+Genevieve laughed and tossed her head a little.
+
+"Well, we'll have the boys here on the ranch, of course, and Susie
+Billings, and some of the other Bolo girls. We can't have Quentina, of
+course--Poor thing! Isn't it a shame about that whooping cough?--and
+Ned's got it, too, now, you know!--but I think the Boyntons will come.
+Their ranch is only thirty-five miles away, and they could stay all
+night, of course."
+
+"Only thirty-five miles away," repeated Tilly, airily. "Of course
+nobody'd mind a little thing like that, for a party!"
+
+"No, they wouldn't--in Texas," retorted Genevieve. "There's the
+Wetherbys, too. They live five miles out from Bolo on the other side.
+Maybe they'll come. We'll ask them, anyhow. Oh, we'll have a
+party--never you fear!"
+
+When the night of the fourteenth arrived, things looked, indeed, very
+like "a party." Everywhere were confusion and excitement, even to the
+saddle room and blacksmith's shop, and to the two big tents that were
+being put up for extra sleeping quarters. Everywhere, too (Mrs. Kennedy
+declared), were dishes heaped with chocolate candies. Mr. Edwards, who
+had left the ranch only the day before, had sent back by Carlos
+twenty-five pounds of the best candy Bolo could supply; and the girls
+had been lavish in its disposal.
+
+Five Wetherbys and six Boyntons had arrived together with a dozen
+cowboys on horseback. Susie Billings, minus her khaki and cartridges,
+looked the picture of demureness in white muslin and baby-blue ribbons.
+There were other pretty girls, too, from Bolo, in white, and in pale
+pink and yellow. And everywhere were the Happy Hexagons, wildly excited,
+and delighted with it all.
+
+The big hall and the living-room had been cleared for dancing. The
+galleries and the long covered way leading to the dining room had been
+decorated with flowers and lanterns. The long table in the dining-room
+was decorated, too, and would later be loaded with all sorts of good
+things: sandwiches, hot biscuits, tamales, cakes, and black coffee
+without sugar. In the center of the table already there was a huge round
+white something that called forth delighted clappings from the Happy
+Hexagons as they flocked in at seven o'clock to look at the table
+decorations.
+
+"Oh, what a lovely cake," gurgled Tilly, "and such a big one!"
+
+Genevieve laughed mischievously.
+
+"I'll give you the whole cake--if you'll cut it," she proposed.
+
+With manifest alacrity Tilly reached for a knife.
+
+"Done!" she cried.
+
+Before the knife descended, Genevieve caught her hand.
+
+"Wait! Look here," she parleyed. Taking the knife, she thrust its point
+through the elaborate white frosting, with two or three gentle taps.
+
+"Why, it's hard!--hard as stone," ejaculated Tilly, trying for herself.
+
+"It _is_ stone," laughed Genevieve.
+
+"Stone!" cried a chorus of unbelieving voices.
+
+"Yes, stone--frosted with sugar and the whites of eggs. Oh, if you'd
+lived in Texas as long as I have you'd have seen them before," nodded
+Genevieve.
+
+"Well, I've got my opinion of Texas cakes, then," pouted Tilly, with
+saucy impertinence.
+
+"Oh, you'll change it later, I reckon--when you see the real ones,"
+rejoined Genevieve, comfortably, as they left the dining-room.
+
+There never had been, surely, such a party. All the Happy Hexagons
+agreed to that. So, too, did all the guests. Perhaps on no one's face
+was there a look of anxious care except on Cordelia's. Possibly Mr.
+Hartley noticed this look. At all events he watched Cordelia rather
+closely, as the evening advanced, particularly after he chanced to
+overhear some of her remarks to his guests. Then he sought his daughter.
+
+"Dearie," he began in a low voice, leading her a little to one side,
+"what in the world ails that little Miss Cordelia?"
+
+"Ails her! What do you mean? Is she sick?"
+
+"No, I don't think so; but she looks as if she'd got the weight of the
+whole outfit on her shoulders, and she seems to be going 'round asking
+everybody if they knew John somebody, or Lizzie somebody else."
+
+Genevieve laughed merrily; but almost at once she frowned and shook her
+head.
+
+"No, I don't know, Father, what is the matter. But Cordelia is capable
+of--anything, if once her conscience is stirred. Why don't you ask her
+yourself?"
+
+"I believe I will, dearie," he asserted at last.
+
+Five minutes later he chanced to find Cordelia without a partner.
+
+"Miss Cordelia, will you accept an old man for this dance?" he asked
+genially. "And shall we sit it out, perhaps?"
+
+"Oh, thank you! I'd love to," cried Cordelia in a relieved voice. "And I
+shall be so glad to rest!"
+
+"Tired--dancing?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, no, not dancing; that is--well--" She stopped, and colored
+painfully.
+
+Mr. Hartley waited a moment, then observed with a smile:
+
+"You seem to be looking for some one to-night, Miss Cordelia. Didn't I
+hear you asking Mr. Boynton and Joe Wetherby if they knew John somebody
+or other?"
+
+Again a pink flush spread over Cordelia's face, "Yes, sir; I am looking
+for somebody--four somebodies."
+
+"You don't say! Found them yet?"
+
+She shook her head. To the man's surprise and distress, her eyes filled
+with tears.
+
+"No, Mr. Hartley, and that's what's the trouble. That's why I'm trying
+so hard to-night to ask all these people--there's such a little time
+left!"
+
+"Time--left?"
+
+"Yes. I'd like to tell you about it, please. I think I may tell you. Of
+course I haven't said a word to the girls, because the people--back in
+Sunbridge--didn't want me to talk about it. I'm looking for John
+Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt, and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins. They're
+all Sunbridge people who came to Texas years ago, and are lost."
+
+Mr. Hartley gave a sudden exclamation.
+
+"Did you say--Lester Goodwin was one?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Who wants him, and what for?"
+
+Patiently Cordelia told him. She wore a hopeless air. She had ceased,
+evidently, to expect anything that was good.
+
+Mr. Hartley gave a low whistle. For a moment he was silent, then he
+chuckled unexpectedly.
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia, if you hadn't looked so far away for your pony you
+might have seen his tracks nearer home, perhaps. As it happens, Lester
+Goodwin is right here on the ranch."
+
+"Here? Lester Goodwin?" gasped Cordelia.
+
+"Yes. Oh, he isn't known by that name--he preferred not to be. He came
+to me fourteen years ago, and he's been here ever since. He said he
+wanted to be a cowboy; that he'd always wanted to be one ever since
+when, as a little boy, he used to rope his rocking-horse with his
+mother's clothes-line. His uncle had wanted him to be a teacher, but he
+hated the sight of books; so when his uncle died, he ran away and came
+here. He said there wasn't anybody to care where he was, or what he did;
+so I let him stay."
+
+"And to think he's here now!"
+
+"He certainly is. You see he came here because he knew me once a little
+when I was in Sunbridge visiting relatives, years ago, and he knew I had
+become a ranchman in Texas. He begged so hard that I should keep his
+secret that I've always kept it. Besides, there was nothing to keep.
+Nobody ever asked me, or suspected he was here."
+
+"Why, how strange!" breathed Cordelia, with shining eyes. "And only
+think how I've asked everybody but you--and now I've found one of them
+right here!"
+
+"Yes--though we mustn't be too sure, of course. We'll tell him; but
+maybe he won't want to go back, even now. I reckon, however, that when
+he hears of the money, Reddy won't mind his real name being known."
+
+"Reddy!" cried Cordelia.
+
+"Oh!--I didn't tell you, did I?" smiled Mr. Hartley. "Yes, Reddy is
+Lester Goodwin."
+
+"Why, Mr. Hartley! And I never thought of such a thing as asking _him_!
+I only looked for the cowboys who were called 'John' or 'James' or
+'Lester'--and there weren't many of those. And so it's Reddy--why, I
+just can't believe it's true!"
+
+"I reckon Reddy can't, either," laughed Mr. Hartley. "And now we'll let
+you go back to your dancing, my dear. I've already encountered at least
+four pairs of glowering eyes unpleasantly pointed in my direction. I'll
+go and find Reddy--or rather, Mr. Lester Goodwin," he finished
+impressively, as he rose to his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE ALAMO
+
+
+Two days after the party at the ranch house, Mr. Hartley made a
+wonderful announcement at the dinner table.
+
+"What do you say, young ladies, to a visit to San Antonio?" he began.
+
+"Father, could we? Do you mean we can?" cried Genevieve.
+
+"Yes, dear, that's just what I mean. It so happens I've got business
+there, so I'm going to take you home 'round by that way. We'll have
+maybe a couple of days there, and we'll see something of the surrounding
+country, besides. You know Texas is quite a state--and you've seen
+mighty little of it, as yet."
+
+"Oh, girls, we'll see the Alamo!" cried Genevieve. "Did you realize
+that?"
+
+"Will we, truly?" chorused several rapturous voices.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what do you know about the Alamo, young ladies?" smiled Mr.
+Hartley.
+
+"We know everything," answered Tilly, cheerfully. "Mr. Jones's
+daughter, you know, was our Latin teacher, and she had the History
+class, too. Well, we couldn't even _think_ Bunker Hill but what she'd
+pipe up about the Alamo. Now I think Bunker Hill is pretty good!"
+
+"Oh, but we want to see the Alamo, just the same," interposed Bertha,
+anxiously.
+
+"Of course!" cried five emphatic girlish voices.
+
+"All right," laughed Mr. Hartley. "You shall see it, all of you--if the
+train will take us there; and you'll see--well, you'll see a lot of
+other things, too."
+
+Cordelia stirred uneasily. The old anxious look came back to her eyes.
+When dinner was over she stole to Mr. Hartley's side.
+
+"Mr. Hartley, please, shall we see an oil well?" she asked, in a low
+voice.
+
+"Bless you, little lady, what do you know about oil wells?" smiled the
+man, good-naturedly. "You haven't got any of those to look up, have
+you?"
+
+To his dumbfounded amazement, she answered simply:
+
+"Yes, sir--one."
+
+"Well, I'll be--well, just what is this proposition?" he broke off
+whimsically.
+
+"If you'll wait--just a minute--I'll get the paper," panted Cordelia.
+"Mr. Hodges wrote down the name."
+
+Very soon she had returned with the paper, and Mr. Hartley saw the name.
+His face hardened, yet his eyes were curiously tender.
+
+"I'm afraid, little girl, that this won't come out quite so well as the
+Reddy affair--by the way, Reddy left an extra good-by for you this
+morning. He went away before you were up, you know. He feels pretty
+grateful to you, Miss Cordelia."
+
+"But I didn't do anything, Mr. Hartley. I do wish I could see Mrs.
+Granger when he gets there, though. I--I'm afraid she doesn't like
+cowboys much better than Mrs. Miller does."
+
+There was a moment's silence. Mr. Hartley was scowling at the bit of
+paper in his hand.
+
+"Did you say you _didn't_ know where that oil well was, Mr. Hartley?"
+asked Cordelia, timidly.
+
+"Yes. I don't know where it is--and I reckon there doesn't anybody else
+know, either," he answered slowly. "I know where it _claims_ to be, and
+I know it is just one big swindle from beginning to end."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," sighed the girl.
+
+"So am I, my dear. I'm sorry for Mr. Hodges, and lots of others that I
+know lost money in the same thing. But it can't be helped now."
+
+"Then there aren't any oil wells here at all in Texas?" asked Cordelia,
+tearfully.
+
+"Bless you, yes, child--heaps of them! You'll see them, too, probably,
+before you leave the state. But--you won't see this one."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," mourned Cordelia, again, as sadly she took the bit
+of paper back to her room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not many days before the Happy Hexagons said good-by to the
+ranch--a most reluctant good-by. It was a question, however, which felt
+the worst: Mammy Lindy, weeping on the gallery steps, Mr. Tim and the
+boys, waving a noisy good-by from their saddles, or Mrs. Kennedy and the
+Happy Hexagons--the latter tearfully giving their Texas yell with "THE
+RANCH" for the final word to-day.
+
+"I think I never had such a good time in all my life," breathed
+Cordelia.
+
+"I know I never did," choked Tilly. "Genevieve, we can't ever begin to
+thank you for it all!"
+
+"I--I don't want you to," wailed Genevieve, dabbing her eyes with her
+handkerchief. "I reckon you haven't had any better time than I have!"
+
+Quentina was at the Bolo station; so, too, was Susie Billings.
+
+"O Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons, I just had to come," chanted
+Quentina, standing some distance away, and extending two restraining
+hands, palms outward. "Don't kiss me--don't come near me! I don't think
+I've got any whooping germs about me, but we want to be on the safe
+side."
+
+"But, Quentina, how are you? How are all of you?" cried Genevieve,
+plainly distressed. "I think it's just horrid--staying off at arm's
+length like this!"
+
+"But you must, dear," almost sobbed Quentina. "I wouldn't have you go
+through what we are going through with at home for anything. Such a
+whoop--whoop--whooping time!"
+
+"Couldn't you make a poem on it?" bantered Tilly. "I should think
+'twould make a splendid subject--you could use such sonorous, resounding
+words."
+
+Quentina shook her head dismally.
+
+"I couldn't. I tried it once or twice; but all I could think of was
+'Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound'; then somebody would cough, and I
+just couldn't get any further." Her voice was tragic in spite of its
+drawl.
+
+"You poor thing," sympathized Genevieve. "But we--we're glad to _see_
+you, even for this little, and even if we can't _feel_ you! But,
+Quentina, you'll write--sure?"
+
+"Yes, I'll write," nodded Quentina, backing sorrowfully away. "Good-by,
+Happy Hexagons, good-by!"
+
+"So that is your Quentina?" said Mr. Hartley in a low voice, as the
+girls were waving their hands and handkerchiefs. "Well, she _is_
+pretty."
+
+"Oh, but she wasn't half so pretty to-day," regretted Genevieve. "She
+looked so thin and tired. I wanted to introduce you, Father, but I
+didn't know how to--so far away."
+
+"I should say not," laughed Mr. Hartley. "'Twould have been worse than
+your high handshake back East," he added, as he turned to speak to Susie
+Billings, who had come up at that moment.
+
+Susie Billings was in her khaki suit and cowboy hat to-day, with the
+cartridge belt and holster; so, as it happened, the last glimpse the
+girls had of Bolo station was made picturesque by a vision of
+"Cordelia's cowboy" (as Tilly always called Susie) waving her
+broad-brimmed hat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trip to San Antonio was practically uneventful, though it was
+certainly one long delight to the Happy Hexagons, who never wearied of
+talking about the sights and sounds of the wonderful country through
+which they were passing.
+
+"Well, this isn't much like Bolo; is it?" cried Tilly, when at last they
+found themselves in the handsome railroad station of the city itself. "I
+shouldn't think Texas would know its own self half the time--it's so
+different from itself all the time!"
+
+[Illustration: "'THERE, NOW--LOOK!' SHE ADDED"]
+
+"That's all right, Tilly, and I think I know what you mean," laughed
+Genevieve; "but I wouldn't advise you to give that sentence to Miss Hart
+as your best example of logic."
+
+"Well, I was talking about Texas," retorted Tilly, saucily, "and there
+isn't anything logical about Texas, that I can see. There, now--look!"
+she added, as they reached the street. "Just tell me if there's anything
+logical in that scene!" she finished, with a wave of her hand toward the
+passing throng.
+
+Genevieve laughed, but her eyes, too, widened a little as she stepped
+one side with the others, for a moment, to watch the curious
+conglomeration of humanity and vehicles before them.
+
+In the street a luxurious limousine was tooting for a ramshackle prairie
+schooner to turn to one side. Behind the automobile plodded a forlorn
+mule dragging a wagon-load of empty boxes. Behind that came an army
+ambulance followed by an electric truck. A handsome soldier on a restive
+bay mare came next, and behind him a huge touring car with a pompous
+black chauffeur. On either side of the touring car rode a grinning boy
+on a mustang, plainly to the discomfort of the pompous negro and the
+delight of two pretty girls in white who were in the low phaeton that
+followed. A bicycle bell jangled sharply for a swarthy Mexican in a tall
+peaked hat to get out of the way, and farther down the street two
+solid-looking men in business suits were waiting for a pretty Mexican
+woman with a rebosa-draped head to precede them into a car. Behind them
+a huge negro woman wearing a red bandana about her head, waited her
+turn. And still behind her a severe-faced young woman in a tailored suit
+was drawing her skirts away from two almost naked pickaninnies.
+
+"Well, no; perhaps it isn't really logical," laughed Genevieve. "But
+it's awfully interesting!"
+
+"I chose one of the older hotels," said Mr. Hartley, a little later, as
+he piloted his party through the doorway of a fine old building.
+
+"You couldn't have chosen a lovelier one, I'm sure, Father," declared
+Genevieve, as she looked about her with shining eyes.
+
+Genevieve was even more convinced of this when, just before dinner, in
+response to a summons from Tilly's voice she stepped out on to the
+little balcony leading from her room. The balcony overlooked an inner
+court, and was hung with riotous moon-vines. Down in the court a silvery
+fountain played among palms and banana trees. Here and there a cactus
+plant thrust spiny arms into the air. Somewhere else queen's wreath and
+devil's ivy made a tiny bower of loveliness. While everywhere were
+electric lights and roses, matching one against the other their
+brilliant hues.
+
+"Genevieve, I--I think I'm going to c-cry," wailed Tilly's sobbing
+voice from the adjoining balcony.
+
+"Cry!--when it's all so lovely!" exclaimed Genevieve.
+
+Tilly nodded.
+
+"Yes. That's why I want to," she quavered. "Honestly, Genevieve, if I
+stay here long I shall be writing poetry like Quentina--I know I shall!"
+
+"If you do, just let me read it, that's all," retorted Genevieve,
+saucily. "Where's Cordelia?"
+
+"Off somewhere with Elsie and Bertha. She got dressed early--but I
+sha'n't get dressed at all if I don't go about it."
+
+At that moment there was the sound of a scream, then the patter of
+running feet in the court below.
+
+"Why, there they are now," cried Genevieve, leaning over the railing.
+"Girls, girls!" she called, regardless of others in the court. "Look up
+here! What's the matter?"
+
+The girls stopped, and looked up. Cordelia, only, cast an apprehensive
+glance over her shoulder.
+
+"It's an alligator in the fountain in the other court," explained Elsie.
+"Bertha said she heard there was one there, and so we went to see--and
+we found out."
+
+"I should say we did," shuddered Cordelia, still with her head turned
+backward. "I sha'n't sleep a wink to-night--I know I sha'n't!"
+
+"An alligator--really?" cried Tilly. "Then I'm going to hurry and get
+ready so I can see him before dinner," she finished, as she whisked into
+her room.
+
+Dinner that night, in the brilliantly lighted, flower-decked dining-room
+was an experience never to be forgotten by the girls.
+
+"I didn't suppose there were such bea-_u_-tiful dresses in the world,"
+sighed Elsie, looking about her.
+
+Mr. Hartley smiled.
+
+"I reckon you'd think so, Miss Elsie," he said, "if you could see the
+place when it's in full swing. It's too early yet for the real tourist
+season, I imagine. Anyhow, there aren't so many people here as I've
+always seen before."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't ask it to be any nicer, anyway," declared Bertha; and
+the rest certainly agreed with her.
+
+Bright and early the next morning the Happy Hexagons and Mr. Hartley
+started out sight-seeing. Mrs. Kennedy was too tired to go, she said.
+
+"I'll let business slip for an hour or two," Mr. Hartley remarked as
+they left the hotel; "at all events, until I get you young people
+started."
+
+"Hm-m; you mean, to--the Alamo?" hinted Genevieve, with merry eyes.
+
+"Sure, dearie! The Alamo it shall be," smiled her father. "Then
+to-morrow I'll take you to Fort Sam Houston where there are _live_
+soldiers."
+
+"Oh, is there an army post here, truly?" cried Tilly.
+
+"Only the largest in the country," answered the Texan, proudly.
+
+"Really? Oh, how splendid! I just love soldiers!"
+
+"Really?" mimicked Mr. Hartley, mischievously. "They'll be pleased to
+know it, I'm sure, Miss Tilly."
+
+The others laughed. Tilly blushed and shrugged her shoulders; but she
+asked no more questions about Fort Sam Houston for at least five
+minutes.
+
+"Now where's the place--the really, truly place?" demanded Cordelia, in
+an awed voice, when the party had reached the Alamo Plaza.
+
+"The place--the real place, Miss Cordelia," replied Mr. Hartley, "where
+the fight occurred, was in a court over there; and the walls were pulled
+down years ago. But this little chapel was part of it, and this is what
+everybody always looks at and talks about. The relics are inside. We'll
+go in and see them, if you like."
+
+"If we like!" cried Genevieve, fervently. "Just as if we didn't want to
+see everything--every single thing there is to see!" she finished, as
+her father led the way into the dim interior under the watchful eyes of
+the caretaker.
+
+Even Tilly, for a moment, was silenced in the hush and somberness of
+the place. Genevieve stole to her father's side. Mr. Hartley, with bared
+head, was wearing a look of grave reverence.
+
+"You appreciate it, don't you, Father?" she said softly. "You have
+always talked such a lot about it."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I don't see how any one can help appreciating it," he rejoined, after a
+moment, looking up at the narrow, iron-barred windows. "Why, Genevieve,
+this is our Bunker Hill, you know."
+
+"I know," she said soberly. "How many was it? I've forgotten."
+
+"About one hundred and eighty on the inside--here; and all the way from
+two to six thousand on the outside--accounts differ. But it was
+thousands, anyway, against one hundred and eighty--and it lasted ten
+days or more."
+
+Genevieve shuddered.
+
+"And they all--died?"
+
+"Every one--of the soldiers. There was a woman and a young child and a
+negro servant left to tell the tale."
+
+"That's what it means on the monument, isn't it?" murmured Genevieve.
+"'Thermopylæ had its messenger of defeat: the Alamo had none.'"
+
+"Yes," said her father. "I've always wondered what Davy Crockett would
+have said to that. You know he was here."
+
+"Wasn't he the one who said, 'Be sure you are right, then go ahead'?"
+
+"Yes. And he went ahead--straight to his death, here."
+
+Genevieve's eyes brimmed with tears.
+
+"Oh, it does make one want to be good and brave and true, doesn't it,
+Father?"
+
+"I reckon it ought to, little girl," he smiled gently.
+
+"It does," breathed Genevieve. A moment later she crossed to Tilly's
+side.
+
+Tilly welcomed her with subdued joyousness.
+
+"Genevieve, please, _please_ mayn't we get out of this?" she begged.
+"Honestly, I feel as if I were besieged myself in this horrid tomb-like
+place. And--and I like live soldiers so much better!"
+
+Genevieve gave her a reproachful glance, but in a moment she suggested
+that perhaps they had better go.
+
+"Oh, but that was lovely," she sighed, as they came out into the bright
+sunshine. "The caretaker told me they call it the 'Cradle of Liberty,'
+here; and I don't wonder."
+
+Tilly uptilted her chin--already the sunshine had brought back her usual
+gayety of spirits.
+
+"Dear me! what a lot of cradles Liberty must have had! You know Faneuil
+Hall in Boston is _one_. Only think how far the poor thing must have
+traveled between naps if she tried to sleep in all her cradles!"
+
+Even Genevieve laughed--but she sighed reproachfully, too.
+
+"Oh, Tilly, how you can turn poetry into prose--sometimes!" Then she
+added wistfully: "How I wish I could see this Plaza on San Jacinto Day!"
+
+"What is that?" demanded Tilly.
+
+"The twenty-third of April. They have the Battle of the Flowers in the
+Plaza here, in front of the Alamo. I've always wanted to see that."
+
+"Hm-m; well, I might not mind that kind of a battle myself," laughed
+Tilly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TILLY CROSSES BRIDGES
+
+
+In the afternoon the young people again started out to explore the town.
+This time Mr. Hartley was not with them.
+
+"But are you quite sure you won't get lost?" Mrs. Kennedy demurred
+anxiously, as Genevieve was putting on her hat.
+
+"No, ma'am," returned Genevieve, with calm truthfulness and a merry
+smile. "But, dearie, it's daylight and there are six of us. What if we
+do get lost? We've got tongues in our heads, and we know the name of our
+hotel and of the street it's on."
+
+"Very well," sighed Mrs. Kennedy. Then, with sudden spirit she added:
+"Dear me, Genevieve! I shall be glad if ever we get back to Sunbridge
+and I have you to myself all quiet again. I'm afraid you'll never, never
+settle down to just plain living after these irresponsible weeks of one
+long playday."
+
+It was Genevieve's turn now to sigh.
+
+"I know, Aunt Julia. It will be hard, won't it?" she admitted. Then,
+with a quick change of manner, she observed airily: "As if anything
+could be nicer than learning to cook, and keeping my stockings mended!
+Why, Aunt Julia!" The next moment, with a breezy kiss, she was gone.
+
+It was a delightful afternoon that the girls spent rambling about the
+curiously interesting old town, which--Cordelia impressively informed
+them--was the third oldest in the United States. They tried to see it
+all, but they did not succeed in this, of course. They did stand in
+delighted wonder before the San Fernando Cathedral with its square,
+cross-tipped towers; and they did wander for an entrancing hour in the
+old Mexican Quarter, with its picturesque houses and people, its
+fascinating chili and tamale stands, and its narrow, twisting streets,
+which Genevieve declared were almost as bad as Boston.
+
+"Boston!" bridled Tilly, instantly. "Why, Boston's tiniest, crookedest
+streets are great wide boulevards compared to these! Besides, when we
+are in Boston we don't have to cross a river every time we turn around."
+
+"I don't know about that," retorted Genevieve, warmly. "Just try to go
+over to Cambridge or Charlestown and see. I'm sure I think Boston's got
+lots of bridges."
+
+Tilly sniffed her disdain.
+
+"Pooh! You're _leaving_ Boston when you cross those bridges, Genevieve
+Hartley, and you know it. But just look at them here! We haven't
+stirred once out of San Antonio, and I think I've crossed five bridges
+in the last seven minutes. I can imagine those old fellows who built
+this town getting tired of building houses, and saying: 'And now let's
+stop and build a bridge for the fun of it!'"
+
+Genevieve laughed heartily.
+
+"You've won, Tilly. I'll give up," she chuckled. "I hadn't meant to tell
+you; but there _are_ thirteen miles of river twisting in and out through
+the city, and--there _are_ seventeen bridges."
+
+"Where did you find out all that?" demanded Tilly, suspiciously.
+
+"In a guidebook that I saw last night at the hotel. It's the same one, I
+reckon, that Cordelia's been giving all her information from," said
+Genevieve.
+
+"Hm-m;" commented Tilly. "Now I _know_ I've crossed five bridges in the
+last seven minutes!"
+
+"Well, I wouldn't care if there were forty miles of river and fifty
+bridges," retorted Genevieve, "if they'd all have such lovely green
+banks and dear little boats!"
+
+"Nor I," agreed two or three emphatic voices.
+
+Everywhere and at every turn the girls found something of interest,
+something to marvel at. When tired of walking they boarded a car; and
+when tired of riding, they got off and walked.
+
+"Well, anyhow, folks seem to have a choice of houses to live in,"
+observed Tilly, her eyes on a quaint little white bungalow surrounded by
+heuisach and mesquite trees.
+
+"Yes, they do," laughed Genevieve--Genevieve was looking at the next one
+to it: an old-fashioned colonial mansion set far back from the street,
+with a huge pecan tree standing guard on each side.
+
+"Well, seems to me just now a hotel would look the nicest of anything,"
+moaned Cordelia, wearily. "Girls, I just can't go another step--unless
+it's toward home," she finished despairingly.
+
+"Me, too," declared Tilly. "I'm just plum locoed, I'm that tired! Say we
+hit the trail for the hotel right now. Come on; I'm ready!"
+
+Genevieve laughed, but she eyed Tilly a little curiously.
+
+"What do you suppose Sunbridge will say to your new expressions à la the
+wild and woolly West?" she queried.
+
+"Just exactly what they said to you, Miss Genevieve," bantered Tilly.
+
+"Oh, but Genevieve's were _natural_," cut in Bertha, with meaning
+emphasis.
+
+"All the more reason why mine should be more interesting, then,"
+retorted Tilly, imperturbably. And with a laugh Bertha and Genevieve
+gave it up, as with tired but happy faces, they set out for the hotel.
+
+At breakfast the next morning, Mr. Hartley announced cheerily:
+
+"We'll do the parks, to-day, and the Hot Sulphur Well and Hotel; and
+finish with dress parade at Fort Sam Houston."
+
+"But--what about your business?" asked Genevieve.
+
+Mr. Hartley laughed.
+
+"Oh, that's all--done," he answered; then, as the puzzled questioning
+still remained in her eyes, he added, a little shamefacedly: "You see,
+there wasn't much business, to tell the truth, dearie. I reckon my real
+business was to show off the state of Texas to our young Easterners
+here."
+
+"You darling!" cried Genevieve, rapturously, while all the rest of the
+Happy Hexagons stumbled and stuttered over their vain attempts at
+thanking him.
+
+"I declare! I wish we could give him our Texas yell, right here,"
+chuckled Tilly, turning longing eyes about the dining-room. "We would
+end with 'Mr. Hartley,' of course."
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, in open horror.
+
+"What is the Hot Sulphur Well, Mr. Hartley, please?" asked Elsie, who
+had not heard Tilly's remark.
+
+"You'll have to ask some one who's been cured by it," laughed the man.
+"They say there are plenty that have been."
+
+"Do you suppose it looks any like an oil well?" ventured Cordelia.
+
+"Sounds a bit hot, seems to me, for to-day," giggled Tilly. "I think I
+shall like the parks better."
+
+"All right; we'll let you do the parks--_all_ of them," cooed Genevieve,
+wickedly. "There are only twenty-one, you know, my dear."
+
+"Genevieve Hartley, if you remember your lessons next year one half as
+well as you have that abominable guidebook, you'll be at the head of
+your class!" remarked Tilly, severely, as the others rose from the
+table, with a laugh.
+
+It was another long, happy day. The parks, as Tilly had predicted,
+proved to be cooler than the Hot Sulphur Well, and they certainly were
+more enjoyable, even though only two of Genevieve's announced twenty-one
+were visited--Brackenridge Park, and San Pedro Park. It was the former
+that Cordelia enjoyed the most, perhaps, for it was there that she saw
+her much-longed-for buffalo. Tired, but still enthusiastic, they reached
+the hotel in time to dress for the visit to Fort Sam Houston, upon which
+Mrs. Kennedy was to accompany them.
+
+Getting dressed was, however, a grand flurry of excitement, for time and
+space were limited; and there was not one of the Happy Hexagons who did
+not feel that on this occasion, at least, every curl and ribbon and
+shoe-tie must display a neatness that was military in its precision.
+
+Perhaps only Elsie of all the girls wept over the matter. Her eyes were
+red when she knocked at Genevieve's door.
+
+"Why, Elsie!"
+
+"Genevieve, I've come to say--I can't go," choked Elsie.
+
+"Why, Elsie, are you sick?"
+
+"Oh, no; it's--clothes. Genevieve, I simply haven't anything to wear."
+
+"Nonsense, dear, of course you have! We don't have to dress much for
+this thing. Where's your white linen or your tan or your blue?"
+
+"The white is too soiled, and the other two have worn places that show."
+
+"But there's your chambray--that isn't worn."
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"But I can't--that, truly, Genevieve. It's got worse and worse every
+day, until now _anybody_ can tell Cora and Clara apart!"
+
+Genevieve choked back a laugh. She was frowning prodigiously when Elsie
+looked up.
+
+"I'll tell you, Elsie, I've got just the thing," she cried. "Wear my
+white linen--it's perfectly fresh, and 'twill fit you, I'm sure."
+
+Elsie's face turned scarlet.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve! I wouldn't--I couldn't! I'd never, never do such an
+awful thing," she gasped. "Why, what _would_ Aunt Kate say?--my wearing
+your clothes like that! Oh, I never thought of your taking it that way!
+Never mind--I'll fix something," she choked, as she turned and fled down
+the hall, leaving a distressed and almost an angry Genevieve behind her.
+
+For some minutes Genevieve busied herself with her own toilet, jerking
+hooks and ribbons into place with unnecessary force; then she turned
+despairingly to Mrs. Kennedy, whose room she was sharing.
+
+"Aunt Julia, what's the use of having anything to give, if folks won't
+take it when you give it?" she demanded, irritably.
+
+"Not having followed your thoughts for the last five minutes, my dear, I
+fear I'm unable to give you a very helpful answer," smiled Mrs. Kennedy,
+serenely. And Genevieve, remembering Elsie's shamed, red face, decided
+suddenly that Elsie's secret was not hers to tell.
+
+Half an hour later Mr. Hartley marshaled his party for the start.
+
+"You're a brave sight," he declared, smiling into the bright faces about
+him. "You're a mighty brave sight; and I'll leave it to anybody if even
+the boys in line to-day will make a finer show!"
+
+The Happy Hexagons laughed and blushed and courtesied prettily; and only
+Genevieve knew that the smile on Elsie's face was a little forced--Elsie
+was wearing the green chambray.
+
+There was an awed "Oh-h!" of wonder and admiration when Mr. Hartley's
+party came in sight of the great parade grounds at Fort Sam Houston.
+There was a still deeper, longer, louder "Oh-h-h!" when, sitting at one
+end of the grounds, the girls heard the first stirring notes of the
+band.
+
+To the Hexagon Club it was a most wonderful sight--those long lines of
+men moving with such perfect precision. Fresh from the Alamo as the
+girls were, with the story of that dreadful slaughter in their ears--to
+them it almost seemed that there before them marched the brave men who
+years ago had given up their lives so heroically in the little chapel.
+
+It was Tilly who broke the silence.
+
+"Oh, I do just love soldiers," she cried, with a hurried glance sideways
+to make sure that Mr. Hartley in the next carriage could not hear her.
+"Don't you, Genevieve?" But Genevieve was too absorbed to answer.
+
+A little later the band played "The Star-spangled Banner," and there
+sounded the signal gun for the lowering of the colors. In the glorious
+excitement of all this, even Tilly herself forgot to talk.
+
+After dress parade a certain Major Drew, who knew Mr. Hartley, came up
+and was duly presented to the ladies. He in turn presented the officer
+of the day, who looked, to the Happy Hexagons, very handsome and
+imposing in sword and spurs. After this, at Major Drew's invitation,
+there was a visit to the officers' quarters, and on the Major's broad
+gallery there was a cooling refreshment of lemonade and root beer before
+the drive back to the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"BERTHA'S ACCIDENT"
+
+
+It had been decided that the party would go to New Orleans from San
+Antonio, and then from there by boat to New York.
+
+"It'll make a change from car-riding, and a very pleasant one, I'm
+thinking," Mr. Hartley had said; and the others had enthusiastically
+agreed with him.
+
+It was on the five-hundred-and-seventy-two mile journey from San Antonio
+to New Orleans that something happened. In the Chronicles of the Hexagon
+Club it fell to Genevieve to tell the story; and this is what she wrote:
+
+"It seems so strange to me that we should have traveled so many
+thousands of miles on the railroad without anything happening; and then,
+just on the last five hundred (we are going to take the boat at New
+Orleans)--to have it happen.
+
+"We have had all sorts of amusing experiences, of course, losing trains,
+and missing connections; but nothing like this. Even when we had to take
+that little bumpy accommodation for a few hours, and it was so
+accommodating it stopped every few minutes 'to water the horses,' as
+dear Tilly said, nothing happened--though, to be sure, we almost did get
+left that time we all (except Aunt Julia) got off and went to pick
+flowers while our train waited for a freight to go by. But we didn't get
+quite left, and we did catch it. (Dear Tilly says we could have caught
+it, anyway, even if it had started, and that we shouldn't have had to
+walk very fast, at that! Tilly does make heaps of fun of all our trains
+except the fast ones on the main lines. And I don't know as I wonder,
+only I'd never tell her that, of course--that is, I _wouldn't_ have told
+her before, perhaps.)
+
+"Well, where was I? Oh, I know--on the sidetrack. (I had to laugh here,
+for it occurred to me that that was just where I was in the story--on a
+sidetrack! I'm not telling what I started out to tell at all. It's lucky
+we can each take all the room we want, though, in these Chronicles.)
+
+"Well, I'll tell it now, really, though I'm still so shaky and excited
+my hand trembles awfully. It was in the night, a little past twelve
+o'clock that it happened. I was lying in my berth above Elsie's, and was
+wide-awake. I had been thinking about Father. He has been such a dear
+all the way. I was thinking what a big, big dear he was, when IT
+happened.
+
+"Yes, I put IT in capitals on purpose, and I reckon you would, if
+suddenly the car you were riding in began to sway horribly and bump up
+and down, and then stop right off short with a bang that flung you into
+the middle of the aisle! And that's what ours did.
+
+"For a minute, of course, I was too dazed to know what had happened. But
+the next moment I heard a scared voice wail right in my ear:
+
+"'Girls, it's an accident--I know it's an accident! I told you we should
+have an accident--and to think I took off my shoes to-night for the very
+first time!'
+
+"I knew then. It was Bertha, and it was an accident. And, do you know?
+I'm ashamed to tell it, but the first thing I did right there and then
+was to laugh--it seemed so funny about Bertha's shoes, and to hear her
+say her usual 'I told you so!' But the next minute I began to realize
+what it all really meant, and I didn't laugh any more.
+
+"All around me, by that time, were frightened cries and shouts, and I
+was so worried for Father and all the rest. I struggled, and tried to
+get up; and then I heard Father's voice call: 'Genevieve, Genevieve,
+where are you? Are you all right?' Oh, nobody will ever know how good
+that dear voice sounded to me!
+
+"We called for Aunt Julia, then, and for the girls; but it was ever so
+long before we could find them. We weren't all together, anyway, and the
+crash had separated us more than ever. Besides, everybody everywhere
+all over the car was crying out by that time, and trying to find folks,
+all in the dark.
+
+"We found Aunt Julia. She was almost under the berth near me; but she
+was so faint and dazed she could not answer when we first called. I was
+all right, and so were Cordelia and Bertha, only Bertha bumped her head
+pretty hard afterwards, looking for her shoes. Elsie Martin and Alma
+Lane were a little bruised and bumped, too; but they declared they could
+move all their legs and arms.
+
+"We hadn't any of us found Tilly up to that time; but when Elsie said
+that (about being able to move all her legs and arms), I heard a little
+faint voice say 'You talk as if you were a centipede, Elsie Martin!'
+
+"'Tilly!' I cried then. 'Where are you?' The others called, too, until
+we were all shouting frantically for Tilly. We knew it must be Tilly for
+nobody but Tilly Mack could have made that speech!
+
+"At last we found her. She was wedged in under a broken seat almost at
+our feet. It was at the forward end of the car--the only part that
+seemed to be really smashed. She could not crawl out, and we could not
+pull her out. She gave a moaning little cry when Father tried to.
+
+"'I guess--some of my legs and arms don't go,' she called out to us
+with a little sob in her voice.
+
+"We were crazy then, of course--all of us; and we all talked at once,
+and tried to find out just where she was hurt. The trainmen had come by
+this time with lanterns, and were helping every one out of the car. Then
+they came to us and Tilly.
+
+"And we were so proud of Tilly--she was so brave and cheery! I never
+found out before what her nonsense was for, but I did find it out then.
+It was the only thing that kept us all from going just wild. She said
+such queer little things when they were trying to get her out, and she
+told them if there was any one hurt worse than she to get them out
+first. She told Father that she knew now just how Reddy felt when his
+broncho went see-saw up in the air, because that was what her berth did.
+
+"Well, they got the poor dear out at last, and a doctor from the rear
+car examined her at once. Her left arm was broken, and she had two or
+three painful bruises. Of course that was bad--but not anywhere near so
+bad as it might have been, and we were all so relieved. The doctor did
+what he could for her, then we all made ourselves as comfortable as
+possible while we waited for the relief train.
+
+"We found out then about the wreck, and the chief thing we could find
+out anywhere was what a 'fortunate' wreck it was! The engine and six
+cars went off the track on a curve. Just ahead was a steep bank with a
+river below it, and of course it _was_ fortunate that we did not go down
+that. No one was killed, and only a few much injured. The car ahead and
+ours were the only ones that were smashed any. Yes, I suppose it was a
+'fortunate wreck'--but I never want to see an unfortunate one. Certainly
+we all felt pretty thankful that we had come out of it as well as we
+did.
+
+"The relief train came at last, and took us to the next city, and to-day
+we are started on our journey once again. We expect to reach New Orleans
+to-night, and take the boat for New York Saturday. We all feel a little
+stiff and sore, but of course dear Tilly feels the worst. But she tries
+to be just as bright and smiling as ever. She looks pretty white,
+though, and what the storybooks call 'wan,' I reckon. She says, anyhow,
+she wishes she _were_ a centipede--in _arms_--because perhaps then she
+wouldn't miss her left one so much, if she had plenty more of them.
+There seems to be such a lot of things she wants her left arm to do. The
+doctor says it wasn't a _bad_ break--as if any break could be _good_!
+
+"And here endeth my record of 'Bertha's accident'--as Tilly insists upon
+calling it, until she's made Bertha almost ready to cry over it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Owing to the delay of the accident, Mr. Hartley and his party had only
+one day in New Orleans before the boat sailed; but they made the most
+of that, for they wanted to see what they could of the quaint,
+picturesque city.
+
+"We'll take carriages, dearie. We won't walk anywhere," said Mr. Hartley
+to Genevieve that morning. "In the first place, Mrs. Kennedy and Miss
+Tilly couldn't, and the rest of us don't want to. We can see more, too,
+in the short space of time we have."
+
+So in carriages, bright and early Friday morning, the party started out
+to "do" New Orleans, as Genevieve termed it. Leaving the "American
+portion," where were situated their hotel and most of the other big
+hotels and business houses of American type, they trailed happily along
+through Prytania Street and St. Charles Avenue to the beautiful "Garden
+District" which they had been warned not to miss. They found, indeed,
+much to delight them in the stately, palatial homes set in the midst of
+exquisitely kept lawns and wonderful groves of magnolia and oak. Quite
+as interesting to them all, however, was the old French or Latin Quarter
+below Canal Street, where were the Creole homes and business houses.
+Here they ate their luncheon, too, in one of the curious French
+restaurants, famous the world over for its delicious dishes.
+
+With the disappearance of the last mouthful on her plate, Tilly drew a
+long breath.
+
+"I've always heard Creoles were awfully interesting," she sighed. "Do
+you know--I don't think I'd mind much being a Creole myself!"
+
+"You look so much like one, too," laughed Genevieve, affectionately,
+patting the soft, fluffy red hair above the piquant, freckled little
+face.
+
+At five o'clock that afternoon a tired but happy party reached the hotel
+in time to rest and dress for dinner.
+
+"Well," sighed Genevieve, "I'd have liked a week here, but a day has
+been pretty good. We've seen enough 'Quarters' to make a 'whole,' and
+the Cathedral, and dozens of other churches, and we've driven along
+those lovely lakes with the unpronounceable names; and now I'm ready for
+dinner."
+
+"And we saw a statue--the Margaret Statue," cut in Cordelia, anxiously.
+"You know it's the _first_ statue ever erected to a woman's memory in
+the United States. We wouldn't want to forget that!"
+
+"Well, I should like to," retorted Genevieve, perversely. "It's only so
+much the worse for the United States--that it wasn't done before!"
+
+"I think Genevieve is going to be a suffragette," observed Tilly,
+cheerfully, as they trooped into the hotel together.
+
+It was from New Orleans that Cordelia Wilson wrote a letter to Mr.
+William Hodges. She had decided that it would be easier to write her bad
+news than to tell it. Then, too, she disliked to keep the old man any
+longer in suspense. She made her letter as comforting as she could.
+
+          "MR. WILLIAM HODGES, SIR:--" she wrote. "I am very
+          sorry to have to tell you that I have looked, but
+          cannot find your oil well anywhere. I did find a
+          man who had heard about it, but he said there
+          wasn't any well at all like what the Boston man
+          told you there was. He said it was a bad swindle
+          and he knew many others who had lost their money,
+          too, which I thought would please you. O dear, no,
+          I don't mean that, of course. I only mean that you
+          might like to know that others besides you hadn't
+          known any more than to put money in it, too. (That
+          doesn't sound quite right yet, but perhaps you
+          know what I mean.)
+
+          "I hope you won't feel too bad about it, Mr.
+          Hodges. I saw some oil wells when we came through
+          Beaumont, and I am quite sure you would not like
+          them at all. They are not one bit like Bertha's
+          aunt's well on her farm, with the bucket. In fact,
+          they don't look like wells at all, and I never
+          should have known what they were if Mr. Hartley
+          had not told me. They are tall towers _standing
+          up_ out of the ground instead of stone holes sunk
+          down in the ground. (It is just as if you should
+          call the cupola on your house your cellar--and you
+          know how queer that would be!) I saw a lot of
+          them--oil wells, not cupolas, I mean--and they
+          looked more like a whole lot of little Eiffel
+          Towers than anything else I can think of. (If you
+          will get your grandson, Tony, to show you the
+          Eiffel Tower in his geography, you will see what I
+          mean.) Mr. Hartley says they _do_ bore for
+          them--wells, I mean, not Eiffel Towers--and so I
+          suppose they do go down before they go up.
+
+          "I saw the wells on the way between San Antonio
+          and New Orleans. One was on fire. (Just think of a
+          well being on fire!) Of course we were riding
+          through a most wonderful country, anyway. We saw a
+          great many things growing besides oil wells, too,
+          as you must know--rice, and cotton, and tobacco,
+          and sugar cane, and onions, and quantities of
+          other things. I picked some cotton bolls. (I spelt
+          that right. This kind isn't b-a-ll.) I am sending
+          you a few in a little box. It takes 75,000 of them
+          to make one bale of cotton, so I'm afraid you
+          couldn't make even a handkerchief out of these.
+
+          "I am so sorry about the oil well, but I did the
+          best that I could to find it.
+
+                             "Respectfully yours,
+                                       "CORDELIA WILSON."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE GOLDEN HOURS
+
+
+Long before ten o'clock Saturday morning--the hour for sailing--Mr.
+Hartley and his party were on board the big steamship which was to take
+them to New York. Here, again, new sensations and new experiences
+awaited the Happy Hexagons, not one of whom had ever been on so large a
+boat.
+
+"I declare, I do just feel as if I was going abroad," breathed Cordelia,
+in an awestruck voice, as she crossed the gangplank.
+
+"Well, I'm sure we _are_, almost," exulted Genevieve. "We're going to
+have a hundred hours of it. You know that little pamphlet that told
+about it called it 'a hundred golden hours at sea.' Oh, Cordelia, only
+think--one hundred golden hours!"
+
+"You'll think it's a thousand, if you happen to be seasick," groaned
+Tilly. (Tilly was looking rather white to-day.) "And they won't be
+golden ones, either--they'll be _lead_ ones. I know because I've been to
+Portland when it's rough."
+
+"Well, we aren't going to be seasick," retorted Genevieve, with
+conviction. "We're just going to have the best time ever. See if we
+don't!"
+
+"Now, dearie," said Mr. Hartley, hurrying up at that moment, "I engaged
+one of the suites for Mrs. Kennedy, and I think Miss Tilly had better be
+with her. The bed will be much more comfortable for her poor arm than a
+berth would be, and Mrs. Kennedy can look after her better, too, in that
+way. The little parlor of the suite will give us all a cozy place to
+meet together. There are two berths there which they turn into a lounge
+in the daytime. I thought perhaps you and Miss Cordelia could sleep
+there. Then I have staterooms for the rest of us--I engaged them all a
+week ago, of course. Now if you'll come with me I reckon we can set up
+housekeeping right away," he finished with a smile.
+
+"Setting up housekeeping" proved to be an absorbing task, indeed. It
+included not only bestowing their belongings in the chosen places, but
+interviewing purser and stewards in regard to rugs, steamer chairs, and
+other delightfully exciting matters. Then there was the joy of exploring
+the great ship that was to be their home for so many days. The luxurious
+Ladies' Parlor, the Library with its alluring books and magazines, the
+Dining Saloon with its prettily-laid tables and its revolving chairs
+(like piano stools, Tilly said), the decks with their long, airy
+promenades, all came in for delighted exclamations of satisfaction which
+increased to a chorus of oh's and ah's when the trip really began, and
+the stately ship was wending its way down the Great River to the Gulf of
+Mexico.
+
+First there was to be seen the city itself, nestled beyond its barricade
+of levees.
+
+"Dear me!" shuddered Cordelia. "I don't believe I'd have slept a wink
+last night if I'd realized how _much_ below the river we were. Only
+fancy if one of those levees had sprung a leak!"
+
+"Why, they'd have sent for the plumber, of course," observed Tilly,
+gravely.
+
+"Of course! Still--they don't look very leaky, to me," laughed
+Genevieve.
+
+"Was it here, or somewhere else, that a man (or was it a child?) put his
+arm (or was it a finger?) in a little hole in the wall and stopped the
+leak, and so saved the town?" mused Bertha aloud dreamily.
+
+"Of course it was," answered Tilly with grave emphasis; and not until
+the others laughed did Bertha wake up enough to turn her back with a
+shrug.
+
+"Well, it was somewhere, anyhow," she pouted.
+
+"As if we could doubt that--after what you said," murmured Tilly.
+
+"But they have had floods here, haven't they?" questioned Alma Lane.
+
+Genevieve gave a sudden laugh. At the others' surprised look she
+explained:
+
+"Oh, I'm not laughing at the real floods, the _water_ floods they've
+had, of course. It's just that I happened to think of something I read
+some time ago. They had one flood here of--molasses."
+
+"Mo--lass--es!" chorused several voices.
+
+"Yes. A big tank that the city used to have for a reservoir had been
+bought by a sugar company and turned into a storage for molasses. Well,
+it burst one day, and a little matter of a million gallons of molasses
+went exploring through the streets. They say some poor mortals had
+actually to wade to dry land."
+
+"Genevieve! what a story," cried Elsie.
+
+"But it's true," declared Genevieve. "A whole half-mile square of the
+city was flooded, honestly. At least, the newspapers said it was."
+
+"How the pickaninnies must have gloried in it," giggled Tilly, "--if
+they liked 'bread and perlashes' as well as I used to. Only think of
+having such a _big_ saucerful to dip your bread into!"
+
+"Tilly!" groaned Genevieve.
+
+They were at Port Chalmette, now. The Crescent City lay behind them, and
+beyond lay the shining river-roadway, with its fertile,
+highly-cultivated plantations bordering each side, green and beautiful.
+
+"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!" cried Elsie. "And I'm not sick one
+bit."
+
+"Naturally not--yet," laughed Tilly. "But you just wait. We don't sail
+the Mississippi all the way to New York, you know."
+
+"I wish we did," said Genevieve, her eyes dreamily following the shore
+line. "But we're only on it for a hundred miles."
+
+"I don't," disagreed Elsie. "I want to see the Gulf Stream. They say
+it's a deep indigo blue, and that you can see it plainly. I think a blue
+river in a green sea must be lovely--like a blue ribbon trailing down a
+light green gown, you know."
+
+"Well, I want to see the real ocean, 'way out--out. I want to see
+nothing but water, water everywhere," declared Alma Lane.
+
+"'And not a drop to drink,'" quoted Tilly. "Well, young lady, you may
+see the time when you'd give your eyes for a bit of land--and just any
+old land would do, too, so long as it _stayed put_!"
+
+"What does it feel like to be seasick?" asked Cordelia, interestedly.
+
+"It feels as if the bottom had dropped out of everything, and you didn't
+much care, only you wished you'd gone with it," laughed Tilly.
+
+"Who was it?--wasn't it Mark Twain who said that the first half-hour you
+were awfully afraid you would die, and the next you were awfully afraid
+you wouldn't?" questioned Elsie.
+
+"I don't know; but whoever said it knew what he was talking about,"
+declared Tilly. "You just wait!"
+
+"We're waiting," murmured Genevieve, demurely.
+
+"You young ladies don't want to forget your exercise," said Mr. Hartley
+smilingly, coming up at that moment with Mrs. Kennedy. "We've just been
+five times around the deck."
+
+"It's eleven laps to the mile," supplemented Mrs. Kennedy with a smile.
+
+"What's a lap?" asked Cordelia.
+
+"Sounds like a kitten on a wager with a saucer of milk," laughed Tilly,
+frowning a little as she tried to adjust her sling more comfortably.
+
+"Well, young ladies, we'll show you just what a lap is, if you'll come
+with us," promised Mr. Hartley; and with alacrity the girls expressed
+themselves as being quite ready to be shown.
+
+On and on, mile after mile, down the great river swept the great ship
+until Forts Jackson and St. Philip were reached and left behind; then on
+and on for other miles to the narrow South Pass where on either side the
+Eads Jetties called forth exclamations of wonder.
+
+"Well, you'd better 'ah' and 'um,'" laughed Genevieve. "They happen to
+be one of the greatest engineering feats in the world; that's all."
+
+"How do you know that?" demanded Bertha.
+
+"Don't worry her," cut in Tilly, with mock sympathy. "Poor thing! it's
+only a case of another guidebook, of course."
+
+"Well, all is, just keep your weather eye open," laughed Genevieve, "for
+when we make the South Pass Lightship, then ho! for the--"
+
+"Broad Atlantic," interposed Tilly.
+
+"Well, not until you've passed through the little matter of the Gulf of
+Mexico," rejoined Genevieve; while a chorus of laughing voices jeered:
+
+"Why, Tilly Mack, where's your geography?"
+
+"Don't know, I'm sure," returned Tilly, imperturbably. "Haven't seen it
+since I studied up Texas," she finished as she turned away.
+
+The first night aboard ship was another experience never to be forgotten
+by the Happy Hexagons. In the parlor of the suite Genevieve and Cordelia
+kept up such an incessant buzz of husky whispering and tittering that
+Mrs. Kennedy came out from the bedroom to remonstrate.
+
+"My dears, you mean to be quiet, I know; but I'm sure you don't realize
+how it sounds from our room. Tilly is nervous and feverish to-night--the
+day has been very exciting for her."
+
+"And she has tried so hard to keep up, and seem as usual, too," cried
+Genevieve, contritely. "Of course we'll keep still! Cordelia, I'm
+ashamed of you," she finished severely. Then, at Cordelia's amazed look
+of shocked distress, she hugged her spasmodically. "As if it wasn't all
+my fault," she chuckled.
+
+In other parts of the boat the rest of the party explored their strange
+quarters to the last corner; then made themselves ready to be "laid on
+the shelf," as Elsie termed going to bed in the narrow berth.
+
+"I shall take off my shoes to-night," announced Bertha with dignity,
+after a long moment of silence. "If anything happens here we'll get into
+the water, of course, and I think shoes would only be a nuisance."
+
+For a moment Elsie did not answer; then, almost hopefully she asked,
+
+"I suppose if anything did happen we'd lose our clothes--even if we
+ourselves were saved, wouldn't we?"
+
+"Why, I--I suppose so."
+
+"Yes, that's what I thought," nodded Elsie, happily. Elsie, at the
+moment, was engaged in taking off a somewhat unevenly faded green
+chambray frock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on the second day of the trip that Cordelia took from her
+suit-case a sheet of paper, worn with much folding and refolding, and
+marked plainly, "Things to do in Texas."
+
+"I suppose I might as well finish this up now," she sighed. "I'm out of
+Texas, and what is done is done; and what is undone can't ever be done,
+now." And carefully she spread the paper out and reached into her bag
+for her pencil.
+
+When she had finished her work, the paper read as follows:
+
+See the blue bonnet--the Texas state flower. Find out if it really is
+shaped like a bonnet. Didn't.
+
+Bring home a piece of prairie grass. Did.
+
+See a real buffalo. Did. (But it was in a park.)
+
+Find Hermit Joe Sanborn's son, John, who ran away to Texas twenty years
+ago. Didn't.
+
+See an Osage orange hedge. Did.
+
+See a broncho bursted (obviously changed over from "busted"). Did.
+
+Find out for Mrs. Miller if cowboys do shoot at sight, and yell always
+without just and due provocation. Did. They do not. Cowboys are good,
+kind gentlemen; but they are noisy, and some rough-looking.
+
+See a mesquite tree. Did.
+
+Inquire if any one has seen Mrs. Snow's daughter, Lizzie, who ran away
+with a Texas man named Higgins. Did. (But could not find any one who
+had.)
+
+Pick a fig. Didn't.
+
+See a rice canal. Did.
+
+Find out what has become of Mrs. Granger's cousin, Lester Goodwin, who
+went to Texas fourteen years ago. Did.
+
+See cotton growing, and pick a cotton boll, called "Texas Roses." Did.
+
+See peanuts growing. Did.
+
+Inquire for James Hunt, brother of Miss Sally Hunt. Did. (But could not
+find him.)
+
+See a real Indian. Did.
+
+Look at oil well for Mr. Hodges, and see if there is any there. Did.
+(But there wasn't any there like the one he wanted.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The paper completed, Cordelia looked at it with troubled eyes.
+
+"It doesn't sound quite right," she thought. "Somehow, the things _I_
+wanted to do are 'most all done, but I didn't find but just one of those
+people, and seems as if I ought to have done better than that. Besides,
+I'm not at all sure Mrs. Granger will be satisfied with what I did find
+for her--a cowboy, so!" And she sighed as she put the paper away.
+
+The trip across the Gulf of Mexico to Dry Tortugas Light was nothing but
+a rest and a joy to everybody. It was still delightful and wonderfully
+interesting all the way around the City of Key West and up by the
+southeastern coast of Florida with its many lights and coral reefs.
+
+Here Genevieve's guidebook came again into prominence.
+
+"The Sand Key Light 'way back there is our most southern possession, and
+only fifty-seven miles from the line of the Tropics," she announced
+glibly one day. "We're coming to the American Shoals Light, the
+Sombrero Light, Alligator Light, Carysfort Light and Fowey Rock Light."
+
+"Mercy! Didn't you sleep _any_ last night?" inquired Tilly,
+sympathetically.
+
+"I suppose you mean you think it must have taken all night to learn all
+that," laughed Genevieve. "But it didn't."
+
+"Maybe you know some more, now," hazarded Tilly.
+
+"Certainly. After we strike Jupiter Light, we veer off into the Atlantic
+out of sight of land."
+
+"I thought lighthouses were put up so you wouldn't 'strike' them,"
+observed Tilly, with smooth politeness; "but then, of course if you do
+strike them, it is quite to be expected that you veer off into the
+Atlantic, and never see land again. Besides, I found all those
+lighthouses and things on a paper last night, but it was the southern
+trip that did all that. Maybe we, going north, don't do the same things
+at all. I sha'n't swallow all you say, anyhow, till I know for sure."
+
+"Children, stop your quarreling," commanded Bertha Brown, sternly. "Now
+I've been learning something worth while. _I_ know the saloon deck from
+the promenade deck, and I can rattle off 'fore' and 'aft' and 'port' and
+'starboard' as if I'd been born on shipboard!"
+
+"Pooh! You wait," teased Tilly. "There'll come a time when you won't
+think you're born on shipboard, and you won't know or care which is
+fore or aft--any of you. And it will come soon, too. Those were
+porpoises playing this morning--when Cordelia thought she saw the sea
+serpent, you know. I heard a man say he thought it meant a storm was
+coming. And if it does--you just wait," she finished laughingly.
+
+"Oh, I'm waiting," retorted Bertha. "I like waiting. Besides, I don't
+think it's coming, anyhow!"
+
+But it did come. Off the coast of South Carolina they ran into a heavy
+storm, and the great ship creaked and groaned as it buffeted wind and
+wave.
+
+In the little parlor of the suite the entire party, banished from wet,
+slippery decks, made merry together, and declared it was all fun,
+anyway. But gradually the ranks thinned. First Mrs. Kennedy asked to be
+excused, and went into the bedroom. Alma Lane went away next. She said
+she wanted a drink of water--but she did not return, and very soon Elsie
+Martin, looking suspiciously white about the lips, said she guessed she
+would go and find Alma. She, too, did not return.
+
+Tilly went next. Tilly, naturally, had not been her usual self since the
+accident, in spite of her brave attempts to hide her suffering. She
+slipped away now without a word; though just before she had made them
+all laugh by saying a little shakily:
+
+"I declare, I wish Reddy were here! He'd think he was riding his
+broncho, sure."
+
+Just when Mr. Hartley disappeared, no one seemed to know. One moment he
+had been singing lustily "Pull for the Shore"; the next moment he was
+gone. There was left then only Bertha with Genevieve and Cordelia in the
+little parlor; and certainly the last two were anything but sorry when
+Bertha rose a little precipitately to go, too, saying:
+
+"I--I think, Genevieve, if you don't mind, I'll go and take off my
+shoes. They sort of--hurt me."
+
+"Honestly, Cordelia," moaned Genevieve, when they had the room to
+themselves, "I reckon we're not caring just now, whether we're fore or
+aft!"
+
+It was not really a serious storm, after all, and not any of the party
+was seriously ill. They were all on deck again, indeed, smiling and
+happy, even if a little white-faced, long before the journey was ended.
+
+It was during the very last of the "golden hours" that Tilly, her eyes
+on Bartholdi's wonderful Statue of Liberty just ahead of them, in the
+New York Bay, choked:
+
+"I declare, I'd just like to give that lady our Texas yell. Only think,
+girls, our Texas trip is almost over!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+HERMIT JOE
+
+
+There was not quite so large a crowd at the Sunbridge station to welcome
+the Texas travelers as there had been to see them off; but it was fully
+large enough to give a merry cheer of greeting, as the train pulled into
+the little station.
+
+"They're all here, with their 'sisters and their cousins and their
+aunts,'" laughed Tilly, stooping to look through the window as she
+passed down the narrow aisle behind Genevieve.
+
+"I should say they were," answered Genevieve a little wistfully. "We
+haven't got any one, I'm afraid, though. Miss Jane's been 'down in
+Maine,' as you call it, visiting, and she doesn't come till next week."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have," chuckled Tilly, as she caught sight of an eager
+face in the crowd. "There's Harold Day."
+
+"Pooh! He didn't come to welcome me any more than he did the rest of
+you," retorted Genevieve severely, as she neared the door.
+
+And what a confusion and chatter it all was, when "their sisters and
+their cousins and their aunts"--to say nothing of their fathers and
+mothers and brothers--all talked and laughed at once, each trying to be
+first to kiss and hug the _one_ returning traveler, before bestowing
+almost as cordial a welcome on all the others. At last, however, in
+little family groups, afoot or in carriages, the crowd began to leave
+the station, and Genevieve found herself with Mrs. Kennedy in the family
+carriage with the old coachman sitting sedately up in front. Mr. Hartley
+had left the party in New York, after seeing them safely aboard their
+Boston train.
+
+"Well, it's all over," sighed Genevieve, happily, "and hasn't it been
+just lovely--with nothing but poor Tilly's arm to regret!"
+
+"Yes, it certainly has been a beautiful trip, my dear, and I know every
+one has enjoyed it very much. And now comes--school."
+
+Genevieve made a wry face; then, meeting Mrs. Kennedy's reproving eye,
+she colored.
+
+"There, forgive me, Aunt Julia, please. That wasn't nice of me, of
+course, when you're so good as to let me come another year. But school
+is so tiresome!"
+
+"Tiresome! Oh, my dear!"
+
+"Well, it is, Aunt Julia," sighed the girl.
+
+"But I thought you liked it now, dear. You took hold of it so bravely at
+the last." Mrs. Kennedy's eyes were wistful.
+
+"Oh, of course I wanted to pass and go on with the rest of the girls,
+Aunt Julia. I couldn't help wanting that. But as for really _liking_
+it--I couldn't like it, you know; just study, study, study all day in
+hot, poky rooms, when it's so much nicer out of doors!"
+
+Mrs. Kennedy shook her head. Her eyes were troubled.
+
+"I'm afraid, my dear, that this trip _hasn't_ helped any. I was fearful
+that it wouldn't be easy for you to settle down after such a prolonged
+playday."
+
+"Oh, but I shall settle, Aunt Julia, I shall settle," promised Genevieve
+with a merry smile. "I know I've got to settle--but I can't say yet I
+shall like it," she finished, as the carriage turned in at the broad
+driveway, and Nancy and Bridget were seen to be waiting in respectful
+excitement to welcome them.
+
+There would be five days to "get used to it"--as Genevieve expressed
+it--before school began; but long before noon of the first of those five
+days, Genevieve had planned in her mind enough delightful things to
+occupy twice that number of days. Immediately after dinner, too, came
+something quite unexpected in the shape of a call from Cordelia.
+
+Cordelia looked worried.
+
+"Genevieve, I've come to ask a favor, please. I'm sure I don't know as
+you'll want to do it, but--but I want you to go with me to see Hermit
+Joe."
+
+"To see--_Hermit Joe_!"
+
+"O dear, I knew you'd exclaim out," sighed Cordelia; "but it's just got
+to be done. I suppose I ought not to have told you, anyway, but I
+couldn't bear to go up to that dismal place alone," she finished,
+tearfully.
+
+"Why, of course not, dear; and I'm sure you did just right to tell me,"
+soothed Genevieve, in quick response to the tears in Cordelia's eyes.
+"Now wait while I get my hat and ask Aunt Julia. She'll let me go, I
+know;--she'd let me go to--to London, with _you_."
+
+"Just please say it's an errand--an important one," begged Cordelia,
+nervously, as Genevieve darted into the house.
+
+In two minutes the girl had returned, hat in hand.
+
+"Now tell me all about it," she commanded, "and don't look so
+frightened. Hermit Joe isn't cross. He's only solemn and queer. He won't
+hurt us."
+
+"Oh, no, he won't hurt us," sighed the other. "He'll only look more
+solemn and queer."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because of what I've got to tell him. I--I suppose I ought to have
+written it, but I just couldn't. Besides, I hadn't found out anything,
+and so I didn't want to write until I was sure I couldn't find anything.
+Now it's done, and I haven't found out anything. So I've got to tell
+him."
+
+"Tell him what, Cordelia?" demanded Genevieve, a little impatiently.
+"How do you suppose I can make anything out of that kind of talk?"
+
+"O dear! you can't, of course," sighed Cordelia; "and, of course, if
+I've told you so much I must tell the rest. It's Hermit Joe's son. I
+can't find him."
+
+"His son! I didn't know he had a son."
+
+"He has. His name is John. He ran away to Texas twenty years ago."
+
+"And you've been hunting for _him_, too--besides that Lester Goodwin who
+turned out to be Reddy?"
+
+Cordelia nodded. She did not speak.
+
+Genevieve laughed unexpectedly.
+
+"Of all the funny things I ever heard of! Pray, how many more lost
+people have you been looking for in the little state of Texas?"
+
+Cordelia moved her shoulders uneasily.
+
+"I--I'd rather not tell that, please, Genevieve," she stammered, with a
+painful blush.
+
+Genevieve stared dumbly. She had not supposed for a moment that Cordelia
+had been looking for any more lost people. She had asked the question
+merely as an absurdity. To have it taken now in this literal fashion,
+and evidently with good reason--Genevieve could scarcely believe the
+evidence of her senses. Another laugh was almost on her lips, but the
+real distress in Cordelia's face stopped it in time.
+
+"You poor dear little thing," she cried sympathetically. "What a shame
+to bother you so! I wonder you had any fun at all on the trip."
+
+"Oh, but I did, Genevieve! You don't know how beautiful it all was to
+me--only of course I felt sorry to be such a failure in what folks
+wanted me to do. You see, Reddy was the only one I found, and I'm very
+much worried for fear he won't be satisfactory."
+
+Genevieve did laugh this time.
+
+"Well, if he isn't, I don't see how that can be your fault," she
+retorted. "Come, now let's forget all this, and just talk Texas
+instead."
+
+"Aunt Mary says I do do that--all the time," rejoined Cordelia, with a
+wistful smile. "Aunt Sophronia is there, too, and _she_ says I do.
+Still, she likes to hear it, I verily believe, else she wouldn't ask me
+so many questions," concluded Cordelia, lifting her chin a little.
+
+"I'd like to take Miss Jane there sometime," observed Genevieve, with a
+gravity that was a little unnatural.
+
+"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Cordelia--then she stopped short with a hot
+blush. "I--I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Genevieve," she went on
+stammeringly. "I ought not to have spoken that way, of course. I was
+only thinking of Miss Jane and--and the cowboys that day they welcomed
+us."
+
+"Yes, I know," rejoined Genevieve, her lips puckered into a curious
+little smile.
+
+"I don't believe I'm doing any more talking, anyway, than Tilly is,"
+remarked Cordelia, after a moment's silence. "Of course, Tilly, with her
+poor arm, would make a lot of questions, anyway; but she _is_ talking a
+great deal."
+
+"I suppose she is," chuckled Genevieve, "and we all know what _she'll_
+say."
+
+"But she says such absurd things, Genevieve. Why, Charlie Brown--you
+know he calls us the 'Happy _Tex_agons' now--well, he told me that
+Tilly'd been bragging so terribly about Texas, and all the fine things
+there were there, that he asked her this morning real soberly--you know
+how Charlie Brown _can_ ask questions, sometimes--"
+
+"I know," nodded Genevieve.
+
+"Well, he asked her, solemn as a judge, 'Do these wondrous tamales of
+yours grow on trees down there?'
+
+"'Oh, yes,' Tilly assured him serenely. And when Charlie, of course,
+declared that couldn't be, she just shrugged her shoulders and answered:
+'Well, of course, Charlie, I'll own I didn't _see_ tamales growing on
+trees, but Texas is a very large state, and while I didn't, of course,
+see anywhere near all of it, yet I saw so much, and it was all so
+different from each other, that I'm sure I shouldn't want to say that I
+_knew_ they didn't have tamale trees somewhere in Texas!' And then she
+marched off in that stately way of hers, and Charlie declared he began
+to feel as if tamale trees did grow in Texas, and that he ought to go
+around telling folks so."
+
+"What a girl she is!" laughed Genevieve. "But, Cordelia, she isn't all
+nonsense. We found that out that dreadful night of the accident."
+
+"Indeed we did," agreed Cordelia, loyally; then, with a profound sigh
+she added: "O dear! for a minute I'd actually forgotten--Hermit Joe."
+
+Hermit Joe lived far up the hillside in a little hut surrounded by thick
+woods. A tiny path led to his door, but it was seldom trodden by the
+foot of anybody but of Hermit Joe himself--Hermit Joe did not encourage
+visitors, and visitors certainly were not attracted by Hermit Joe's
+stern reticence on all matters concerning himself and every one else.
+
+To-day, as the girls entered the path at the edge of the woods, the sun
+went behind a passing cloud, and the gloom was even more noticeable than
+usual.
+
+"Mercy! I'm glad Hermit Joe _isn't_ dangerous and _doesn't_ bite,"
+whispered Genevieve, peering into the woods on either side. "Aunt Julia
+says he is really a very estimable man--Cordelia, if I was a man I just
+wouldn't be an 'estimable' one."
+
+"Genevieve!" gasped the shocked Cordelia.
+
+Genevieve laughed.
+
+"Oh, I'd _be_ it, of course, my dear, only I wouldn't want to be
+_called_ it. It's the word--it always makes me think of side whiskers
+and stupidity."
+
+"Oh, Genevieve!" cried Cordelia, again.
+
+"Well, as I was saying, Aunt Julia told me that Hermit Joe was really a
+very nice man. She used to know him well before a great sorrow drove him
+into the woods to live all by himself."
+
+Cordelia nodded sadly.
+
+"That was his son that ran away. Aunt Mary told me that long ago. She
+told us children never to tease him, or worry him, but that we needn't
+be afraid of him, either. He wouldn't hurt us. I heard once that he was
+always stern and sober, and that that was why his son ran away. But that
+it 'most killed him--the father--when he did go. And now I couldn't find
+him! Isn't it terrible, Genevieve?" Cordelia's eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Yes," sighed Genevieve. "But you aren't to blame, dear."
+
+It was very beautiful in the hushed green light of the woods, with now
+and then a bird-call, or the swift scampering of a squirrel's feet to
+break the silence. But the girls were not noticing birds or squirrels
+to-day, and they became more and more silent as they neared the end of
+their journey. The little cabin was almost in sight when Genevieve
+caught Cordelia's arm convulsively.
+
+"Cordelia, sh-h-h! Isn't that some one--talking?" she whispered.
+
+Cordelia held her right foot suspended in the air for a brief half
+minute.
+
+"Yes. That's Hermit Joe's voice. He _is_ talking to some one."
+
+"Then there must be somebody there with him."
+
+"Yes. Genevieve, I--I _guess_ I won't tell him to-day," faltered
+Cordelia. "Let's go back. I'll come again to-morrow."
+
+"Nonsense! Go back, and have you worrying about this thing another
+twenty-four hours? No, indeed! Come, Cordelia, we must tell him now. I
+think we ought to do it, really."
+
+"All right," sighed the other despairingly. "Come, then." The next
+minute she gave a sharp cry. "Why, Mr. _Edwards_!" she breathed.
+
+They had come to the turn which brought the cabin into plain sight; and
+on the stone step with Hermit Joe sat the man Cordelia had last seen
+driving away from the Six Star Ranch in Texas.
+
+Both men rose abruptly. The younger stepped forward. There was a
+whimsical smile on his lips, but his eyes were wonderfully tender.
+
+"Yes, 'Mr. Edwards,' Miss Cordelia--but Mr. 'Jonathan Edwards
+_Sanborn_.' You see, you didn't know all my name, perhaps."
+
+To every one's surprise and consternation Cordelia sat down exactly
+where she was, and began to cry softly.
+
+"Why, Cordelia!"
+
+Genevieve was at her friend's side at once. Hermit Joe looked plainly
+distressed. Mr. Jonathan Edwards Sanborn hurried forward in frightened
+dismay.
+
+"Oh, but Miss Cordelia, don't, please don't--I beg of you! Don't you
+understand? I am John Sanborn, Hermit Joe's son; and 'twas all through
+you that I came home again."
+
+Cordelia only sobbed the harder.
+
+Genevieve dropped on her knees at the girl's side, and put her arms
+about her.
+
+"Cordelia, Cordelia, dear--don't you see?--it's all come out right. You
+did find him, after all! Why are you crying so?"
+
+"T-that's why," stuttered Cordelia, smiling through tear-wet eyes. "It's
+because I d-did find him, and I'm so glad, and everything!"
+
+"But, if you're glad, why cry?" began Hermit Joe's son, in puzzled
+wonder, but Genevieve patted Cordelia's back, and smiled cheerily.
+
+"That's all right, Cordelia," she declared. "I know just how you feel.
+_Now_ you know what was the matter with me when you girls gave me the
+Texas yell at the station. Just cry all you like!"
+
+As if permission, only, were all she wanted, Cordelia wiped her eyes and
+smiled shyly into Mr. Jonathan Edwards Sanborn's face.
+
+"It is really you, isn't it?" she murmured.
+
+"It certainly is, Miss Cordelia."
+
+"And you wouldn't have come if it hadn't been for what I said?"
+
+"No. You set me to thinking, and when I got to thinking I couldn't stop.
+And, of course, when I couldn't stop thinking I had to come; that's
+all."
+
+"I'm so glad," sighed Cordelia; then, interestedly: "How long have you
+been here?"
+
+"Only since day before yesterday. No one in the village knows I'm here,
+I suspect. We've been talking over our plans--father and I. I want him
+to come West with me."
+
+Cordelia got up from the ground.
+
+"I'm so glad," she said again, simply. "Genevieve, I think we ought to
+be going."
+
+As she turned toward the path, Hermit Joe advanced so that he
+intercepted her.
+
+"Miss Cordelia, I would like to tell how--but I can't. Still--I wish you
+could know how happy you've made me."
+
+Hermit Joe spoke with evident difficulty. His lips, so long unused to
+speaking, stumbled over the words; but his eyes glowed as with hidden
+fires, and his whole face was alight with joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE NEW BOY
+
+
+The first day of school, for Genevieve, was not a success. Before two
+hours of it had passed, indeed, she declared to herself that Miss Hart,
+her new teacher, was not at all promising, and that she did not like her
+nearly so well as she had liked Miss Palmer the year before. Making the
+final arrangements as to her studies and recitations, too, Genevieve
+privately voted a bore; and more than once her eyes turned longingly to
+the beautiful September sunshine out of doors.
+
+At recess time the Happy Hexagons met in the corridor and held what
+proved to be an indignation meeting.
+
+"Well, I for one don't like her a bit," declared Tilly, perking up the
+bow ends of the black sling that hung about her neck.
+
+"Nor I," echoed Genevieve.
+
+"Not much like Miss Palmer last year, nor Miss Jones," said Bertha. "I
+told you we wouldn't get such a good one this term."
+
+"But, girls, I think we ought to try to like her," ventured Cordelia, in
+a voice that told very plainly how she expected her remark to be
+received.
+
+"Of course," sniffed Tilly, disdainfully.
+
+"Oh, but I'm sure she won't be half bad when we come to know her," cried
+Alma Lane. "She was so nervous this morning, and I think acted troubled
+over something."
+
+Tilly tossed her head.
+
+"Troubled! I should think we were the ones that were troubled. Did you
+ever see such a lot of rules and regulations about what not to do? She's
+scarcely left a thing we _can_ do."
+
+"Oh, yes, she has," groaned Genevieve. "We can sit still and look
+pleasant, and study, study, study! I reckon I shall have to, all right,
+too, this term, at the rate my studies and recitation hours are piling
+up," she finished, as the bell rang for them to go to their seats.
+
+All days--even the worst of them--come to an end sometime; and at last
+Genevieve was free to go home. Half-way to the Kennedy house a soft
+whistle of the Happy Hexagons' Club song sounded behind her; and a
+moment later Harold Day caught up with her.
+
+"Well?" he queried.
+
+"But it isn't 'well' at all," wailed Genevieve, with a shake of her
+head.
+
+"So I judged from your face."
+
+"But--have _you_ ever had Miss Hart for a teacher?"
+
+"No; she's new this year. We had Miss Holbrook in her place last year,
+and she was fine; but she got married, you know. She herself recommended
+Miss Hart for the position, I believe."
+
+"Did she?" sighed Genevieve.
+
+"What a lugubrious face!" laughed Harold. "Suppose you tell me what is
+the matter with Miss Hart, eh?"
+
+"I can't. It's just an intangible, indefinable 'don't-like-her' feeling.
+She doesn't sit still a minute, and she's awful on rules. Tilly calls
+her 'Miss Hartless.'"
+
+Harold laughed.
+
+"Trust Tilly to call her something!" he rejoined. "But I don't believe
+the lady will be half bad when you get used to her."
+
+"That's what your cousin Alma says."
+
+"Well, I believe she's right," declared Harold. "It sounds to me as if
+Miss Hart were nervous and afraid."
+
+Genevieve opened her eyes.
+
+"Afraid! A _teacher afraid_!"
+
+"Wouldn't you be afraid if you had to follow where you know there had
+been such favorites as Miss Holbrook and Miss Palmer were?"
+
+"Why, I never thought of it that way," frowned Genevieve. "I didn't
+suppose teachers ever had--er--feelings like that."
+
+"Well, I suppose teachers are--folks, like the rest of us," hazarded the
+youth, as he stopped a minute at the foot of the Kennedys' front walk.
+
+Genevieve shook her head mischievously.
+
+"I don't," she protested. "They always seem to me like things you buy
+for school, just like you do the books and chalk, and that they come in
+boxes all graded and sorted--primary, grammar, high school, French,
+German, and all that," she flashed over her shoulder, as she skipped up
+the walk toward the house.
+
+"There!" sighed Genevieve, bounding up on to the veranda, and dropping
+her books into a chair. "I'm going for a ride with Tilly, Aunt Julia,
+please, if you don't mind."
+
+"Very well, dear; but don't stay too long. There's your practicing, you
+know."
+
+Genevieve scowled, and made an impatient gesture--neither of which Mrs.
+Kennedy seemed to notice.
+
+"You have your watch, I see," she went on serenely; "so I don't think
+you'll forget."
+
+Genevieve bit her lip. She threw a hurried glance into Mrs. Kennedy's
+face; but that, too, Mrs. Kennedy did not appear to notice.
+
+"No, Aunt Julia," said Genevieve, a little constrainedly, as she went to
+saddle her horse, "I sha'n't--forget."
+
+When quite by herself around the corner of the house, she drew a long
+breath.
+
+"Sometimes," she muttered fiercely behind her teeth, "sometimes I--I
+just wish folks _weren't_ so good to me! Seems to me I just _can't_
+waste a whole hour of this tiny little bit of glorious day that is left,
+practising a stupid old 'one, two--one, two--one, two!'" Then, with
+apparent irrelevance, she patted her blue-and-gold chatelaine watch
+remorsefully--and it may be noted right here that she came back in ample
+time for her hour of practising before supper.
+
+There was a new boy at school the next morning. This fact in itself did
+not particularly interest the Happy Hexagons until they learned his
+name. It was "O. B. J. Holmes." When the initials did not seem quite to
+satisfy Miss Hart, he hesitated visibly, then said, with a very painful
+blush, that the "O" might be put down "Oliver." It was plainly on the
+teacher's tongue to ask about the other letters; but, after a moment's
+hesitation, she passed over the matter, and turned to something else.
+
+As usual the Happy Hexagons found themselves together at recess time,
+and as was natural, perhaps, the subject of the new boy came up for
+discussion.
+
+"I don't believe 'Oliver' is ever his name," declared Tilly, stoutly.
+"No sane youth in his right mind would blush so beautifully over just
+'Oliver.' Besides, he didn't _say_ it was Oliver."
+
+[Illustration: "'HOW DO YOU DO, MR. OLIVER HOLMES,' SHE BEGAN"]
+
+"I saw Miss Hart talking to him as I came out just now," announced
+Bertha, "and his face was even redder than ever. Hers was getting red,
+too."
+
+"Then there _is_ something," cried Genevieve, excitedly, "and it's a
+mystery. I love mysteries! 'O. B. J.'--what a really funny set of
+letters!"
+
+"Must be 'Oliver Ben Johnson,'" laughed Bertha.
+
+"Sounds to me like 'O Be Joyful,'" giggled Tilly.
+
+"Sh-h!--Tilly!" warned Cordelia, in a horrified whisper. "He's coming.
+He'll hear you!"
+
+But Tilly was not to be silenced. Tilly, for some reason, felt
+recklessly mischievous that morning.
+
+"Why, of course his, name is 'O Be Joyful,'" she cried in gay, shrill
+tones that carried the words straight to the ears of a rather
+awkward-appearing boy coming toward them. "How could it be anything
+else?"
+
+The boy blushed hotly. For a moment it seemed as if he would stop and
+speak; but the next minute he had turned away his face, and was passing
+them hurriedly.
+
+It was then that the unexpected happened. With a quick little impulsive
+movement, Genevieve stepped to the new boy's side, and held out a
+frankly cordial hand.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Oliver Holmes," she began breathlessly, but with
+hurried determination. "I am Genevieve Hartley, and I'd like to welcome
+you to our school. These are my friends: Cordelia Wilson, Alma Lane,
+Bertha Brown, Elsie Martin, and Tilly Mack. We hope you'll soon get
+acquainted and feel at home here," she finished, her face almost as
+painful a red as was the boy's.
+
+O. B. J. Holmes clutched Genevieve's hand, stammered a confused
+something in response to the introductions, and flung a terrifiedly
+uncertain bow in the direction of the wide-eyed girls; then he turned
+and fled precipitately.
+
+Behind him he left, for one brief minute, a dazed silence before Tilly
+lifted her chin disagreeably and spoke.
+
+"Well, dear me! For so _marked_ a bid for his favor, seems to me our
+young friend doesn't show proper appreciation--to run away like that!"
+
+Genevieve colored angrily.
+
+"That was no bid for his favor, and you know it, Tilly Mack!"
+
+"No?" teased Tilly, hatefully. "Well, I'm sure I should have thought it
+was if a perfect stranger flung herself in my way like that."
+
+"Tilly, Tilly--don't!" begged Cordelia, almost tearfully.
+
+It was Genevieve's turn to lift a disdainful chin. She eyed Tilly
+scornfully.
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't--not if some other perfect stranger had just
+called out a particularly hateful, horrid joke about something you were
+not in the least to blame for! If you hadn't said what you did, I
+shouldn't have said what I did, Tilly Mack. As it was, I--I just
+couldn't help it; I was so sorry for him!"
+
+"Oh, it was just being sorry, then! Oh, excuse me; I didn't know," cooed
+Tilly, smoothly. "You see, it looked so--different!"
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia. "Genevieve, don't you mind one bit what she
+says!" But Genevieve, without a word, had turned and was walking swiftly
+away.
+
+"Well, Tilly Mack," chorused several indignant voices; and Elsie Martin
+added severely: "I've got my opinion of _you_--after all Genevieve has
+just done for us! I'm sure, I think it was lovely of her to speak to
+that boy like that!"
+
+Tilly flushed uncomfortably. Her tongue had gone much farther than she
+had intended it to go. She did not like to think, either, of that Texas
+trip just then. But the very shame that she felt made her only the more
+determined not to show it--then.
+
+"Pooh! there wasn't a thing I said that anybody need to make such a fuss
+about," she declared loftily; then, as she spied Harold Day coming
+toward them, she called in a merry voice: "Seen the new boy, Harold? His
+name is 'O. B. J. Holmes.' _I_ say his name is 'O Be Joyful,' and the
+girls are shocked at my disrespect."
+
+"Is that so?" laughed Harold. "Well, I'm not sure I'd like that name
+myself very well--even if 'tis a cheerful one! Where's Genevieve? One
+doesn't often see one of you without all of you."
+
+"Oh, she was here, but she's gone. She was the most shocked of all,"
+answered Tilly, with mock humility. "Probably she's gone to tell him so.
+You see, she shook hands with him and introduced us all around, and said
+she'd like to welcome him and that she hoped he'd enjoy it here."
+
+"Oh, Tilly!" remonstrated Cordelia.
+
+"Why, Cordelia, didn't she?" asked Tilly, in a particularly innocent
+tone of voice.
+
+"Y-yes," admitted Cordelia, reluctantly, "only--" The bell rang and the
+group broke up, with Cordelia's sentence still unfinished.
+
+The rest of the day for the Happy Hexagons was not an easy one. Tilly
+looked rebellious--and ashamed. Cordelia looked ready to cry. Genevieve
+kept her eyes on her books and seemed unaware that there was such a
+thing in the world as a girls' club, of which she was a prominent
+member. Bertha, Elsie, and Alma divided their time between scowling at
+Tilly and trying to attract Genevieve's attention.
+
+It was during the Latin recitation, which came just before closing time
+at noon, that Cordelia's perturbation culminated in a blunder that sent
+most of the class into convulsive giggles, and even brought a twitching
+smile to Genevieve's tense lips.
+
+Cordelia, rising to translate in her turn, hurried blindly through a
+paragraph until she came to the words "sub jugum". Now Cordelia very
+well knew what "sub jugum" meant; but her eyes, at the moment, were
+divided between her book and Genevieve's flushed cheeks, and so saw,
+apparently, but half of the word "jugum". At all events, the next moment
+the class were amazed to learn from Cordelia's lips that Cæsar sent the
+army--not "under the yoke" as was expected--but "under the jug."
+
+Cordelia knew, before the titters of the class told her, what she had
+said; and with hot blushes she made a hasty correction. But to Cordelia,
+usually so conscientiously accurate and circumspect, the thing was a
+tragedy, and, as such, would not soon be forgotten by her. She knew,
+too, that the class would not let her forget it even could she herself
+do so. If she had doubted this, she did not doubt it longer, after
+school was dismissed, for she was assailed on all sides by a merry
+bombardment of gibes and questions as to just what sort of jug it was,
+anyhow, under which Cæsar sent his army.
+
+Genevieve, only, had nothing to say. She did not, indeed, even glance
+toward Cordelia. With averted face she hurried through the corridor and
+out the street door alone. In the yard a quick step behind her overtook
+her, and she found herself looking into the flushed, agitated face of
+the new boy.
+
+O. B. J. Holmes would not, at first sight, be called a good-looking
+youth. His face was freckled, and his nose was rather large. But his
+mouth was well-shaped, and his eyes were large and expressive. They
+looked into Genevieve's now with a gaze that was clear and honest and
+manly.
+
+"Miss Genevieve, may I walk with you a little way, please?" he asked
+with disarming directness. "I want to speak to you."
+
+"Why, of--of course," stammered Genevieve. Then she colored painfully:
+behind her she heard Tilly's laughing voice, followed by Alma's lower
+one, and Harold's.
+
+"I wanted to thank you for what you did this morning," began O. B. J.
+Holmes, falling into step with her.
+
+"Oh, that wasn't--wasn't anything," stammered Genevieve, nervously,
+still acutely conscious of the eyes that she knew were behind her.
+
+The boy smiled a little wistfully.
+
+"Perhaps not, to you," he answered; "but if you'd been named 'O Be
+Joyful' and had had to suffer for it as I have, you'd think it was
+something."
+
+"You don't mean to say your name _is_ 'O Be Joyful'!" gasped Genevieve.
+
+He nodded, his face showing a deeper red.
+
+"Yes, that's what I wanted to tell you. I didn't feel square not to have
+you know it, after you stood up so bravely for 'Oliver'. Of course, if
+you like, you may tell the rest. I suppose I was foolish to try to keep
+it to myself, anyway," he sighed moodily.
+
+"Tell it! Of course I sha'n't tell it," declared Genevieve, warmly. She
+had forgotten all about those watching eyes behind her, now.
+
+"Thank you," smiled the boy again, a little wistfully. "Miss Hart knows
+it, of course. I told her at recess; and the principal, Mr. Jackson,
+knows it. He agreed to letting me be called 'Oliver,' and so does Miss
+Hart. Still, I don't suppose I can keep it, and it will get out. I--I
+supposed it had got out when I heard your friend this morning."
+
+"Well, it isn't out, and nobody knows it--but me," declared Genevieve,
+with more warmth than grammar. "That was only some of Tilly Mack's
+nonsense; and when you know her better, you'll know that nobody pays any
+attention to what Tilly says." Genevieve stopped abruptly, and bit her
+lip. She was thinking that not so very long before, she herself _had_
+paid attention to something Tilly Mack said.
+
+"I don't think mother ever realized just what such a name would be for a
+fellow to carry through life," said the boy, after a moment's silence.
+"There were five of us children, and she gave us all queer names--names
+that expressed something that had just been happening in the family, you
+understand. For instance, my oldest brother was born in a year when the
+crops failed, and they called him 'Tribulation.' Crops were good, you
+see, when I came," he added, with a rueful smile.
+
+"Why, how--how funny and--and terrible," breathed Genevieve.
+
+"Yes, it was terrible--but mother never thought of it that way, I'm
+sure. I'm glad she can't know--now--just how hard it's been for me. When
+I came here, I knew I was a perfect stranger and I determined folks
+shouldn't know. I'd be 'Oliver B. J. Holmes.'"
+
+"And you shall be 'Oliver B. J. Holmes,'" averred Genevieve, lifting her
+chin. "Oh, of course Tilly will call you the other, and maybe some of
+the rest will, sometimes; but don't let that fret you for a moment. Just
+remember that _no one knows_--for I sha'n't tell it. And now good-by.
+This is my street," she finished, with a cheery nod.
+
+It was not easy for Genevieve to go back to the short session of school
+that afternoon; but she went--and she tried to appear as if everything
+was as usual when she met Cordelia and Elsie at the corner. Cordelia and
+Elsie were only too glad to follow her lead. Not until they met Tilly in
+the school yard--and saw her turn hastily away without speaking--did
+they show how really constrained they felt.
+
+Genevieve, apparently, saw and felt nothing of this--but she never
+looked toward Tilly that afternoon; and when school was dismissed she
+hurried cheerfully away with only a smiling nod toward Cordelia and
+Alma, whom she passed in the corridor.
+
+At home Genevieve went immediately to her practising--somewhat to Mrs.
+Kennedy's surprise. She practised, too, quite fifteen minutes over her
+hour--still more to Mrs. Kennedy's surprise. There was, also, a certain
+unsympathetic hardness in the chords and runs that puzzled the lady not
+a little; but in the face of their obvious accuracy, and of Genevieve's
+apparent faithfulness, Mrs. Kennedy did not like to find fault.
+
+Just how long Genevieve would have practised is doubtful, perhaps, had
+there not sounded an insistently repeated whistle of the Hexagon Club
+song from the garden. The girl went to the open window then.
+
+"Did you whistle, Harold?" she asked, not too graciously.
+
+"Did I whistle?" retorted the boy, testily. "Oh, no, I never whistled
+_once_--but I did four times! See here, I thought your practice-hour was
+an _hour_."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Well, you've been working fifteen minutes over-time already."
+
+"Have I?"
+
+"Yes, you have; and your constitution positively needs a walk. Come,
+it's your plain duty to your health. Will you go?"
+
+Genevieve dimpled into a laugh.
+
+"All right," she cried more naturally. "Then I'll come. I'll be out in a
+jiffy."
+
+"Let's go up through the pasture to the woods," proposed Harold, when
+Genevieve appeared, swinging her hat.
+
+"All right," nodded Genevieve, somewhat listlessly. "Anywhere."
+
+In the woods, some time later, Genevieve and Harold dropped themselves
+down to rest. It was then that Harold cleared his throat a little
+nervously.
+
+"You have a new boy in school, I hear," he said.
+
+Genevieve turned quickly. For a moment she looked almost angry. Then,
+unexpectedly, she laughed.
+
+"You've been talking with Tilly, I perceive," she remarked.
+
+"Oh, no; Tilly has only been talking with me," retorted Harold, laughing
+in his turn--though a little constrainedly.
+
+Genevieve grew suddenly sober.
+
+"I don't care; I'm glad I did it," she declared. "You know _what_ Tilly
+can be when she wants to be--and she evidently wanted to be, this
+morning. Just because a boy is new and has got freckles and a queer
+name, is no reason why he should be made fun of like that."
+
+"Of course not!" Then, still a little constrainedly, Harold asked: "How
+do you like him? I saw you talking with him afterward."
+
+Genevieve frowned thoughtfully.
+
+"Why, I don't know--I hadn't thought," she answered. "But I reckon
+perhaps I like him. He talked quite a little, and he seemed rather nice,
+I think--just frank and folksy, you know. Yes, I think I like him. I
+think we'll all like him."
+
+"Oh, of course," agreed Harold without enthusiasm, getting suddenly to
+his feet. "Well, I suppose we must be going."
+
+"Yes, of course," sighed Genevieve, glancing down at her little
+blue-enamel watch; "but it _is_ nice here!"
+
+The homeward walk was somewhat of a silent one. Harold was unusually
+quiet, and Genevieve was wondering just how and when peace and happiness
+were to reign once more in the Hexagon Club. She was wondering, too, if
+ever she could be just the same to Tilly--unless Tilly had first
+something to say to her.
+
+As it happened, Genevieve's questions were answered, in a way, before
+she slept; for, after she had gone up to bed that night, there came a
+ring at the doorbell, followed, a moment later, by a tap at her door.
+
+"It do be a note for you, Miss Genevieve," explained Nancy.
+
+"A note--for me?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; from Miss Tilly, I think. She's down at the door with her
+brother."
+
+Genevieve did not answer. Her eyes were devouring the note.
+
+          "DEAR GENEVIEVE:--" Tilly had written. "I'm so
+          ashamed I just can't live till you tell me you
+          forgive me. I have begged Howard to take me down
+          there. I know I never, never can sleep till I've
+          asked your pardon for being so perfectly horrid
+          this morning. Will you ever, ever forgive and love
+          me again?
+
+                         "Your miserable, remorseful
+                                                  "TILLY.
+
+          "P. S. I think what you did was just the bravest,
+          loveliest thing I ever saw a girl do.
+
+                                                   "T. M.
+
+          "P. S. again. I'm so late I'm afraid you've gone
+          to bed; but if you haven't, and if you do forgive
+          me, come to your window and wave to me. I shall
+          watch with what Quentina would call soulful,
+          hungry eyes.
+
+                                                    "T."
+
+"That's all right; thank you, Nancy. There isn't any answer," smiled
+Genevieve as she closed the door. The next moment she darted across the
+room, plucked a great pink aster from the vase on the table, hurried to
+the window and threw up the screen.
+
+Below she saw the automobile and the two figures therein. Faintly
+visible, too, was the upturned face of the girl, containing, presumably,
+the "hungry, soulful eyes."
+
+The next moment, plump into Tilly's lap, fell a huge pink aster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+GENEVIEVE LEARNS SOMETHING NOT IN BOOKS
+
+
+School, in an amazingly short time, fell into its customary routine.
+Genevieve, it is true, did not cease to pine for long, free hours out of
+doors; but with as good grace as she could muster she submitted to the
+inevitable.
+
+Miss Hart was still not a favorite in the school, and no one seemed to
+realize this more keenly than did Miss Hart herself. At all events, as
+the days passed, she grew thinner and paler looking, and more nervous
+and worried in her manner. While none of the Happy Hexagons deliberately
+set herself to making trouble, certainly none of them tried to cause
+matters to be any easier for her. The girls themselves had long since
+forgotten their brief day of unpleasantness regarding O. B. J. Holmes,
+and were more devoted than ever, after this, their first quarrel.
+
+In the Kennedy home, too, matters had settled into their usual routine.
+Miss Jane had returned, and the days, for Genevieve, were full of study,
+practice, and the usual number of lessons in cooking and sewing.
+
+As the crisp October days came, every pleasant Saturday afternoon found
+the Hexagon Club off for a long walk or ride, sometimes by themselves,
+sometimes with Harold, Charlie, O. B. J. Holmes, or some of the other
+boys and girls as invited guests.
+
+O. B. J. Holmes had long since ceased to be the "new boy." He was not,
+indeed, exactly a favorite with some of the young people, but he was
+included frequently in their merrymakings--chiefly because Genevieve
+declared openly that she thought he ought to be. He was not called
+"Oliver" except in the classroom. Outside he was known usually as "O. B.
+J." slurred into "Obejay." Sometimes, it is true, Tilly's old "O Be
+Joyful" was heard, but not often--perhaps because the lad appeared not
+to care if they did call him that, specially if Genevieve were near to
+join in the good-natured laugh with which he greeted it.
+
+Undeniably, this frank friendliness of the most popular girl in school
+had much to do with the way the others regarded him; though they were at
+a loss, sometimes, to account for a certain quality in that friendship,
+which they could not fathom.
+
+"It's for all the world as if you'd known each other before," Harold
+explained it a little aggrievedly one day to Genevieve, when O. B. J.
+Holmes had just thrown her one of his merry glances at a sudden revival
+of Tilly's "O Be Joyful" name. "Say, _have_ you known him before?"
+
+Genevieve laughed--but she shook her head.
+
+"No; but maybe I do know him now--a little better than you do," she
+answered demurely, thinking of the name that Harold did not even
+suspect.
+
+School this year, for Genevieve, was meaning two new experiences. One
+was that for the first time class officers were elected; the other, that
+a school magazine was started. In both of these she bore a prominent
+part. In the one she was unanimously elected president; in the other she
+was appointed correspondent for her class by the Editor-in-Chief. By
+each, however, she was quite overwhelmed.
+
+"But I don't think I can do them--not either of them," she declared to
+Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Jane Chick when she had brought home the news. "To
+be Class President you have to be awfully dignified and conduct meetings
+and know parliamentary law, and all that."
+
+"I'm not afraid of anything _there_ hurting you," smiled Miss Jane. "In
+fact, it strikes me that it will do you a great deal of good."
+
+"Y-yes, I suppose you would think so," smiled Genevieve, a little
+dubiously.
+
+"And I'm sure it's an honor," Mrs. Kennedy reminded her.
+
+Genevieve flushed.
+
+"I _am_ glad they wanted me," she admitted frankly.
+
+"And what is this magazine affair?" asked Miss Jane.
+
+"Yes, and that's another thing," sighed Genevieve. "I can't write
+things. If it were only Quentina, now--she could do it!"
+
+"But you have written for the Chronicles, my dear," observed Mrs.
+Kennedy. "Have you given those up?"
+
+"Oh, no; we still keep them, only we have entries once a week now
+instead of every day. There isn't so much doing here as there was in
+Texas, you know."
+
+"Then you do write for that," said Miss Jane.
+
+"Oh, but _that's_ just for us," argued Genevieve. "I don't mind that.
+But this has got to be printed, Miss Jane--printed right out for
+everybody to read! If it were only Quentina, now--she'd glory in it.
+And--oh, Miss Jane, how I wish you could see Quentina," broke off
+Genevieve, suddenly. "Dear me! wouldn't she just hit on your name,
+though! She'd be rhyming it in no time, and have 'Miss Jane at the
+window-pane,' before you could turn around!"
+
+"Quite an inducement for me to know her, I'm sure," observed Miss Jane,
+dryly.
+
+Genevieve laughed, but she sighed again, too.
+
+"Well, anyhow, she would do it lovely--this correspondence business; but
+I can't, I'm sure."
+
+"What are you supposed to do?"
+
+"Why, just hand in things--anything that's of interest in my class; but
+I don't know _what_ to say."
+
+"Perhaps the others can help you," suggested Aunt Julia.
+
+Genevieve gave a sudden laugh.
+
+"They'd like to--some of them. Tilly's tried already. She gave me two
+items this noon, all written down. One was that O. B. J. had a new
+freckle on the left side of his nose, and the other that Bertha hadn't
+said 'I told you so' to-day."
+
+"Genevieve!" protested the shocked Miss Jane. "You wouldn't--" She
+stopped helplessly.
+
+"Oh, no, Miss Jane, I wouldn't," laughed Genevieve, merrily, as she rose
+from the dinner-table.
+
+Perhaps it was her duties as president, and her new task as
+correspondent, or perhaps it was just the allurement of the beautiful
+out-of-doors that made it so hard for Genevieve to spend time on her
+lessons that autumn. Perhaps, too, her lack of enthusiasm for Miss Hart
+had something to do with it. Whatever it was, to concentrate her
+attention on Latin verbs and French nouns grew harder and harder as the
+days passed, until at last--in the frenzied rush of a study-hour one
+day--she did what she had never done before: wrote the meaning of some
+of the words under the Latin version in her book.
+
+It was, apparently, a great success. Her work in class was so unusually
+good that Miss Hart's tired eyes brightened, and her lips spoke a word
+of high praise--praise that sent to Genevieve's cheek a flush that
+Genevieve herself tried to think was all gratification. But--the next
+day she did not write any words in the book. The out-of-doors, however,
+was just as alluring, and the outside duties were just as pressing; so
+there was just as little time as ever for the Latin verbs. They
+suffered, too, in consequence. So, also, did Genevieve; for this time,
+Miss Hart, stung into irritation by this apparently unnecessary falling
+back into carelessness, said a few particularly sharp words that sent
+Genevieve out of the class with very red cheeks and very angry eyes.
+
+"I just hate Miss Hart and school, and--and everything," stormed
+Genevieve hotly, five minutes later, as she met Cordelia and Tilly in
+the corridor after school was dismissed.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve," remonstrated Cordelia, faintly.
+
+"Well, I do. I didn't have time to get that lesson--but a lot Miss Hart
+cared for that!"
+
+"Why don't you use a pony?" twittered Tilly, cheerfully.
+
+"A--pony?" Genevieve's eyes were puzzled.
+
+Tilly laughed.
+
+"Oh, it isn't one of your bronchos," she giggled, "and it's easier to
+ride than they are! It's just a nice little book that you buy--a Latin
+translation, you know, all done by somebody else--and no bother to
+you."
+
+"But--is that quite--fair?" frowned Genevieve.
+
+"Hm-m; well, I presume Miss Hartless wouldn't call it--good form," she
+shrugged.
+
+"Why, Tilly Mack! of course it isn't fair, and you know it," cried
+Cordelia. "It's worse than cribbing."
+
+"What's cribbing?" demanded Genevieve.
+
+"It's the only way out when you haven't got your lesson," answered
+Tilly, promptly.
+
+"It's writing the translation under the words in the book," explained
+Elsie Martin, who, coming up at the moment, had heard Genevieve's
+question.
+
+"It's just plain cheating--and it's horrid," declared Cordelia, with
+emphasis.
+
+Genevieve's face turned a sudden, painful red, for some unapparent
+reason.
+
+"Y-yes, it must be," she murmured faintly, as she turned to go.
+
+On the walk home that noon, Harold, as was frequently the case, overtook
+her.
+
+"Well, what part of the world would you like changed to-day?" he asked,
+with a smiling glance at her frowning face.
+
+"Chiefly, I reckon I'd like no school," sighed Genevieve; "but if I
+can't have that, I'd like another box of teachers opened so we could
+have a new one."
+
+"What's the trouble now?"
+
+"Oh, I reckon the trouble is with me," admitted Genevieve, ruefully.
+"Anyhow, Miss Jane would say it was. I flunked in Cæsar--but that's no
+reason why Miss Hart should have been so disagreeable! But then, I
+suppose she has to be. She came out of that kind of a box, you know."
+
+Harold laughed, though a little gravely.
+
+"You still think they come all boxed, sorted, and labeled, do you?" he
+said. "And that they aren't 'just folks' at all?"
+
+"Yes, I still think so. They never seem a bit like 'folks' to me. It's
+their business to sit up there stiff and solemn and stern, and see that
+you behave and learn your lessons. I never saw one that I liked, except
+Miss Palmer and Miss Jones--but then, they came out of a jolly box,
+anyhow."
+
+"Lucky ladies!"
+
+Genevieve laughed rebelliously.
+
+"Oh, I know I'm horrid," she admitted; "but--well, I went off for a ride
+with Tilly yesterday after school, instead of paying attention to his
+Imperial Highness, Cæsar; and that's what was the trouble. But, Harold,
+it was so perfectly glorious out I had to--I just had to! I tell you,
+every bit of me was tingling to go! Now what do you suppose Miss Hart
+knows of a feeling like that? She simply couldn't understand it."
+
+"But--Miss Hart doesn't look very old--to me."
+
+Genevieve stopped short, and turned half around.
+
+"Old! Why, she's a _teacher_, Harold!"
+
+Harold chuckled, as they started forward again.
+
+"I should like to see some teachers' faces if they could hear you say
+'teacher' in that tone of voice, young lady!"
+
+"Pooh! I reckon it would take considerable to make me think of any
+teacher as _young_," retorted Genevieve, with emphasis.
+
+"All right; but--aren't you coming out, later, for a walk or--or
+something?" asked Harold, a little anxiously, as they reached the
+Kennedy driveway.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, little boy," she answered, with mock cheerfulness. "I'm going to
+practise, then I'm going to study my algebra, then I'm going to study my
+Latin, then I'm going to study my French, then I'm going to study my
+English history, then--"
+
+"_Good-by!_" laughed Harold, clapping his hands to his ears, and
+hurrying away.
+
+Unhesitating as was Genevieve's assertion of her intentions, those
+intentions were not carried out, even to the practising, first on the
+list; for, in putting down her books, Genevieve dropped some loose
+papers to the floor. The papers were some that had that day been
+returned by Miss Hart; and, as the girl gathered them up now, a sheet of
+note paper, covered with handwriting entirely different from her own,
+attracted her attention.
+
+She recognized the writing at once as that of Miss Hart, and she
+supposed at first that the paper must contain some special suggestions
+or criticisms in regard to her own work. With a quick frown, therefore,
+she began to read it.
+
+She had not read five lines before she knew that the paper did not
+contain criticism or suggestions. But so dazed, so surprised, and so
+absorbed was she, by that time, that she quite forgot that she was
+reading something most certainly never meant for her eyes to see.
+
+The paper was evidently the second sheet of a letter. The writing--fine,
+but plain--began close to the top of the first page, in what was
+apparently the middle of a sentence.
+
+          "speak freely, I am sure.
+
+          "Things are not getting any better, but rather
+          worse. I cannot seem to win them. Of course I
+          understood that my task would be difficult,
+          following, as I did, two such popular teachers. I
+          think, perhaps, that this very fact has made me
+          nervous; and so--I have not appeared even at my
+          best. But, oh, I have tried!--you cannot know how
+          I have tried!
+
+          "I am nearly sick with terror for fear I shall
+          lose my position--and of course _that_ doesn't
+          help me to be the cool, calm, judicious person in
+          the chair I ought to be. But it means so much to
+          me--this place--and if I should lose it, there
+          would be poor Annie deprived of her comforts
+          again; for, of course, a failure here would mean
+          that not for a long time (if ever!) could I get
+          another like it.
+
+          "Forgive me for burdening you with all this, but
+          it had got to the point where I must speak to some
+          one. Then, too, I did not know but you could
+          perhaps tell me why I have failed--I have tried so
+          hard myself to understand!
+
+          "Sometimes I think I'm too lenient. Sometimes I
+          think I'm too strict. Sometimes I'm so worried for
+          fear they'll think me too young and inexperienced,
+          that I don't dare to act myself at all--then I'm
+          stiffly dignified in a way that I know must be
+          horrid.
+
+          "After all, I think the whole secret of the matter
+          is--that I'm afraid. If once I could have a
+          confident assurance that I _am_ doing well, and
+          that I _am_ winning out--I think I should win out.
+          I do, truly!
+
+          "And now I must stop and go to work. I'm in the
+          grove, back of the schoolhouse. I often bring my
+          papers here to correct. I have them with me
+          to-night; but--I've been writing to you instead of
+          working. I'll finish this later. But, really,
+          already I feel a little better. It's done me good,
+          just to say things to you. Of course, to no one
+          else could I--"
+
+There was a little more, but Genevieve stopped here. Not until she read
+that last sentence did she realize in the least what she was doing.
+Then, hurriedly, with flushed cheeks and shamed eyes, she thrust the
+letter out of sight under the papers. But there was something besides
+shame in her eyes; there was a very real, and a very tender sympathy
+for--folks.
+
+"And to think that I--read it," she breathed. Then, suddenly, she
+snatched up the papers again. "But she mustn't know--she _mustn't_
+know," choked the girl. "Maybe, if I run, I can get there in time and
+tuck it into her desk. I _must_ get there in time," she declared aloud,
+darting out of the house and up the street without once looking back
+toward an amazed Miss Jane, watching her from the window.
+
+As Genevieve hoped would be the case, the janitor had not finished his
+nightly duties. The great front door stood wide open, and Genevieve made
+short work of reaching her own room. As she opened that door, however,
+she paused in dismay.
+
+Miss Hart was in her chair. Her arms lay folded on the desk before her,
+and her face was hidden in them.
+
+The knob under Genevieve's nerveless fingers clicked sharply, and Miss
+Hart raised her head with a start.
+
+During the one brief moment that Genevieve gazed into her teacher's
+startled eyes, wild plans raced through her mind: she would run; she
+would go to her own desk and leave the papers, then destroy the fateful
+letter to-morrow; she would walk up and hand the letter to Miss Hart
+now, and confess that she had read it; she would--
+
+"Why, Genevieve!" cried Miss Hart, a little huskily. "Did you--forget
+something?"
+
+"No, Miss Hart; yes--well, I mean--it isn't that I _forgot_ exactly.
+I--I didn't know," she faltered, realizing more than ever the meaning of
+the letter she had just read, now that the wistful-eyed writer of it sat
+before her, bearing plain evidence of tears.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" Miss Hart asked.
+
+Genevieve went, then, straight to the desk. The papers--with the
+letter--were rolled tightly in one hand.
+
+"No, Miss Hart, thank you; but--isn't there something that--that I can
+do for--you?" she faltered.
+
+What happened next was, to Genevieve, certainly, most disconcerting.
+Miss Hart gave one look into Genevieve's eyes, then dropped her face
+into her hands and burst into tears. At Genevieve's aghast exclamation,
+however, she raised her head determinedly and began to wipe her eyes.
+
+"There, there, my dear," she smiled brightly, winking off the tears.
+"That was very foolish and very silly of me, and you must forget all
+about it. I was a little homesick, I'm afraid, and perhaps a bit blue;
+and your eyes looked into mine so frankly and honestly, and with such a
+courageous 'I'll-try-to-help-you' look, that--that--well, you know what
+I did. But come--let us talk no more of this, my dear! Let us get out of
+this stifling room, and into the blessed out-of-doors. We'll go into the
+grove for a little walk. These four walls have been just smothering me
+all day!"
+
+Genevieve opened wide her eyes.
+
+"Why, do _you_ feel that way--too?" she asked incredulously.
+
+Miss Hart colored a little.
+
+"I'm afraid I do, my dear--though probably I ought not to have said just
+that--to you," she sighed constrainedly. "But--to tell the truth, I've
+never been able quite to see what houses were made for, I suspect, since
+I used to ask that question as a little girl. I imagine 'twas in summer,
+however, not winter, when I asked it," she finished a little
+tremulously, as they passed through the hall to the outer door.
+
+Once again Genevieve opened wide her eyes.
+
+"Did you ask that--really? Why, Father says that was one of _my_
+questions, too," she breathed rapturously. "Why, you are--you are just
+like--" with a little cough Genevieve choked off the "folks" before it
+was spoken. The word was "me" when it finally left her lips.
+
+It was a wonderful half-hour that Genevieve spent then in the grove.
+Over in the west the sun was low, and the shadows were long under the
+trees. The air was crisp, but not too crisp, if one were walking--and
+she and Miss Hart were walking. They were talking, too.
+
+They talked of birds and beasts and flowers. They talked of school and
+study, and Latin lessons that were so hard to learn when the
+out-of-doors called. They talked of the days and lessons to come; and
+they spoke--at least, Miss Hart did--of what fine work Genevieve was
+sure to do before the year was through. They did not talk, however, of
+Miss Hart's tears in the classroom, nor of Miss Hart's letter still
+tightly clutched in Genevieve's hand.
+
+Genevieve, however, had not forgotten the letter; and when she walked
+alone toward home, a little later, she wondered what she should do with
+it. To give it openly back to Miss Hart, she felt was not to be thought
+of; at the same time she doubted if in any other way she could return it
+to her now. The letter certainly had already accomplished two things:
+never again would she so misjudge Miss Hart; never again, too, would she
+let the others so misjudge her, if she could help it--and she believed
+she could help it. She should try, certainly. As for the letter--
+
+"Well, Miss," broke in Harold's slightly aggrieved voice behind her, "is
+_this_ the way you practise, and study your Latin and your French and
+your algebra and your English history?"
+
+Genevieve was too absorbed even to notice the taunt, much less to reply
+to it.
+
+"Harold," she sighed, "I wish you'd tell me something."
+
+"Certainly! You have only to command me," bowed the lad, with mock
+pomposity, as he fell into step with her.
+
+Genevieve was frowning. She did not even smile.
+
+"Harold, if you had something that belonged to somebody else, and they
+didn't know you had it and would feel dreadfully if they found out you
+had it, do you think you ought to give it back to them, and so let them
+know you had it, when all the time if they _didn't_ know you had it,
+they wouldn't care at all?"
+
+"W-w-well!" whistled Harold. "Do you mind--er--giving me that again,
+now--say, in pieces a foot long this time? If I were Cordelia I might
+give you my answer right off the handle, but--I'm not Cordelia, you
+see."
+
+Genevieve laughed a little ruefully.
+
+"There wouldn't anybody know, of course, unless I told the rest; and I
+can't tell the rest."
+
+"Maybe not," smiled Harold, oddly; "but I'll wager you'll have to be
+telling something to Miss Jane pretty quick now. I saw you when you flew
+out of the yard an hour ago, and I fancy Miss Jane must have seen you,
+too. At any rate, she's been to the door three times since, to my
+knowledge, to look for you."
+
+Genevieve clapped her hand to her lips.
+
+"Mercy! I never thought to tell them a word. I just ran."
+
+"Yes, I noticed you--ran," observed Harold, dryly.
+
+"And they always want to know just where I am," sighed Genevieve. "O
+dear! if you do something bad in order to do something good, which is
+it--bad or good?"
+
+Harold shook his head.
+
+"That's not in mine, either," he retorted whimsically. "Really, Miss,
+your questions on ethics this afternoon do you credit--but they're too
+much for me."
+
+"Well, I reckon this one is for me," sighed Genevieve again, as she came
+in sight of the house and saw Miss Jane Chick at the window. "But the
+other one--I know the answer to that. I shall burn it up," she said
+decisively, clutching even more tightly the roll of papers in her hand,
+as she turned in at the Kennedys' front walk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A TEXAS "MISSIONARY"
+
+
+October passed and November came. School was decidedly more bearable
+now, in the opinion of Genevieve, perhaps because it was a rainy month;
+but Genevieve preferred to think it was because of Miss Hart. It was
+strange, really, how much Miss Hart had improved as a teacher!--all the
+school agreed to that. Even Tilly ceased to call her "Hartless."
+
+"Maybe she came in a jolly box, after all," Harold said one day to
+Genevieve; but Genevieve tossed her head.
+
+"Pooh! She wasn't in any box at all, Harold. She's--_folks_!" And Harold
+saw that, in spite of the lightness of her words, there were almost
+tears in Genevieve's eyes.
+
+Presidential duties, too, were easier for Genevieve now. They proved to
+be, in fact, very far from arduous; and, as Tilly declared, they were,
+indeed, "dreadfully honorable."
+
+As correspondent for the school magazine Genevieve did not feel herself
+to be a success. She wrote few items, and sent in even fewer.
+
+Those she did write represented hours of labor, however; for she felt
+that the weight of nations lay on every word, and she wrote and rewrote
+the poor little sentences until every vestige of naturalness and of
+spontaneity were taken out of them. Such information as she could gather
+seemed always, in her eyes, either too frivolous to be worth notice, or
+too serious to be of interest. And ever before her frightened eyes
+loomed the bugbear of PRINT.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was during the short vacation of three days at Thanksgiving time that
+Nancy, the second girl at the Kennedys', came to the parlor door one
+afternoon and interrupted Genevieve's practising.
+
+"Miss Genevieve, I do be hatin' ter tell ye," she began indignantly,
+"but there's a man at the side door on horseback what is insistin' on
+seein' of ye; and Mis' Kennedy and Miss Jane ain't home from town yet."
+
+"Why, Nancy, who is the man?"
+
+"I ain't sayin' that I know, Miss, but I do say that he is powerful
+rough-lookin' to come to the likes o' this house a-claimin' he's Mis'
+Granger's cousin, as he does."
+
+"Reddy! Why, of course I'll see Reddy," cried Genevieve, springing to
+her feet.
+
+A minute later, to Nancy's vast displeasure, Genevieve was ushering into
+the sitting room a sandy-haired man in full cowboy costume from
+broad-brimmed hat and flannel shirt to chaparejos and high-heeled boots.
+
+Reddy evidently saw the surprise in Genevieve's face.
+
+"Yes, I know," he smiled sheepishly, as Nancy left the room with slow
+reluctance, "I reckon you're surprised to see me in this rig, and I'll
+own I hain't wore 'em much since I came; but to-day, to come to see you,
+I just had to. You see, Miss Genevieve, it's what this 'ere rig stands
+for that I want to see you about, anyhow."
+
+"About--this--rig?"
+
+"Well, yes--in a way. It's about the West."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's Martha--Mis' Granger, my cousin. I want her to go back with me.
+She's all alone, and so am I. And she'd come in a minute, but
+she's--afraid."
+
+"What of?"
+
+Reddy's lips twitched.
+
+"Indians and prairie fires and bucking bronchos and buffaloes. She
+thinks all of 'em run 'round loose all the time--in Texas."
+
+Genevieve laughed merrily.
+
+"The idea! Haven't you told her they don't?"
+
+"Oh, yes; and I've come to see if _you_ won't tell her."
+
+"I!"
+
+"Yes. She thinks I'm a man and rough anyhow, so I don't count. _Would_
+you be willing to come and talk Texas to her?"
+
+"Why, of course I will," cried Genevieve. "I'll come right away to-day,
+after I've finished my hour."
+
+"Thank you," sighed Reddy, rising to his feet. "Now I'll hit the trail
+for Texas inside of a month--you see if I don't! What _you_ say will
+go."
+
+"Oh, but don't be too sure of that, Reddy," frowned Genevieve,
+anxiously.
+
+"I ain't. I'm just _sure_--and that's all right," retorted Reddy,
+cheerfully. "And mighty glad I shall be to get there, too! I'd be plum
+locoed here in another month. You see, I've got some money now, and I
+know a nice little place I can buy cheap, to start in for myself.
+Martha'll take Jim Small's girl, 'Mandy, for company and to help. You
+see we've got her already roped."
+
+"She wants to go, then?"
+
+"Dyin' to. It all depends on you now, Miss Genevieve."
+
+"All right; I'll be there," promised the girl, laughingly, as Reddy,
+watched by Nancy's disapproving eyes from the kitchen window, swung
+himself into the saddle and galloped down the driveway.
+
+A little later Genevieve met Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick at the foot of
+the front walk.
+
+"I've taken my music lesson and done my hour, and I'm off on missionary
+work now," she beamed brightly. "I knew you'd let me go, so I didn't
+wait till you came home."
+
+"Missionary work?" frowned Miss Chick.
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" questioned Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+Genevieve chuckled.
+
+"It's to teach Mrs. Granger that Texas has something besides bucking
+bronchos and prairie fires. You see, Reddy wants to take her West, and
+she's afraid. She thinks those things, and Indians and buffaloes, are
+all that grow there. So I'm going to tell her a thing or two," she
+finished with a nod and a smile.
+
+Just how successful Genevieve was with her missionary work perhaps she
+herself did not realize until nearly a fortnight later, when Cordelia
+Wilson overtook her on the way to school one morning.
+
+"Genevieve, Genevieve, please," panted Cordelia. "I want you to do some
+missionary work for me! Will you?"
+
+Genevieve turned in surprise.
+
+"'Missionary work!' What _do_ you mean?"
+
+Cordelia laughed and colored.
+
+"Well, it's what you did for Mrs. Granger. Reddy told me. He said you
+called it missionary work--and that _'twas_ missionary work, too. You
+know they're to start next week, and they're all so happy over it!"
+
+"Yes, I know," nodded Genevieve; "and I'm so glad!"
+
+"So am I," sighed the other, fervently. "You see, Reddy being my find,
+so, I felt responsible; and of course I ought to feel that way, too.
+Just think--what if they weren't happy over it!"
+
+"But they are," smiled Genevieve. "What's the use of 'if-ing' a thing
+when it just _is_ already?"
+
+"What?" Cordelia's eyes were slightly puzzled. "Oh, I see," she laughed.
+"What a funny way you do have of putting things, Genevieve Hartley! Why
+don't you say such things as that in your notes for the magazine?"
+
+"In the magazine?--mercy! Why, Cordelia, they're _printed_!"
+
+"Well, what of it?" maintained Cordelia.
+
+"What of what?" chirped a new voice; and Tilly Mack hurried up from
+behind them.
+
+Cordelia looked plainly disappointed; but Genevieve turned with a light
+laugh.
+
+"My magazine notes, Tilly. Cordelia doesn't like them," she explained.
+
+"Oh, but Genevieve, it's only that I want you to write as you talk,"
+supplemented Cordelia, in distress.
+
+"Well, I don't know. I'm sure--aren't they true?" bridled Genevieve.
+
+"True!" giggled Tilly, suddenly. "Oh, yes, they're true, just as 'c-a-t
+spells cat' is true--and they sound just about like that, too, Genevieve
+Hartley, and you know it."
+
+"Humph! I like that," bridled Genevieve, again.
+
+"Oh, Tilly, she writes lovely notes--you know she does," championed
+Cordelia, almost tearfully.
+
+"No, I don't write lovely notes," disputed Genevieve, with unexpected
+frankness. "They're just like Tilly says they are, and they're horrid. I
+_do_ say 'c-a-t spells cat' every time--but I simply can't seem to say
+anything else!"
+
+"But why don't you write as you talk?" argued Tilly.
+
+"Or as you do in the Chronicles?" added Cordelia. "You write just
+beautifully there."
+
+"But, Cordelia, that isn't _printed_," cried Genevieve, again, as they
+came in sight of the school building and saw Elsie Martin coming to meet
+them.
+
+At the doorway of the classroom Cordelia whispered to Genevieve:
+
+"Please wait after school for me. I'll tell you then--about the
+missionary work, you know." And Genevieve nodded assent.
+
+Once or twice during the day, Genevieve wondered what Cordelia's
+missionary work could be; but for the most part study and recitation
+filled her thoughts and time. Mid-year examinations were approaching,
+and, in spite of the fact that she had been doing much better work for
+the last month, she felt by no means sure of herself for the dreaded
+ordeal. It was of this she was thinking when she met Cordelia according
+to agreement at the close of the short afternoon session.
+
+"Here I am, dear," she sighed; "but, really, I reckon _I'm_ the one that
+needs the missionary work if any one does--with those horrid exams
+looming up before me."
+
+"Oh, but you've been doing such splendid work--lately!" cried Cordelia.
+
+"Thank you," retorted Genevieve, wrinkling up her nose saucily at the
+pause before the "lately." "I perceive you still know how to tell the
+truth, Miss!"
+
+"Genevieve!" protested Cordelia.
+
+"Oh, then you mean it wasn't the truth," bantered her friend.
+
+"Genevieve!" groaned Cordelia, hopelessly.
+
+"There, there, never mind," laughed the other. "Come, we must be running
+along; then you shall tell me all about this wonderful missionary work
+of yours. What is it?"
+
+"Well, it--it's about another of my--my finds."
+
+"Oh, your lost people?"
+
+"Yes. It's John Sanborn, Hermit Joe's son, you know. He wants to go West
+and take his father."
+
+"Well, can't he? Or doesn't his father want to? Maybe you want me to go
+and tell Hermit Joe not to be afraid of bronchos and buffaloes," laughed
+Genevieve.
+
+A swift color stole into Cordelia's face.
+
+"No; Hermit Joe wants to go."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+Cordelia laughed shyly.
+
+"Well, it--it's a lady, Genevieve."
+
+"A lady! Why, Hermit Joe and his son haven't any--any women or cousins,
+have they?"
+
+"No; but--but they want one," admitted Cordelia, a little breathlessly.
+
+Genevieve stopped short.
+
+"Cordelia, what _are_ you talking about?" she demanded.
+
+Cordelia laughed softly, but she grew suddenly very pink indeed, and she
+clasped her hands rapturously.
+
+"I'll tell you, Genevieve. I've been just longing to tell you, every
+minute. It's the loveliest thing--just like a book! It seems Hermit
+Joe's son, years ago, before he ran away, had a sweetheart, Miss Sally
+Hunt."
+
+"That little old maid on Hunt's Hill? She's a dear, I think!"
+
+"Yes; but she wasn't old then, you know. She was young, and so pretty!
+She showed me her picture, once--how she looked then."
+
+"Yes, yes--go on!"
+
+"Well, they were sweethearts, but they had a quarrel or something,
+and--anyhow, Mr. John Sanborn ran away."
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+"Twenty years; and now he's back, and they've made everything all up
+lovely, and he wants to marry her and take her West."
+
+"Oh-h!" breathed Genevieve. "It _is_ just like a story; isn't it? And
+didn't it turn out lovely!"
+
+"Y-yes, only it hasn't turned out yet."
+
+"What's the matter? I thought you said they'd made it all up!"
+
+"They have. She'll marry him; but she--she's afraid of Texas, too, just
+as Mrs. Granger was, I guess."
+
+"Oh, I see," cried Genevieve. "Pooh! We'll fix that in no time,"
+finished the Texas "missionary," with confidence.
+
+"There, I knew you would," sighed her friend, blissfully. "You see, I
+specially wanted Miss Sally to be happy, because I couldn't find--"
+Cordelia caught herself up in time. She must not, of course, tell
+Genevieve about Sally Hunt's lost brother whom she had failed to find.
+"Well, you know, anyway, Sally Hunt is very poor," she explained
+hastily; "and everybody said, when we went to Texas last summer, that
+she'd have to go to the Poor Farm soon, if something wasn't done. So
+I'm specially glad to have her happy, and--" Cordelia stopped, and
+turned to Genevieve with a new look in her eyes.
+
+"Genevieve, I've just remembered," she cried. "At the ranch last summer,
+when I was talking to Mr. Jonathan Edwards and didn't know his name was
+'Sanborn'--I've just remembered that I told him about Miss Sally, and
+how she'd have to go to the Poor Farm. Genevieve, I'm sure--I just know
+that's one reason why he came home!"
+
+"Of course it was," agreed Genevieve, excitedly; "and we'll go straight
+up there now, if Aunt Julia'll let us; only--" her face fell--"Cordelia,
+when _shall_ I get in my studying?"
+
+"To-night, Genevieve; you must study to-night," answered Cordelia,
+firmly. "You mustn't sacrifice your studies, even for missionary work.
+Uncle always says it isn't right to send money to the heathen when your
+own child is hungry; and I'm sure this is the same thing. Maybe we can
+go Saturday morning, though," she finished hopefully.
+
+"I'm sure we can," declared Genevieve; "and I'm just as excited as I can
+be. I just love missionary work," she exulted, as she waved her hand in
+farewell, at her street corner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GENEVIEVE GOES TO BOSTON
+
+
+December was a busy month, indeed. To Genevieve it seemed actually to be
+one whirl of study, lessons, practice, and examinations, leaving oh, so
+little time for Christmas gifts and plans.
+
+A big box was to go to the Six Star Ranch, and a smaller one to
+Quentina. But, better than all, Mr. Jones was to have a letter from Mrs.
+Kennedy which would--Genevieve was sure--carry a wonderful happiness to
+Quentina. Mrs. Kennedy was to ask Mr. Jones to let Quentina come to
+Sunbridge to school the next winter, and share Genevieve's room, as Mrs.
+Kennedy's guest. All other expenses, railroad fare, school supplies, and
+any special instruction, were to be met by Mr. Hartley through Genevieve
+herself.
+
+All this, of course, Genevieve had not brought about without many
+letters to Mr. Hartley, and many talks with Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick,
+wherein all sorts of pleadings and promises had a part. But it had been
+done at last, and the letter was to go in the Christmas box--but of all
+this the Happy Hexagons were not to know until the answer from Mr.
+Jones came. Naturally, however, Genevieve could not keep all her
+attention on her studies that month, in spite of the coming
+examinations.
+
+There was, too, more than one visit to the gentle spinster on Hunt's
+Hill before Genevieve quite succeeded in convincing Miss Sally that
+there _were_ places in Texas where wild Indians did not prowl, nor wild
+horses race neck and neck across vast deserts of loneliness. At last,
+however, she had the satisfaction of hearing from John Sanborn's own
+grateful lips that everything was all right, and that the wedding day
+was set for April the tenth.
+
+In the midst of all this came the dreaded examinations, then the fearful
+waiting till the last day of school when the decision would be
+announced. The winter before, at these mid-year examinations, Genevieve
+had not passed. She had not forgotten the mortification of that tragedy,
+nor the weary weeks of study that had been necessary to enable her to go
+on with her class. So she, of all the girls now, was awaiting the
+verdict with special anxiety. Meanwhile, all the Happy Hexagons were
+spending every available minute on Christmas gifts.
+
+It was just a week before Christmas Day that Genevieve was surprised to
+receive a hurried after-school call from Cordelia.
+
+"Genevieve--quick!" panted Cordelia, dropping herself into the first
+chair she came to. "Can't we do something? We _must_ do something!"
+
+"Of course we can," laughed Genevieve, promptly; "but--what about?"
+
+Cordelia gave a faint smile.
+
+"Yes, I know; I wasn't very explicit," she sighed. "But, listen. You
+know--or maybe you didn't know--but the Missionary Society have been
+packing a barrel to go West. They're at the church this afternoon,
+packing it; but they didn't have half enough, and they sent down to the
+parsonage to know if Aunt Mary hadn't something more--some old clothes
+of the children's, or old magazines, or anything. Auntie's sick to-day
+with an awful cold, but she went up attic and hunted up all she could;
+then after I got home from school she asked me to take them down to the
+church."
+
+"Yes, go on," prompted Genevieve, as Cordelia paused for breath.
+
+"Well, I took them; and, Genevieve, what do you think?"--Cordelia's
+voice was tragic--"that missionary barrel was going to the Rev. Luke
+Jones, Bolo, Texas. _Our_ Mr. Jones,--Quentina!"
+
+"Cordelia! Really?"
+
+"Yes. You know they told us they got them from our church sometimes.
+And, Genevieve, it was awful--that barrel! It looked just like the other
+one, the one they got while we were there that day--old shoes and
+dolls, and _homely_ things!"
+
+"Oh, Cordelia! What did you do?"
+
+Cordelia drew in her breath with a little gasp.
+
+"I don't know. I talked. I said things--awful things. I know they were
+awful things from the looks of some of their faces. And at the last Mrs.
+Johnson--you _know_ how she can be sometimes!--she--she just snapped
+out: 'Very well, Miss Cordelia, if you are not satisfied with what we
+have been able to procure after weeks of hard work, suppose you go out
+yourself and solicit gifts for your friends!' And, Genevieve, I said I
+would. And I turned 'round and marched out. And now--now--what _shall_
+we do?"
+
+Genevieve sprang to her feet.
+
+"Do? Why, we'll do it, of course," she cried.
+
+"But, Genevieve, I'm so scared. What if folks won't give--anything?
+Those women worked weeks--they said they did--for what they've got!"
+
+"But folks _will_ give," declared Genevieve, with prompt confidence.
+"Now wait. I'll have to tell Aunt Julia where I'm going, then I'll be
+back ready to start," she finished, as she whisked out of the room.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve, you're always so comfortingly _sure_," sighed Cordelia
+to the door through which her friend had just sped.
+
+During the next two hours Sunbridge, as represented by many of its most
+staid and stately homes, received the surprise of its life--a surprise
+that sent hitherto complacently contented women scurrying into attics
+and closets, and stirred reputedly miserly men into thrusting hands into
+inside pockets for spare bills.
+
+Perhaps it was the sight of the eager young faces, alight with generous
+enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the pathos of the story of one missionary
+barrel as told by girlish lips trembling with feeling. Perhaps it was
+just the novelty of receiving so direct, and so confident an appeal for
+"something you'd like to have given to you, you know." Perhaps it was a
+little of all three that worked the miracle. At all events, in the
+church parlor some time later, a little band of excited, marveling women
+worked until far into the evening packing a missionary barrel for the
+Rev. Luke Jones. And when it left their hands, there was in it the
+pretty dress for the minister's wife, the unworn underclothing for the
+minister's boys, the fresh hair-ribbons for the minister's daughter, and
+the serviceable coat for the minister himself, to say nothing of
+uncounted books, games, and household articles of a worth and
+desirability likely to make a missionary minister's family exclaim with
+surprise and delight--until they found the generous roll of bills in the
+minister's coat pocket, when they would be dumb with a great wave of
+reverent gratitude to a God who could make human hearts so kind.
+
+"There!" sighed Genevieve, when she and Cordelia had left their last
+parcels at the church door. "I reckon we've got something different for
+that barrel now--but we'll never let Quentina know, _never_--that we had
+a thing to do with packing it."
+
+"No; but I guess she'll suspect it, though," returned Cordelia, with a
+teary smile. "But, oh, Genevieve, didn't they give just splendidly!"
+
+"I knew they would," declared Genevieve, "if they just understood."
+
+"Well, then, I wish they'd--understand oftener," sighed Cordelia, as she
+turned down her street.
+
+Two days later the Happy Hexagons were holding a hurried meeting at the
+parsonage after school. It was the night before the last day of the
+term, and they were all trying to work at once on the sofa pillow they
+had planned to give Miss Hart. Cordelia was making the tassel for one
+corner, and Alma Lane one for another. The other two tassels were being
+sewed on by Elsie and Bertha. Tilly was writing the card to go with it,
+and Genevieve was holding the paper and ribbon with which to do it up.
+
+"I'm going to do as Miss Jane does, next year," sighed Genevieve, at
+last.
+
+"And what does Miss Jane do?" asked Tilly.
+
+"Begins in January to get ready for Christmas. Now I've got exactly
+seventy-nine and one things to do before next Tuesday--and to-day is
+Thursday."
+
+"You must have spent part of your valuable time counting them," teased
+Tilly, "to have figured them down so fine as that."
+
+"Seventy-nine and one are eighty," observed Cordelia, with a little
+frown. "Why didn't you say eighty to begin with, Genevieve?"
+
+"Because she wanted to give your brain something to do, too," explained
+Tilly, wearing an exaggeratedly innocent air.
+
+"Tilly!" scolded Genevieve. But Tilly only laughed, and Cordelia forgot
+her question with the last stitch she put into her tassel.
+
+The pillow was given to Miss Hart the next day, and, apparently, made
+the lady very happy. Nor was Miss Hart the only one that was made happy
+that day. Genevieve, and in fact, all the Happy Hexagons, together with
+O. B. J. Holmes and nearly all the rest of the class, knew before night
+that they had "passed"--which is no small thing to know, when for days
+you have worried and for nights you have dreamed about the dreadful
+alternative of a contrary verdict.
+
+With Miss Jane Chick, Genevieve went to Boston shopping, Saturday,
+coming back tired, but happy, and all aglow with the holiday rush and
+color of the crowded streets and stores. On Sunday came the beautiful
+Christmas service, which Mr. Wilson made very impressive. Certainly it
+touched Genevieve's heart deeply, as she sat by Mrs. Kennedy's side and
+listened to it. It seemed so easy to Genevieve, at that moment, always
+to be good and brave and true--always to be thoughtful of others'
+wishes--never to be heedless, careless, or impulsively reckless of
+consequences!
+
+It was snowing when she left the church, and it snowed hard all the
+afternoon and until far into the night. Genevieve awoke to look out on a
+spotlessly white, crystal-pure world, with every ugly line and dreary
+prospect changed into fairylike beauty.
+
+"Oh--oh--oh, isn't it lovely!" she exclaimed, as she came into the
+dining-room that morning. "Don't I wish Quentina were here to see
+it--and to talk about it!"
+
+"We'll hope she will be some day," smiled Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"Anyhow, 'Here's Miss Jane at the window-pane' all ready for her,"
+chanted Genevieve, merrily, her eyes on the tall figure in the bay
+window.
+
+Miss Jane turned with a sigh.
+
+"Yes, it's very lovely, of course, Genevieve--but I must confess it
+isn't lovely to me this morning."
+
+"Why, Miss Jane!"
+
+"I had planned to go to Boston. In fact it seems as if I must go. But I
+have waked up with a sore throat and every evidence of a bad cold; and
+I'm afraid I don't dare to go--not with all this new snow on the ground
+and dampness in the air."
+
+"Couldn't I go, Miss Jane? I was going to ask to go, anyway. I find
+there are three more things I want to get, and I know I can't find them
+here."
+
+"But you have never been to Boston alone, my dear."
+
+"I suppose everybody has to have a first time," laughed Genevieve; "and
+I'm not a mite afraid. Besides, I know the way perfectly, all through
+the shopping district; and all I have to do then is just to take the car
+for the North Station and the train home. I reckon I know how to do
+_that_ all right!"
+
+Miss Jane frowned and shook her head slowly.
+
+"I know; but--I hate to let you do it, Genevieve, only I--it seems as if
+I _must_ go myself!"
+
+Mrs. Kennedy looked up reassuringly.
+
+"Indeed, Jane, I am inclined to think Genevieve can go all right," she
+smiled. "She has been to Boston now many times, you know."
+
+"There, Miss Jane!" crowed Genevieve, triumphantly. "You see! Please,
+now," she begged.
+
+Miss Jane still frowned--but a look of almost reluctant relief came to
+her eyes.
+
+"Very well," she conceded slowly. "Perhaps, my dear, I will let you go
+for me, then."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Miss Jane--besides, there are several things I want for
+myself."
+
+"Very well, dear. I have three things that must be changed, and there
+are two that I want you to buy. It seems so absurd--when I began last
+January--that there should be anything to be done to-day; but,
+unfortunately, some of my plans had to be changed at the last moment.
+You may get ready at once after breakfast, please, then come to my room.
+I'll have the list all made out for you. You'll have to bring everything
+home, of course, but they are not very heavy, and you can carry them all
+in the large hand bag, I think. You'd better take the nine-four train."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not quite half-past ten when Genevieve arrived in the great
+Boston station that morning. She glanced importantly at her pretty
+little watch, took a firmer hold on the large leather bag she carried,
+and stepped briskly off toward her car.
+
+It was delightful--this independent feeling of freedom. Even to pay her
+fare and to signal the conductor to stop were Events. Shopping, all by
+herself, was even more delightful; so she dallied over every purchase
+and every exchange as long as she could--and it was not hard to dally,
+with the crowds, the long waits, and the delays for change.
+
+At one o'clock, when in state she ate her luncheon at a pretty white
+table in a large department-store dining-room, she had not half
+finished her task. She was so glad there was still so much to do! But at
+four o'clock, when she did finish, she looked at her watch with faintly
+troubled eyes. She had not, indeed, realized that it was quite so late.
+She remembered, too, suddenly, for the first time, that Miss Chick had
+told her to come back early. She wondered--could she catch the
+four-twenty train?
+
+Stores and sidewalks were a mass of surging, thronging humanity now, and
+progress was slow and uncertain. When, at ten minutes past four, she had
+not succeeded even in reaching her car for the station, she gave up the
+four-twenty train. Well, there was one at five-fifteen, she comforted
+herself. She could surely get that.
+
+The streets were darkening fast, and lights were beginning to flash here
+and there, finding a brilliant response in tinsel stars and crystal
+pendants. With the Christmas red and green, and the thronging crowds, it
+made a pretty sight; and Genevieve stopped more than once just to look
+about her with a deep breath of delight. It was at such a time that she
+saw the small ragged boy, and the still smaller, still more ragged girl
+wistfully gazing into the fairyland of a toyshop window.
+
+"I choose the fire engine, the big red one," she heard a shrill voice
+pipe; and she looked down to see that it was the boy's blue lips that
+had uttered the words.
+
+"I d-druther have that d-doll," chattered the mite of a girl; "an' that
+teeny little bedstead an' the chair what rocks, an' the baby trunk, an'
+the doll with curly hair, an'--"
+
+"Gee! look at the autymobile," cut in the boy, excitedly. "Say, if I had
+that--"
+
+"Well, you shall have it, you poor little mite,--or one just like it,"
+cried Genevieve impulsively, sweeping the astonished children into the
+circle of her arm, and hurrying them into the store.
+
+They did not get the "autymobile" nor yet the engine nor the big doll.
+Genevieve selected them, to be sure, with blithe promptness; but when
+she took out her purse, she found she had not half money enough to pay
+for them, which mortified and disappointed her greatly.
+
+"Dear, dear!" she laughed, blushing painfully. "I'm afraid I can't
+manage it, after all, chickabiddies. That horrid money of mine has given
+out! I bought more things than I meant to, anyhow. Never mind, we'll get
+all we can," she cried, emptying her little purse on the counter, even
+shaking it to make sure no lurking penny stayed behind. "There, you'll
+have to make that do," she said to the amazed clerk behind the counter.
+"Just please give them whatever you can for that." And the clerk,
+counting out one dollar and eighty-three cents, obeyed her literally.
+
+A few minutes later, two dazed, but blissfully happy children clasping
+in their arms a motley array of toys, and a laughing, bright-faced girl
+with a tan leather bag, joined the hurrying throng on the street.
+
+"Good-by, chickabiddies, and good luck to you," called Genevieve, waving
+her hand in farewell to the children, as she spied her car in the
+distance.
+
+"Poor little midgets!" thought Genevieve, as she stepped on to the car;
+"I don't think now they really believe they've got those things. But I
+do wish I could have bought all those first things they selected!" A
+moment later she took out her purse to pay her fare.
+
+The conductor, coming toward her just then, saw her face turn red, then
+white. The next minute she was on her feet, hurrying toward him.
+
+"Fare, please," he said mechanically, holding out his hand.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I--I don't want this car," she stammered faintly. "If you'll--stop,
+please." A moment later she rushed blindly through the door and down the
+steps to the street.
+
+Genevieve was thoroughly angry, and very much ashamed.
+
+"Now I reckon I've done it," she muttered half aloud. "No wonder they
+say I never stop to think! Seems to me I might have thought to save a
+nickel for my car-fare, though! Never mind, I'll walk it. Serves me
+right, anyhow, I reckon!" And determinedly she turned toward a woman
+near her and asked the way to the North Station.
+
+It would be something of a walk, the woman said, as she gave directions;
+but Genevieve declared she did not mind that. Very courageously,
+therefore, she turned a corner and began to thread her way among the
+crowd.
+
+She was laughing now. This thing was something of a joke, after all.
+Still, she was rather sorry it had happened--on Miss Jane's errand. She
+would be late home, too. (She pulled aside the lapel of her coat and
+glanced at her watch.) Five o'clock, already! It would be late, indeed,
+if she could not catch the five-fifteen! Still, there must be other
+trains, of course, and it took only an hour and twenty minutes to go--
+
+Genevieve stopped with a little cry of dismay. She remembered now that
+she had used the last of the commutation tickets. Miss Jane had told her
+to get a single-fare ticket for the return trip. And now--pray, how was
+one to buy any sort of fare without any money?
+
+A hurrying man jostled her, and Genevieve stepped into a doorway to
+think. Across the street a blue-bell-sign caught her attention, and sent
+a swift light to her eye.
+
+[Illustration: "IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A WALK, THE WOMAN SAID, AS SHE
+GAVE DIRECTIONS"]
+
+Why, of course! She would telephone for Aunt Julia to send Nancy or
+somebody in with some money. Why had she not thought of it before?
+
+She had pushed her way half across the crowded street when it occurred
+to her that she needed money to pay the telephone toll.
+
+"I never saw such a place! It takes money to do everything! I just hate
+cities," she stormed hotly--then jumped just in time to escape the
+wheels of a swiftly-moving automobile.
+
+Safely back in the doorway, she tried to think once more. Then, slowly,
+she began to retrace her steps toward the corner from which she had
+started.
+
+The crowds were just as gay, the Christmas reds and greens just as
+brilliant, and the tinsel stars and crystal pendants were just as
+sparkling; but Genevieve did not even look at them now. She was tired,
+ashamed, and thoroughly frightened. The bag, too, began to seem woefully
+full, and her stomach correspondingly empty.
+
+Curiously enough, after a time, the Christmas service of the day before
+rang in her ears. It seemed so far away now. And yet--it was only
+yesterday that she had been promising herself never again to be
+thoughtless, heedless, or impulsively reckless of consequences. And
+now--
+
+Suddenly she almost smiled. She was thinking of her question to Harold:
+
+"If you do something bad to do something good, which is it, good or
+bad?"
+
+One by one the minutes passed. It grew darker and colder. At times
+Genevieve walked on aimlessly. At others, she stood one side, watching
+the crowds, hoping to find some man or woman whom she could dare to ask
+for money. But her cheeks burned at the thought, and she never saw the
+man or woman whom she wanted to ask--for money. That the blue-coated man
+at the street-crossing might help her, never occurred to Genevieve.
+Genevieve knew policemen only as vaguely dreadful creatures connected
+with jails and arrests.
+
+In time it came to be quite dark. Genevieve wondered what would become
+of her--by midnight. People did not starve or die, she supposed, in
+Boston streets--not when the streets were as bright as these. But she
+_must_ get to Sunbridge. _Sunbridge!_ How worried they must be about her
+now in Sunbridge, and how she wished she were there! She would be glad
+to see even Miss Jane's severest frown--if she could see Miss Jane, too!
+
+It was six o'clock when Genevieve suddenly remembered Mr. and Mrs.
+Thomas Butterfield. She wondered then how it was possible that she had
+forgotten them so long.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield were two friends of Mrs. Kennedy's not
+very far from sixty years old. They lived in a quaint old house on Mt.
+Vernon Street, on top of Beacon Hill--Genevieve thought she remembered
+the number. She remembered the house very well, for she had called
+there twice with Mrs. Kennedy the winter before.
+
+It was with a glad little cry that Genevieve now turned to the first
+woman she met and asked the way to Mt. Vernon Street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the somber Butterfield dining-room on Mt. Vernon Street, Mr. and Mrs.
+Thomas Butterfield had almost finished dinner, when their pompous,
+plainly scandalized butler, standing beneath the severest of the severe
+Butterfield portraits, announced stiffly:
+
+"There's a young person at the door, ma'am, with a bag. She says she
+knows you, if you'll see her, please."
+
+One minute later, the astonished Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield caught
+in their arms a white-faced, almost fainting girl, who had sobbed out:
+
+"Please, won't you give me a little money and some supper, and telephone
+to Aunt Julia!"
+
+Seven minutes later Mr. Thomas Butterfield had Mrs. Kennedy at the other
+end of the wire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A BROWN DRESS FOR ELSIE
+
+
+Christmas, for Genevieve, was not a happy time that year; and when the
+day was over she tried to forget it as soon as possible.
+
+She had stayed all night with the Butterfields--which had not been
+unalloyed joy; for, though they obviously tried to be kind to her, yet
+they could not help showing that they regarded her sudden appearance
+among them, dinnerless and moneyless, as most extraordinary, and
+certainly very upsetting to the equanimity of a well-ordered household.
+
+In the morning she went back to Sunbridge. At the house she found Miss
+Chick ill. Her cold, and her fright over Genevieve, had sent her into a
+high fever; and Mrs. Kennedy was scarcely less ill herself.
+
+Certainly it was not exactly a cheerful Christmas Day for the one whose
+heedlessness had brought it all about. But Genevieve mourned so
+bitterly, and blamed herself so strongly, that at last, out of sheer
+pity, Mrs. Kennedy, and even Miss Jane Chick, had to turn comforter;
+for--as Mrs. Kennedy reminded her sister--it was, after all, aside from
+her thoughtless lack of haste, only Genevieve's unselfish forgetfulness
+of her own possible wants that led to the whole thing. Then, and not
+until then, did Genevieve bestow some attention upon her Christmas
+presents, of which there were a generous number.
+
+Fortunately no one outside the house had known of Genevieve's
+nonappearance that Christmas Eve, so she was spared any curious
+questions and interested comments from others of the Happy Hexagons.
+
+The short Christmas vacation sped rapidly. The young people spent much
+of it on the river, skating, when the ice was good. Genevieve, it is
+true, was not often seen there. Genevieve was playing nurse these days,
+and so devotedly attentive to Miss Jane Chick was she, that both the
+ladies had almost to scold her, in order to make her take needed
+exercise. Even Harold Day reproached her one morning, when he met her
+coming from the post-office.
+
+"You don't let any of us see anything of you--not anything," he
+complained. "And you look as if you were doing penance, or
+something--you've got such a superior expression!"
+
+Genevieve dimpled into a sudden laugh.
+
+"Maybe I am," she retorted. "Maybe I did something bad so I could do
+something good; and now I'm trying to do enough good to take out all the
+taste of the bad."
+
+"Well, what do you mean by that, Miss Mystery?"
+
+She would not tell him. She only shook her head saucily, and ran into
+the house.
+
+By New Year's Day Miss Jane seemed almost like her old self, and
+Genevieve was specially happy, for on that night Harold Day gave the
+first dance of the season; and, with Miss Jane better, and her own heart
+lighter once more, she could give herself up to full enjoyment of the
+music, fun, and laughter.
+
+All the Happy Hexagons were there, together with O. B. J. Holmes,
+Charlie Brown, and many other of the young people, including even Tilly
+Mack's big brother, Howard, who--though quite twenty-one--was a prime
+favorite with the Happy Hexagons.
+
+Genevieve was wonderfully happy that evening. Never had the music
+sounded so entrancing; never had her own feet felt so light. With Harold
+she "opened the ball," as Tilly airily termed it; then Charlie and O. B.
+J. had their turn.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve, you do look just too sweet for anything in that pale
+pink," panted Elsie, stopping at her side between dances.
+
+"Not any sweeter than you do in that white," tossed back Genevieve,
+affectionately.
+
+Elsie sighed.
+
+"I love this white, too, but it's got kind of frazzled now. Aunt Kate
+says she is going to make over Fannie's brown silk for Miss Sally's
+wedding," she went on, sighing again.
+
+"I'm sure that will be nice," rejoined Genevieve, with hasty politeness.
+
+"Y-yes," admitted Elsie; "only brown sounds kind of hot for April.
+Still, I suppose I ought not to mind. Just one girl wore it, anyhow, so
+it'll be faded even, and I sha'n't look like two folks in it," she
+finished wistfully, as Howard Mack came up to claim his dance with
+Genevieve.
+
+It was three days after the party that there came a letter from Mr.
+Jones in reply to Mrs. Kennedy's Christmas note. It was a very grateful
+letter, but it was a disappointing one. It said that Mr. Jones did not
+see how he could let Quentina accept the kind invitation of Mrs. Kennedy
+and Genevieve. All the way through it, very plainly was shown the
+longing of a man who desires advantages for his daughter, and the pride
+of one who cannot bear that outsiders should give them to her.
+
+Mrs. Kennedy saw this--and wrote another letter. In due time came the
+answer; and again Genevieve almost cried with disappointment. But Mrs.
+Kennedy smiled and comforted her.
+
+"Yes, he says 'no,' I'll admit, Genevieve; but I don't think it's quite
+so strong a 'no' as it was before. One of these days I think I'll write
+Mr. Jones another letter, my dear--but not just now. We'll let him
+think a little--of how good it would have been for Quentina if he'd said
+'yes.'"
+
+Genevieve gave Mrs. Kennedy a big hug.
+
+"Aunt Julia, you're a dear, and a veritable Solomon for wisdom. I'm
+going to write at once to the President, too. Your place is in the
+diplomatic service, I'm sure," she finished, as she danced from the
+room.
+
+As January passed and February came, a new subject came uppermost in the
+thoughts of the Hexagon Club. For the first time in years there was to
+be a prize contest in the Sunbridge High School. The principal, Mr.
+Jackson, was to give a five-dollar gold piece to the writer of the best
+essay, subject to be chosen by the author.
+
+"Well, I sha'n't try for it," announced Tilly on a Saturday afternoon
+late in February, as the Hexagon Club were holding their regular meeting
+at the parsonage.
+
+"Why not?" asked Elsie.
+
+"Because I don't like defeat well enough," retorted Tilly. "Imagine _me_
+winning a prize contest!"
+
+"Oh, I shall try," almost groaned Cordelia. "I shall always try for
+things, I suppose, till I die. I think I ought to; but of course I
+sha'n't win it. Dear me! How I would love to, though," she cried, almost
+under her breath.
+
+Genevieve, looking at her momentarily illumined face, was conscious of
+a sudden fierce wish that Cordelia might win that prize.
+
+"Genevieve, of course, will try," she heard Tilly's teasing voice say,
+then. "Genevieve loves to write, so!"
+
+Genevieve turned with a laugh, and an uptilted chin.
+
+"I take it, Miss Mack, that your very complimentary remarks refer to my
+magazine notes; but just let me assure you that this prize essay is
+quite another matter. _That_ isn't _printed_!"
+
+"Then you _are_ going to try?--of course you are," interposed Bertha.
+
+Genevieve laughed lightly as she reached for a piece of fudge.
+
+"I suppose so. I'm afraid everybody will expect me to. Aunt Julia has
+already expressed her opinion of the matter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+February passed, and March came. A new topic of conversation now arose,
+specially of interest to the Hexagon Club. Miss Sally was to be married
+early in April, and the Happy Hexagons were to be bridesmaids.
+Naturally, even the new prize contest had to step one side for that
+month, in the minds of the six joyously excited girls.
+
+It was on a particularly windy Saturday toward the end of the month,
+that Cordelia literally blew up to the Kennedys' front door and rang the
+bell.
+
+Genevieve herself, passing through the hall, opened the door.
+
+"Br-r-r!" she laughed, as she banged the door shut after admitting the
+whirling draperies from which Cordelia's anxious little face finally
+emerged. "Why, Cordelia!"
+
+"Yes, I know; I'm going to be at the club this afternoon, of course,"
+panted Cordelia; "but this is for something I wanted to say to you--and
+I knew there wouldn't be a chance this afternoon. It--it's private,
+Genevieve."
+
+"Good! I love secrets. Come into the sitting room. There's no one there
+this morning. Now, what is it?" she demanded, as soon as Cordelia's coat
+was off, and they were comfortably seated.
+
+"It--I suppose you might call it missionary work, Genevieve," smiled
+Cordelia, wistfully.
+
+"_More_ missionary work? Who in the world wants to go to Texas now?"
+laughed Genevieve.
+
+"Nobody. It isn't Texas at all. It's--Elsie."
+
+"Elsie!"
+
+"Yes. Of course, dear, I don't know as you can do anything; but you've
+done so many things, and I'm sure if you could, it _would_ be missionary
+work of the very nicest kind."
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?"
+
+Cordelia drew a long sigh.
+
+"I'll tell you. You know the rest of us bridesmaids are all going to
+wear white, but--but Elsie's got to wear Fannie's brown silk."
+
+"I know," nodded Genevieve. "Elsie told me."
+
+"But, Genevieve, just think--brown silk for a bridesmaid at a wedding,
+when all the rest of us wear white! Besides, Elsie says brown is so
+hot-looking for April. She feels awfully about it."
+
+"Can't she do something? I should think she'd tell her aunt."
+
+"She has. But her aunt doesn't seem to understand. She says that the
+brown silk is whole and good, and far too valuable to throw away; and
+that it's all just Elsie's notion that she'd rather wear white."
+
+"Oh, but if she'd only understand!"
+
+"But that's just it--she doesn't understand. And it isn't as if they
+were poor," argued Cordelia, earnestly. "Now auntie has to make over
+things, of course, for me and for Edith and Rachel, and we expect it,
+and don't mind. We're all glad to be economical and help out, for we
+know it's necessary. But it's different with Elsie. She _says_ she
+wouldn't mind so, if they were poor and had to. But the Gales are real
+well off--Fannie and the twins have lots of new clothes. Poor Elsie says
+sometimes it seems as if her aunt actually bought things for them, so
+she _could_ make them over for her. Elsie says she's never so happy as
+when she's doing it, and that she makes a regular game of it--cutting
+them out and putting them together--like picture puzzles, you know."
+
+Genevieve laughed, though she frowned, too.
+
+"But what can I do?" she demanded. "I tried, once, to--to lend Elsie a
+dress; but she was horrified."
+
+"Mercy! Of course she was," shuddered Cordelia. "I don't know _what_
+Mrs. Gale would do if she knew that! They're fearfully--er--er--proud, I
+suppose you call it," hesitated the conscientious Cordelia.
+
+"But what _can_ I do?"
+
+"I don't know; but don't you suppose you could--could say something,
+somehow, to Mrs. Gale that--that would make her understand?"
+
+"Why, Cordelia Wilson, of course I couldn't," gasped Genevieve,
+indignantly. "A pretty picture I'd make going to Mrs. Gale and saying:
+'Madam, why don't you give your niece a new dress when you know she
+wants one?'"
+
+"N-no, I suppose you couldn't do that, of course," sighed the other.
+"Very likely you couldn't do anything, anyway. It's only that I
+thought--well, I knew you were going home with Elsie after school Monday
+night to study; and I didn't know but you'd get a chance to say
+something. But I suppose, after all, there won't be anything you could
+say."
+
+"No, I suppose there won't," echoed Genevieve, still plainly appalled
+at the task Cordelia had set for her.
+
+"Well, it's only that I was so sorry for Elsie," sighed Cordelia, as she
+rose to go.
+
+"Of course! I reckon we're all sorry for Elsie," sighed Genevieve in her
+turn.
+
+And she was sorry. All the rest of the morning she kept thinking how
+very sorry she was; and when afternoon came, and when she saw Elsie's
+lips quiver and her eyes fill with tears, as the others happily
+discussed whether they would wear colored sashes or white belts with
+their white dresses, Genevieve's heart quite overflowed with sympathy
+for Elsie. And she wondered if, after all, it were possible to make
+Elsie's aunt--understand. Determinedly, then, she declared to herself
+that, regardless of consequences, she would try--if she had the
+opportunity.
+
+Genevieve's opportunity came very soon after she arrived at Elsie's home
+Monday afternoon. Even Genevieve herself had to admit that she could not
+have had a better one. But so frightened was she that she wished--for a
+moment--that there were none. Then before her rose a vision of Elsie's
+tear-dimmed eyes and quivering lips--and with a quick-drawn breath
+Genevieve rose and followed Mrs. Gale to the sewing-room.
+
+"Come with me," Mrs. Gale had said to Genevieve--Genevieve had picked up
+a scrap of brown silk from the floor. "That's a piece of the dress I'm
+making for Elsie to wear to the wedding. The silly child has got a
+notion she wants white, but you'll think this is pretty, I'm sure." And
+it was then that Genevieve knew her opportunity had come.
+
+In the sewing-room Mrs. Gale proudly spread the silk dress over a
+chair-back.
+
+"There! What do you think of that?" she demanded.
+
+Genevieve's heart beat so loudly she thought Mrs. Gale must hear it.
+
+"It--it's very pretty, isn't it?" she stammered, wetting her dry lips
+and wondering what good it did to say that.
+
+"Pretty? Of course it is. It's silk, and a fine piece--I thought when I
+got it how splendidly it would make over. I'm sure any girl ought to be
+proud to wear it!"
+
+Genevieve caught her breath sharply. "Proud"--Mrs. Gale had said
+"proud"; and Cordelia had said, that morning, that Mrs. Gale herself was
+very proud, and that she would be very angry if she knew that Genevieve
+had offered Elsie a dress to wear. In a flash of inspiration, then, came
+a wild plan to Genevieve's mind. If only she had the audacity to carry
+it out!
+
+She wet her lips again, and took desperate hold of her courage. Even as
+she did so, she almost smiled--she was thinking: was this another case
+when she was doing something bad to do something good? Never mind; she
+must go through with it now. She _must_!
+
+"Yes, it is a very pretty dress, indeed," she stammered; "and it was
+Fannie's, too, wasn't it?"
+
+Mrs. Gale beamed.
+
+"Yes!--and didn't I get it out finely? You know sleeves are smaller, so
+that helped, and the breadths were so full last year! I think I never
+got a dress out better," she finished proudly.
+
+Genevieve touched the folds lightly.
+
+"And this isn't faded at all, is it?" she murmured pleasantly.
+
+"What?" Mrs. Gale's voice was a little sharp.
+
+Genevieve wet her lips twice this time before she could speak.
+
+"I say, isn't it nice that this one isn't faded? You know Elsie had such
+a time with that chambray last summer!"
+
+"What do you mean, please?" There was no doubt now about the sharpness
+in Mrs. Gale's voice.
+
+Genevieve managed a laugh--but it was not a very mirthful one.
+
+"Why, 'twas so funny, you know; it was made from the twins' dresses, and
+they weren't faded alike. It was just as Elsie said--she didn't know
+whether to turn Cora or Clara toward folks. It _was_ funny; only, of
+course it did plague poor Elsie awfully, and I felt so sorry for her."
+
+"You felt sorry--_sorry_ for _my niece_?" The voice was so very angry
+this time that Genevieve trembled. She was sure now that it was
+bad--this thing she was doing--that good might come. But she kept
+bravely on.
+
+"Why, yes, of course; all of us girls were sorry for her. You know Elsie
+does so love new dresses, and of course she doesn't have them very
+often. Last summer, when she was feeling so bad over her chambray, I--I
+offered her one of mine, but--"
+
+"You--you offered my niece one of _your_ dresses?" gasped Mrs. Gale.
+
+"Yes, but she wouldn't take it; and, of course, _that_ wasn't _new_,
+either," finished Genevieve, with what she hoped would pass for a light
+laugh as she turned away.
+
+Behind her, for a moment, there was an ominous silence. Then a very
+quiet voice said:
+
+"Thank you; but I hardly think my niece needs one of your dresses--yet,
+Miss Genevieve."
+
+Genevieve fled then, ashamed, and very near to crying.
+
+"I wouldn't have said it, of course," she whispered to herself as she
+stumbled back to the sitting-room; "I wouldn't have said it if the Gales
+had been poor and _couldn't_ have given Elsie new things to wear once in
+a while!"
+
+In the Chronicles of the Hexagon Club a fortnight later, it was Elsie
+Martin who wrote the account of Miss Sally's wedding. She wrote as
+follows:
+
+"I had a beautiful white dress for Miss Sally's wedding--a brand-new
+one. All of us girls wore white and looked so pretty--I mean, the rest
+looked pretty, of course. Miss Sally was married the tenth of April. It
+was quite a warm day, and I was so glad I did not have to wear my brown
+silk. Aunt Kate says I needn't wear it anywhere if I don't want to--and
+after all her work, too! I don't know what has got into Aunt Kate,
+anyway, lately. She doesn't seem half so interested in making over
+things, and I have three other brand-new dresses, a pink-sprigged
+muslin, and--but, dear me! This isn't telling about Miss Sally's wedding
+one bit.
+
+"She was married at four o'clock, and looked too sweet for anything in
+light gray silk with a pink carnation in her hair. Everybody went, and
+wore their best things and looked very nice. We had sandwiches and
+chicken salad and olives and three kinds of cake and ice cream for
+refreshments. The ice cream was the brick kind, different colors, like
+lovely striped ribbon.
+
+"At six o'clock they started for Boston to begin their journey West, and
+we all stood on the steps and gave them a lovely send-off with rice and
+old shoes. Just at the last minute Tilly says, 'Let's give her our
+Texas yell, and end with "Miss Sally,"' and we did. And everybody
+laughed and clapped. But not until the carriage drove off did we
+suddenly remember that she wasn't 'Miss Sally' at all any more, and we
+felt ashamed.
+
+"And that's all--except that Miss Sally's going-away gown was gray,
+too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+"WHEN SUNBRIDGE WENT TO TEXAS"
+
+
+By the first of May many of the papers for the new prize contest had
+been turned in. Genevieve's, however, had not. Genevieve was working
+very hard on her essay now. For some time she had not found a subject
+that suited her. Good subjects were not very plentiful, she decided. At
+last she had thought of the Texas trip, and had wondered if she could
+not compare Sunbridge with Texas. Aunt Julia and Miss Jane had thought
+decidedly that she could. So for some days now, she had been hard at
+work upon the paper, and was getting enthusiastically interested.
+
+All papers must be in by the sixteenth. It was on the tenth that
+Cordelia, during a recess meeting of the Hexagon Club, drew a long
+breath and turned upon her fellow members a beaming countenance.
+
+"Girls, I can't keep it a minute longer. I've got to tell you!"
+
+"Tell us what?" asked Tilly. "It must be something pretty fine to bring
+that look to your face!"
+
+Cordelia laughed and blushed; but she sighed, too.
+
+"Oh, it isn't 'fine,' Tilly, at all. I wish it were, though--but really,
+I do think it's the best thing I ever did, anyway."
+
+"What are you talking about, Cordelia Wilson?" demanded Genevieve.
+
+"Mercy! It must be pretty good if it's the _best_ thing Cordelia ever
+did," teased Bertha.
+
+"Girls, stop," begged Cordelia, in real distress. "I--I hate to tell you
+now; it sounds so foolish. It's only--my prize paper. It's all done. I'm
+going to hand it in Monday, and--and I was so pleased with the subject!"
+
+"Oh, Cordelia, what is it? You know what mine is," cried Elsie.
+
+"It's--'When Sunbridge went to Texas,'" announced Cordelia,
+breathlessly.
+
+"When--what?" cried Genevieve, almost sharply.
+
+Cordelia turned a happy face.
+
+"I knew _you'd_ like it, Genevieve," she nodded. "It's our trip, you
+know. I've told all about it--comparing things here to things there, you
+see."
+
+"Why--but, Cordelia, that's--" Genevieve paused abruptly. The pause in
+her sentence was not noticed. The girls were all talking now, begging
+Cordelia to tell them if they were "in it."
+
+"When--when did you choose your subject, Cordelia?" asked Genevieve,
+very quietly, when she could be heard.
+
+"Not until the first of May. I just couldn't seem to get anything. Then
+this came all of a sudden, and--and it just seemed to write itself, it
+was done so quickly. You see I didn't have to look up this subject."
+
+Genevieve's face cleared. It was all right, after all. _She_ had
+selected the subject a whole week before Cordelia--and of course
+Cordelia would understand.
+
+"Oh, but Cordelia, that isn't quite fair," she began impulsively; but
+for once Cordelia forgot her politeness and interrupted.
+
+"Don't you worry, Genevieve," she laughed gayly. "I've said lovely
+things of Texas. You'd know I'd do that, Genevieve, even if I do love
+Sunbridge. I did worry at first for fear somebody else had taken the
+same subject--some of you girls--you know we can't have two about the
+same thing."
+
+"But--" The bell rang for the close of recess, and again one of
+Genevieve's sentences remained unfinished.
+
+Genevieve did not stop even to speak to any of the girls after school
+that day. She went home at once. Even Harold Day, who overtook her,
+found her so absorbed in her own thoughts that she was anything but her
+usual talkative self.
+
+Once in the house, Genevieve went straight to Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"Aunt Julia, if you get a prize subject first, it's yours, isn't it?"
+she asked tremulously.
+
+"Why, y-yes, dear; I should think so."
+
+"Well, Aunt Julia, something perfectly awful has happened. Cordelia has
+got my subject."
+
+"Oh, Genevieve, I'm so sorry!" Mrs. Kennedy's face showed more than
+ordinary distress--Mrs. Kennedy had had high hopes of this prize paper.
+"Why, how did it happen?"
+
+"I don't know. I suppose it was just in the air. But _I_ got it first.
+She says she didn't think of it till May first. So of course it's--it's
+mine, Aunt Julia."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy looked very grave.
+
+"I think the rules of the contest would give it to you, Genevieve," she
+said.
+
+The girl stirred restlessly.
+
+"Of course I'm awfully sorry. She--she was going to hand it in Monday."
+
+"Oh, that is too bad!"
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"I suppose I--I'll have to tell her," murmured Genevieve, at last. "The
+club have a ride to-morrow. There'll be time--then."
+
+"Yes--if you decide to do it."
+
+Genevieve turned quickly.
+
+"But, Aunt Julia, I'll have to," she cried. "Just think of all my work!
+Mine's all done but copying, you know. And I _was_ the first to get it.
+There's no time to get another now."
+
+"No, there's no time to get another--now." Aunt Julia looked even more
+sorrowful than Genevieve just then--Aunt Julia _had_ wanted Genevieve to
+take that prize.
+
+"I'm sure that Cordelia--when she knows--" Genevieve did not finish her
+sentence.
+
+"No, indeed! Of course, if Cordelia should know--" Aunt Julia did not
+finish _her_ sentence.
+
+"But, Aunt Julia, she'll have to know," almost sobbed Genevieve.
+
+There was a long silence. Genevieve's eyes were out the window. Mrs.
+Kennedy, watching her, suddenly spoke up with careless briskness:
+
+"Of course you'll tell Cordelia that 'twas _your_ subject, that _you_
+got it first, and that _you_ want it. Very likely she won't care much,
+anyway."
+
+"Why, Aunt Julia, she will! If you could have seen her face when she
+talked of it--" Genevieve stopped abruptly. Genevieve _did_ suddenly see
+Cordelia's face as it had been that afternoon, all aglow with happiness.
+She heard her eager voice say, too: "I think it's the best thing I ever
+did!"
+
+"Oh, well, but maybe she doesn't care for the prize," observed Mrs.
+Kennedy, still carelessly.
+
+"But, Aunt Julia, she does; she--" Again Genevieve stopped abruptly. She
+was remembering now how Cordelia's face had looked that February
+afternoon at the parsonage when she had said: "Of course I sha'n't win
+it--dear me, how I would love to, though!"
+
+"But she'll understand, of course, when you tell her it's _your_ subject
+and that _you_ want it," went on Mrs. Kennedy, smoothly. Genevieve did
+not see the keen, almost fearful glances, that Mrs. Kennedy was giving
+her between the light words.
+
+"I know; but that sounds so--so--" There was a long pause; then
+Genevieve, with a quivering sigh, rose slowly and left the room.
+
+Mrs. Kennedy, for some unapparent reason, smiled--but there were tears
+in her eyes.
+
+The Hexagon Club took a long ride the next day. Five of them talked
+again of Cordelia's paper, and four begged Cordelia to tell what she had
+said about them. If Genevieve, alone, was unusually silent, nobody,
+apparently, noticed it. They were riding by themselves to-day. They had
+invited none of the boys or other girls to join them.
+
+It was when the ride was over, and when Genevieve had almost reached the
+Kennedy driveway, that she said wistfully, stroking the mare's neck:
+
+"Topsy, I just couldn't. I just couldn't! It sounded so--so--And, Topsy,
+_you_ couldn't, if you'd seen how awfully happy she looked!"
+
+"What did Cordelia say?" asked Mrs. Kennedy, when Genevieve came into
+the house a little later. There was no hint in the lady's voice of the
+hope that was in her heart.
+
+"I--I didn't tell her, Aunt Julia," stammered Genevieve. Then, with a
+playful whimsicality that did not in the least deceive Aunt Julia's
+ears, she added: "Who wants that old prize, anyhow?"
+
+It was a beautiful smile, then, that illumined Aunt Julia's face, and it
+was a very tender kiss that fell on Genevieve's forehead.
+
+"That's my brave Genevieve--and I'm sure you'll never regret it, my
+dear!" she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+May passed, and June came, bringing warm, sunny days that were very
+tempting to feet that were longing to be tramping through green woods
+and fields. Examinations, however, were coming soon, and Genevieve knew
+that, tempting as was the beautiful out-of-doors, studies must come
+first. Every possible minute, however, she spent in rides, walks, and
+tennis playing--even Miss Jane insisted that she must have exercise.
+
+June brought not only alluring days, however, but a letter from
+Quentina, which sent Genevieve flying into Mrs. Kennedy's room.
+
+"Aunt Julia, did you write again to Mr. Jones?"
+
+"I did," smiled Mrs. Kennedy, "and I have a letter from him to-day."
+
+"You darling! Then you know, of course! Oh, Aunt Julia, isn't it
+lovely! I just can't wait till to-morrow to tell the girls."
+
+Genevieve did wait, however--she waited even till the morning recess.
+She wanted all the Happy Hexagons together; and when she had them
+together she told them the astounding news in one breathless rush of
+words.
+
+"Girls, Quentina's coming next year to school. She's going to room with
+me. Isn't it lovely!"
+
+There was a chorus of delighted questions and exclamations; but
+Genevieve lifted her hand.
+
+"Sh-h! Listen. I've got her letter here. You must hear it!" and she
+whipped open the letter and began to read:
+
+          "Oh--oh--It isn't true--it can't be true! But
+          father says it is, and father doesn't lie. I'm to
+          go to Sunbridge. Sunbridge! I think Sunbridge is
+          the loveliest name in the world--for a town, I
+          mean, of course.
+
+          "DEAR GENEVIEVE:--There! this is actually the
+          first minute I could bring myself to begin this
+          letter properly. Really, a thing like this can't
+          just begin, you know! And to think that I'm going
+          to see Paul Revere's grave and Bunker Hill and you
+          just next September! Oh, how can I ever thank you
+          and dear Mrs. Kennedy? I love her, love her, love
+          her--right now! And all the Happy Hexagons--I
+          love them, too. I love everybody and
+          everything--I'm going to Sunbridge!
+
+          "All day I've been saying over and over to myself
+          that song in the 'Lady of the Lake,' only I've
+          changed the words a little to fit my case; like
+          this:
+
+             "'Quentina, rest! thy longing o'er,
+                 Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking;
+               Dream of Texas schools no more,
+                 Days of longing, nights of sighing
+               For Paul Revere's enchanted land.
+                 Hands unseen thy days are planning,
+               Fairy strains of music falling
+                 Every sense is up and calling,
+               Quentina, rest! thy longing o'er,
+                 East thy steps will turn once more.'
+
+          "That 'more' is poetry, but a fib; for of course I
+          haven't been East at all yet. But that's just
+          poetic license, you know--fibs like that.
+
+          "Oh, I just can't wait for September!
+
+                                   "Your happy, happy
+                                               "QUENTINA."
+
+"My, but won't she be a picnic when she gets here?" chuckled Tilly, as
+soon as she could stop laughing long enough to find her voice.
+
+"What in the world is the matter with you girls?" demanded Charlie
+Brown, sauntering up to them, arm in arm with O. B. J. Holmes.
+
+Tilly turned merrily.
+
+"Matter! I guess you'll think something is the matter when Quentina
+Jones gets here," she laughed.
+
+"Who is Quentina Jones?"
+
+"She is a new girl who is coming to school next year," explained Elsie.
+
+"She's from Texas, and she's never been East before," chimed in Bertha.
+
+"Yes, and as for you, Mr. Obejay Holmes," teased Tilly, "just you wait!
+There's no telling what she will do with your name!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+O. B. J. spoke to Tilly, but he threw a merry glance into Genevieve's
+understanding eyes.
+
+"Nothing, only she's a regular walking rhyming dictionary, and I can
+just fancy how those mysterious initials of yours will fire her up. My
+poor little 'O Be Joyful' won't be in it, then. You'll see!"
+
+"I don't worry any," laughed O. B. J. Holmes, with another merry glance
+at Genevieve.
+
+"You don't have to," interposed Genevieve, promptly. "Quentina is
+everything that is sweet and lovely, and you'll all like her; I know you
+will," she finished, as the bell rang and the boys turned laughingly
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A GOOD-BY PARTY
+
+
+The June days sped so rapidly that Genevieve wondered where they went,
+sometimes. School was to close the twenty-third. Mr. Hartley was to
+arrive on the twentieth. Meanwhile examinations and the prize contest
+were uppermost in every one's thoughts. Graduation exercises were to
+come in the evening. The winner of the prize was to be announced at that
+time, also.
+
+"And really, you know, the announcement of the prize-winner is all we
+care about specially," Elsie said one day, in the presence of a group of
+her friends on the schoolhouse steps.
+
+"Just you wait till you graduate," laughed back Bertha's brother,
+Charlie, "and then I guess the _evening_ exercises will be of some
+consequence."
+
+"Of course--but that won't be till two years from now," cried Genevieve.
+
+"Then you girls will be thinking more of frills and furbelows than you
+will of prizes," laughed Harold Day.
+
+"I've got a new white dress for Graduation night," said Elsie in a low
+voice to Genevieve, "and I don't believe I could have a prettier one,
+even then."
+
+"Another new white dress?" demanded Tilly, who had heard the aside.
+"Why, Elsie Martin, you had one for Miss Sally's wedding!"
+
+Elsie laughed happily.
+
+"I know--but this is a muslin. Aunt Kate seemed to want me to have
+it--and of course I'd love to have it, myself!"
+
+Genevieve, for some reason, looked suddenly very happy, so much so that
+Harold, watching her, said quietly a minute later:
+
+"Well, young lady, what's gone specially right with your world to-day?"
+
+Genevieve laughed and blushed. She shook her head roguishly. Then
+suddenly she rejoined:
+
+"I reckon one of my awfully bad things has turned out all good--that's
+all!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+True to his word, Mr. Hartley came on the twentieth. He was to be Mrs.
+Kennedy's guest until the start for Texas after school had closed.
+
+"My, dearie! how fine and tall we are growing," he greeted his daughter
+affectionately. "Looks like Mr. Tim and the boys won't know you, I'm
+thinking!"
+
+"Nonsense! Of course they will--and I can't hardly wait to see them,
+either," cried Genevieve.
+
+It is doubtful if, on Graduation night, Cordelia Wilson herself listened
+to the announcement of the prize-winner any more anxiously than did
+Genevieve. It seemed as if she could not bear it--after what had
+happened--if Cordelia did not get the prize. And Cordelia got it.
+
+"'When Sunbridge went to Texas,'" read Mr. Jackson, "Cordelia Wilson."
+And it was Genevieve who clapped the loudest.
+
+Cordelia, certainly, was beatifically happy. And when Genevieve saw her
+amazed, but joyously happy face, she wondered why she should suddenly
+want to cry--for, surely, she had never felt happier in her life.
+
+Graduation day, for the Happy Hexagons, was not, after all, quite the
+last meeting together; for Mrs. Kennedy gave Genevieve a porch party the
+night before she was to start back to Texas with Mr. Hartley.
+
+A very merry crowd of boys and girls it was that sang college songs and
+told stories that night on the Kennedys' roomy, electric-lighted
+veranda.
+
+"It seems just as if I couldn't have you go away," sighed Cordelia, at
+last, to Genevieve.
+
+"But I'm coming back next year."
+
+"Mercy! We couldn't stand it if you weren't," cried Tilly.
+
+"And just think--last year we all went back with you," murmured Elsie.
+
+"I wish you were going this year," declared Genevieve.
+
+"I guess you aren't the only one that wishes that," cut in several
+longing voices.
+
+"Well, we'll take you all now--if you'll go," retorted Genevieve,
+merrily.
+
+"_All_--did you say?" challenged Harold Day.
+
+"Yes, all," nodded Genevieve, emphatically. "We'd be glad to have you,
+every one of you."
+
+"Well, I begin to think you would--now that I've seen Texas," sighed
+Tilly. "But I suppose we shall have to content ourselves till you come
+back this time."
+
+"And this wonderful little rhyming dictionary, as Miss Tilly calls
+her--does she come back with you?" asked O. B. J. Holmes.
+
+"Maybe. She comes next fall, anyway, before school begins," smiled
+Genevieve.
+
+"Well, what I want to know is, if you are going to do any more Texas
+missionary work," suggested Charlie Brown.
+
+"Pooh! She doesn't do that there--she does that here," cut in Tilly.
+
+"There isn't any more to do, anyway," declared the exact Cordelia,
+happily. "She's got everything fixed even down to Elsie's--" She stopped
+just in time, but already Genevieve had interposed hurriedly:
+
+"Oh, but it wasn't I that did anything. It was Cordelia. She found them
+to begin with, you know--Reddy, and Hermit Joe's son."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Jane, together with Nancy appeared just then with
+great plates of ice cream and delicious cake; and after that, all too
+soon, came the time for good-nights. The good-nights were not quite
+finished, however, until at the foot of the walk, five members of the
+Hexagon Club turned, and all together gave their Texas yell with a lusty
+"Genevieve" at the end that brought the tears to the real Genevieve's
+eyes.
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           GENEVIEVE!"
+
+"Mercy! What will the neighbors say--at this time of night!" protested
+Miss Jane Chick, feebly; but her eyes, too, were moist.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS
+
+(Trade Mark)
+
+_By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON_
+
+   _Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated, per vol._     $1.50
+
+
+          THE LITTLE COLONEL STORIES
+                    (Trade Mark)
+
+          Being three "Little Colonel" stories in the Cosy
+          Corner Series, "The Little Colonel," "Two Little
+          Knights of Kentucky," and "The Giant Scissors," in
+          a single volume.
+
+          THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOUSE PARTY
+                    (Trade Mark)
+          THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOLIDAYS
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+          MARY WARE: THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHUM
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+          MARY WARE IN TEXAS
+          MARY WARE'S PROMISED LAND
+
+_These_ 12 _volumes, boxed as a set_, $18.00.
+
+          THE LITTLE COLONEL
+                    (Trade Mark)
+          TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF KENTUCKY
+          THE GIANT SCISSORS
+          BIG BROTHER
+
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+
+    Each one volume, cloth decorative, small quarto,             $1.25
+
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+
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+
+THE THREE WEAVERS: A FAIRY TALE FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS AS WELL AS FOR
+THEIR DAUGHTERS.
+
+KEEPING TRYST
+
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+
+THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME: A FAIRY PLAY FOR OLD AND YOUNG.
+
+THE JESTER'S SWORD
+
+Each one volume, tall 16mo, cloth decorative $0.50
+
+There has been a constant demand for publication in separate form of
+these six stories which were originally included in six of the "Little
+Colonel" books.
+
+
+JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE: BY ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. Illustrated by L.
+J. Bridgman.
+
+New illustrated edition, uniform with the Little Colonel Books, 1 vol.,
+large 12mo, cloth decorative $1.50
+
+A story of the time of Christ, which is one of the author's best-known
+books.
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL GOOD TIMES BOOK
+
+          Uniform in size with the Little Colonel Series        $1.50
+          Bound in white kid (morocco) and gold                  3.00
+
+Cover design and decorations by Peter Verberg.
+
+Published in response to many inquiries from readers of the Little
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+Betty kept.
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK
+
+          Large quarto, boards                                  $1.50
+
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+
+
+ASA HOLMES; OR, AT THE CROSS-ROADS. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON.
+
+With a frontispiece by Ernest Fosbery.
+
+          Large 16mo, cloth, gilt top                           $1.00
+
+"'Asa Holmes; Or, At the Cross-Roads' is the most delightful, most
+sympathetic and wholesome book that has been published in a long
+while."--_Boston Times._
+
+
+TRAVELERS FIVE: ALONG LIFE'S HIGHWAY. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON.
+
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+Garrett.
+
+          Cloth decorative                                      $1.25
+
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+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY BURNS. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH.
+
+          Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated.           $1.50
+
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+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS AFLOAT; OR, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH.
+
+          Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated.           $1.50
+
+This book is a continuation of the adventures of "The Rival Campers" on
+their prize yacht _Viking_.
+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS ASHORE
+
+By RUEL PERLEY SMITH.
+
+          Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated           $1.50
+
+"As interesting ashore as when afloat."--_The Interior._
+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS AMONG THE OYSTER PIRATES; OR, JACK HARVEY'S
+ADVENTURES.
+
+          By RUEL PERLEY SMITH. Illustrated                     $1.50
+
+"Just the type of book which is most popular with lads who are in their
+early teens."--_The Philadelphia Item._
+
+
+A TEXAS BLUE BONNET
+
+By CAROLINE EMILIA JACOBS (EMILIA ELLIOTT).
+
+          12mo, illustrated                                    $1.50
+
+"The book's heroine Blue Bonnet has the very finest kind of wholesome,
+honest lively girlishness and cannot but make friends with every one who
+meets her through the book as medium."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
+
+
+BLUE BONNET'S RANCH PARTY
+
+A Sequel to "A Texas Blue Bonnet." By CAROLINE ELLIOTT JACOBS and EDITH
+ELLERBECK READ.
+
+          12mo, illustrated                                    $1.50
+
+The new story begins where the first volume leaves off and takes Blue
+Bonnet and the "We Are Seven Club" to the ranch in Texas. The tables are
+completely turned: Blue Bonnet is here in her natural element, while her
+friends from Woodford have to learn the customs and traditions of
+another world.
+
+
+THE GIRLS OF FRIENDLY TERRACE OR, PEGGY RAYMOND'S SUCCESS. By
+HARRIET LUMMIS SMITH.
+
+          12mo, illustrated                                    $1.50
+
+This is a book that will gladden the hearts of many girl readers because
+of its charming air of comradeship and reality. It is a very interesting
+group of girls who live on Friendly Terrace and their good times and
+other times are graphically related by the author, who shows a
+sympathetic knowledge of girl character.
+
+
+PEGGY RAYMOND'S VACATION; OR, FRIENDLY TERRACE TRANSPLANTED.
+
+A Sequel to "The Girls of Friendly Terrace." By HARRIET LUMMIS SMITH.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated.               $1.50
+
+Readers who made the acquaintance of Peggy Raymond and her bevy of girl
+chums in "The Girls of Friendly Terrace" will be glad to continue the
+acquaintance of these attractive young folks.
+
+Several new characters are introduced, and one at least will prove a not
+unworthy rival of the favorites among the Terrace girls.
+
+
+THE HADLEY HALL SERIES
+
+_By LOUISE M. BREITENBACH_
+
+   _Each, library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated_         $1.50
+
+
+ALMA AT HADLEY HALL
+
+"Miss Breitenbach is to be congratulated on having written such an
+appealing book for girls, and the girls are to be congratulated on
+having the privilege of reading it."--_The Detroit Free Press._
+
+
+ALMA'S SOPHOMORE YEAR
+
+"The characters are strongly drawn with a life-like realism, the
+incidents are well and progressively sequenced, and the action is so
+well timed that the interest never slackens."--_Boston Ideas._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR RANCH. By ELEANOR STUART.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated                $1.50
+
+Any girl of any age who is fond of outdoor life will appreciate this
+fascinating tale of Genevieve Hartley's summer vacation house-party on a
+Texas ranch. Genevieve and her friends are real girls, the kind that one
+would like to have in one's own home, and there are a couple of manly
+boys introduced.
+
+
+BEAUTIFUL JOE'S PARADISE; OR, THE ISLAND OF BROTHERLY LOVE. A Sequel
+to "Beautiful Joe." By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful Joe."
+
+    One vol., library 12mo, cloth illustrated                  $1.50
+
+"This book revives the spirit of 'Beautiful Joe' capitally. It is fairly
+riotous with fun, and is about as unusual as anything in the animal book
+line that has seen the light."--_Philadelphia Item._
+
+
+'TILDA JANE. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS.
+
+    One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,       $1.50
+
+"It is one of those exquisitely simple and truthful books that win and
+charm the reader, and I did not put it down until I had finished
+it--honest! And I am sure that every one, young or old, who reads will
+be proud and happy to make the acquaintance of the delicious waif.
+
+"I cannot think of any better book for children than this. I commend it
+unreservedly."--_Cyrus T. Brady._
+
+
+'TILDA JANE'S ORPHANS. A Sequel to "'Tilda Jane." By MARSHALL
+SAUNDERS.
+
+    One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,       $1.50
+
+'Tilda Jane is the same original, delightful girl, and as fond of her
+animal pets as ever.
+
+"There is so much to this story that it is almost a novel--in fact it is
+better than many novels, although written for only young people.
+Compared with much of to-day's juveniles it is quite a superior
+book."--_Chicago Tribune._
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE GRAVELYS. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful
+Joe's Paradise," "'Tilda Jane," etc.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative. Illustrated by E. B. Barry $1.50
+
+Here we have the haps and mishaps, the trials and triumphs, of a
+delightful New England family.
+
+
+PUSSY BLACK-FACE. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "'Tilda Jane,"
+"'Tilda Jane's Orphans," etc.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated                $1.50
+
+This is a delightful little story of animal life, written in this
+author's best vein, dealing especially with Pussy Black-Face, a little
+Beacon Street (Boston) kitten, who is the narrator.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors corrected.
+
+Page 320, missing text supplied original read "jostled ..er, and
+Genevieve stepped into a doorway to thin.. Across the street a blue-bell
+sign caught her at..ention, and sent a swift light to her eye." The
+missing text was inserted.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR
+RANCH***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25578-8.txt or 25578-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/7/25578
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch, by
+Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter, Illustrated by Frank J. Murch</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch</p>
+<p>Author: Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 23, 2008  [eBook #25578]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR RANCH***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch</h1>
+
+
+<div class='center'><a name="front" id="front"></a>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Cover and frontispiece">
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/cover01.jpg" width="300" height="452" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div></td><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/gs01.jpg" width="300" height="394" alt="&quot;REDDY WAS RIGHT THERE EVERY TIME&quot;" title="&quot;REDDY WAS RIGHT THERE EVERY TIME&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;REDDY WAS RIGHT THERE EVERY TIME&quot;</span><br /><div class='right'>(<a href="#Page_113"><i>See page 113</i></a>)</div>
+</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<div class='bbox'><div class='bbox2'>
+<h1>
+The Sunbridge Girls<br />
+at Six Star Ranch</h1>
+</div><div class='bbox2'>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>ELEANOR STUART</h2>
+</div><div class='bbox2'>
+<div class='center'>ILLUSTRATED BY<br /></div>
+<h3>FRANK J. MURCH<br /><br /><br /></h3>
+</div><div class='bbox2'><br /><br />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 145px;">
+<img src="images/emblem.png" width="145" height="150" alt="Emblem" title="Emblem" />
+</div><br /><br /><br />
+
+</div><div class='bbox2'>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Publishing Information">
+<tr><td align='left'>BOSTON</td><td align='center'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 60px;">
+<img src="images/tp01.png" width="30" height="22" alt="decoration" title="decoration" />
+</div></td><td align='left'>L. C. PAGE &amp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>COMPANY</td><td align='center'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 60px;">
+<img src="images/tp01.png" width="30" height="22" alt="decoration" title="decoration" />
+</div></td><td align='left'>PUBLISHERS</td></tr>
+</table></div></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='center'>
+<small><i>Copyright, 1913</i></small><br />
+<small><span class="smcap">By L. C. Page &amp; Company</span></small><br />
+<small>(INCORPORATED)</small><br />
+&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+<i><small>All rights reserved</small></i><br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+<small>First Impression, April, 1913</small><br />
+<small>Second Impression, January, 1914</small><br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+<small>THE COLONIAL PRESS</small><br />
+<small>C. H. SIMONDS &amp; CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.</small><br />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Spine of book and contents">
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="figcenter" style="width: 115px;">
+<img src="images/spine01.jpg" width="115" height="600" alt="Spine" title="Spine" />
+</div></td><td align='left'><div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td align='center'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aunt Sophronia</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Plans for Texas</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Coming of Genevieve</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On the Way</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Boys Prepare a Welcome</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cordelia Sees a Cowboy</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Ranch House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Mistress of the Six Star Ranch</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Reddy and the Broncho</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>X.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cordelia Goes To Church</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Quentina</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Opening of a Barrel</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Prairie&mdash;and Moonlight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Man and a Mystery</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Alamo</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tilly Crosses Bridges</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVII.</td><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">Bertha's Accident</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Golden Hours</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Hermit Joe</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The New Boy</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Genevieve Learns Something Not In Books</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Texas "Missionary"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Genevieve Goes to Boston</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Brown Dress for Elsie</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_324">324</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXV.</td><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">When Sunbridge Went to Texas</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Good-by Party</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_349">349</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">Reddy was right there every time</span>" (<a href="#Page_113"><i>See page 113</i></a>)</td><td align='right'><a href="#front"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">A tall, slender girl .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. appeared at a car door</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'<span class="smcap">Follow me&mdash;quick!' he ordered</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'<span class="smcap">There, now&mdash;look!' she added</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"'<span class="smcap">How do you do, Mr. Oliver Holmes,' she began</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class="hang1">"<span class="smcap">It would be something of a walk, the woman said, as she gave directions</span>"</div></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>The Sunbridge Girls<br />
+at Six Star Ranch</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>AUNT SOPHRONIA</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class='smcap'>The</span> Reverend Thomas Wilson's sister, Miss
+Sophronia, had come to Sunbridge on a Tuesday
+evening late in June to make her brother's family
+a long-promised visit. But it was not until the next
+morning that she heard something that sent her to
+her sister-in-law in a burst of astonishment almost
+too great for words.</p>
+
+<p>"For pity's sake, Mary, what is this I hear?"
+she demanded. "Edith insists that her cousin,
+Cordelia, is going to Texas next week&mdash;to Texas!&mdash;<i>Cordelia!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is, Sophronia," replied the minister's
+wife, trying to make her answer sound as cheerful
+and commonplace as she could, and as if Texas were
+in the next room. (It was something of a trial to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+Mrs. Thomas Wilson that her husband's sister
+could not seem to understand that she, a minister's
+wife for eighteen years and the mother of five children,
+ought to know what was proper and right for
+her orphaned niece to do&mdash;at least fully as much
+as should a spinster, who had never brought up
+anything but four cats and a parrot!) "Edith is
+quite right. Cordelia is going to Texas next week."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mary, are you crazy? To let a child like
+that go all the way from here to Texas&mdash;one
+would think New Hampshire and Texas were
+twenty miles apart!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson sighed a little wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"Cordelia isn't exactly a child, Sophronia, you
+must remember that. She was sixteen last November;
+and she's very self-reliant and capable for her
+age, too. Besides, she isn't going alone, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Alone!" exclaimed Miss Sophronia. "Mary,
+surely, the rest that Edith said isn't true! Those
+other girls aren't going, too, are they?&mdash;Elsie
+Martin, and that flyaway Tilly Mack, and all?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think they are, Sophronia."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of all the crazy things anybody ever
+heard of!" almost groaned the lady. "Mary, what
+<i>are</i> you thinking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thinking of Cordelia," returned the minister's
+wife, with a spirit that was as sudden as it was
+unusual. "Sophronia, for twelve years, ever since
+she came to me, Cordelia has been just a Big Sister<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+in the family; and she's had to fetch and carry and
+trot and run her little legs off for one after another
+of the children, as well as for her uncle and me.
+You <i>know</i> how good she is, and how conscientious.
+You know how anxious she always is to do exactly
+right. She's never had a playday, and I'm sure she
+deserves one if ever a girl did! Vacations to her
+have never meant anything but more care and more
+time for housework."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson paused for breath, then went on
+with renewed vigor.</p>
+
+<p>"When this chance came up, Tom and I thought
+at first, of course, just as you did, that it was quite
+out of the question; but&mdash;well, we decided to let
+her go. And I haven't been sorry a minute since.
+She's Tom's only brother's child, but we've never
+been able to do much for her, as you know. We
+can let her have this chance, though. And she's so
+happy&mdash;dear child!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what is it? How did it happen? Who's
+going? Edith's story sounded so absurd to me I
+could make precious little out of it. She insisted
+that the 'Happy X's' were going."</p>
+
+<p>The minister's wife smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the girls' 'Hexagon Club,' Sophronia.
+They call themselves the 'Happy Hexagons.' There
+are six of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" commented Miss Sophronia. "Who
+are they&mdash;besides Cordelia?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Bertha Brown, Tilly Mack, Alma Lane, Elsie
+Martin, and Genevieve Hartley."</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>who?</i>" frowned Miss Sophronia at the
+last name.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve Hartley. She is the little Texas girl.
+It is to her ranch they are going."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Her</i> ranch!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;her father's."</p>
+
+<p>"But who is she? What's she doing here?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's been going to school this winter. She's
+at the Kennedys'."</p>
+
+<p>"A Texas ranch-girl at the Kennedys'! Why,
+they're <i>nice</i> people!" exclaimed Miss Sophronia,
+opening wide her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson laughed now outright.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better not let Miss Genevieve hear you
+say 'nice' in that tone of voice&mdash;and in just that
+connection, Sophronia," she warned her. "Genevieve
+might think you meant to insinuate that there
+weren't any <i>nice</i> people in Texas&mdash;and she's very
+fond of Texas!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sophronia smiled grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't mean that, of course. Still, a
+ranch must be sort of wild and&mdash;and mustangy,
+seems to me; and I was thinking of the
+Kennedys, especially Miss Jane Chick. Imagine
+saying 'wild' and 'Miss Jane' in the same
+breath!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," smiled Mrs. Wilson; "and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+guess Genevieve has been something of a trial&mdash;in
+a way; though they love her dearly&mdash;both of them.
+She's a very lovable girl. But she <i>is</i> heedless and
+thoughtless; and, of course, she wasn't at all used
+to our ways here in the East. Her mother died
+when she was eight years old; since then she has
+been brought up by her father on the ranch. She
+blew into Sunbridge last August like a veritable
+breeze from her own prairies&mdash;and the Kennedy
+home isn't used to breezes&mdash;especially Miss Jane.
+I imagine Genevieve did stir things up a little there
+all winter&mdash;though she has improved a great deal
+since she came."</p>
+
+<p>"But why did she come in the first place?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson smiled oddly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the best part of it," she said. "It seems
+that last April, when Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick
+were on their way home from California, they
+stopped in Houston, Texas, a few days, and there
+they met John Hartley and his daughter, Genevieve.
+It appears they had known him years ago when they
+were 'the Chick girls,' and he came to Sunbridge
+to visit relatives. I've heard it whispered that he
+was actually a bit in love with one of them, though
+I never heard whether it was Miss Jane, or the one
+who is now the Widow Kennedy. However that
+may be, he was delighted to see them in Texas,
+report says, and to introduce to them his daughter,
+Genevieve."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But that doesn't explain how the girl came
+here," frowned Miss Sophronia.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I will," smiled her sister-in-law.
+"Fond and proud as Mr. Hartley very plainly was
+of his daughter, it did not take Mrs. Kennedy long
+to see that he was very much disturbed at the sort
+of life she was living at the ranch. That is, he felt
+that the time had come now when she needed something
+that only school, young girl friends, and
+gently-bred women could give her; yet he could
+not bear the thought of sending her off alone to an
+ordinary boarding school. Then is when Mrs.
+Kennedy arose to the occasion; and very quickly
+it was settled that Genevieve should come here to
+her in Sunbridge for school this last winter&mdash;which
+she did, and Mrs. Kennedy has been a veritable
+mother to her ever since. She calls her 'Aunt
+Julia.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m; very fine, I'm sure," murmured Miss
+Sophronia, a little shortly. "And now she's asked
+these girls home with her&mdash;the whole lot of them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and they're crazy over it&mdash;as you'd
+know they would be."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sophronia sniffed audibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! It's the parents that are crazy, I'm
+thinking," she corrected. "Imagine it&mdash;six scatter-brained
+children, and all the way to Texas!
+Mary!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but the father is in the East here, on business<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+and he goes back with them," conciliated Mrs.
+Wilson, hastily. "Besides, Mrs. Kennedy is going,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sophronia raised her eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't say I envy her the thing she's
+undertaken. Imagine <i>my</i> attempting to chaperon
+six crazy girls all the way from New Hampshire to
+Texas&mdash;and then on a ranch for nobody knows
+how long after that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't imagine&mdash;<i>your</i> doing it, Sophronia,"
+rejoined the minister's wife, demurely. And at the
+meaning emphasis and the twinkle in her eye, Miss
+Sophronia sniffed again audibly.</p>
+
+<p>"When do they go?" she asked in her stiffest
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"The first day of July."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! Very fine, I'm sure. Still&mdash;I've been
+thinking of the expense. Of course, for a minister&mdash;"</p>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson bit her lip. After a moment she
+filled the pause that her sister-in-law had left.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, of course, what you mean, Sophronia,"
+she acknowledged. "And ministers'
+families don't have much money for Texas trips,
+I'll own. As it happens, however, the trip will cost
+the young people nothing. Mr. Hartley very kindly
+bears all the expenses."</p>
+
+<p>"He does?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He declares he shall be in the girls' debt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+even then. You see, last winter Genevieve sprained
+her ankle, and was shut up for weeks in the house.
+It was a very bad sprain, and naturally it came
+pretty hard on such an active, outdoor girl as she
+is. Mrs. Kennedy says she thinks Genevieve and
+all the rest of them would have gone wild if it
+hadn't been for the girls. One or more of them
+was there every day. Then is when they formed
+their Hexagon Club. It was worth everything to
+Genevieve, as you can imagine; and Mr. Hartley
+declares that nothing he can ever do will half repay
+them. Besides, he wants Genevieve to be with nice
+girls all she can&mdash;she's had so little of girls' society.
+So he's asked them to go as his guests."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! Well, he must have some money!"</p>
+
+<p>"He has. Mrs. Kennedy says he is a man of independent
+means, and he has no one but Genevieve
+to spend his money on. So, as for this trip&mdash;in his
+whole-hearted, generous Western fashion, he pays
+all the bills himself."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m; very kind, I'm sure," admitted Miss
+Sophronia, grudgingly. "Well, I'm glad, at least,
+that it doesn't cost you anything."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence, then Mrs. Wilson
+said, apologetically:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Sophronia, but I'm afraid you'll have
+to stand it till the children go&mdash;and there'll be
+something to stand, too; for it's 'Texas, Texas,
+Texas,' from morning till night, everywhere. Genevieve<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+herself is in New Jersey visiting friends, but
+that doesn't seem to make any difference. The
+whole town is wildly excited over the trip. I found
+even little Mrs. Miller, the dressmaker, yesterday
+poring over an old atlas spread out on her cutting-table.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was just a-lookin' up where Texas was,' she
+explained when she saw me. 'My! only think of
+havin' folks go all that distance&mdash;folks I know, I
+mean. I'm sure I'd never dare to go&mdash;or let my
+girl.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Very sensible woman, I'm sure," remarked Miss
+Sophronia.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson smiled; but she went on imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>"Even the little tots haven't escaped infection.
+Imagine my sensations Sunday when Bettie Barker,
+the primmest Miss Propriety in my infant class,
+asked: 'Please, Mis' Wilson, what is a broncho, and
+how do you bust 'em?'"</p>
+
+<p>This, indeed, was too much for even Miss Sophronia's
+gravity. Her lips twitched and relaxed
+in a broad smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, upon my word!" she ejaculated, as she
+rose to her feet to go up-stairs to her room. "Upon
+my word!"</p>
+
+<p>An hour later, in that same room, Mrs. Wilson,
+going in to place some fresh towels upon the rack,
+found a huge book spread open on Miss Sophronia's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+bed. The book was number seven in the Reverend
+Thomas Wilson's most comprehensive encyclopedia;
+and it was open at the word "Texas."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilson smiled and went out, closing the
+door softly behind her.</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, as Mrs. Wilson had said, "Texas,
+Texas, Texas," everywhere throughout the town.
+Old atlases were brought down from attics, and old
+geographies were dug out of trunks. Even the dictionaries
+showed smudges in the T's where not over-clean
+fingers had turned hurried pages for possible
+information. The library was besieged at all hours,
+particularly by the Happy Hexagons, for they, of
+course, were the storm-center of the whole thing.</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily the club met but once a week; now
+they met daily&mdash;even in the absence of their beloved
+president, Genevieve. Heretofore they had
+met usually in the parsonage; now they met in the
+grove back of the schoolhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems more appropriate, somehow," Elsie
+had declared; "more sort of airy and&mdash;Texasy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and we want to get used to space&mdash;wide,
+wide space! Genevieve says it's all space," Bertha
+Brown had answered, with a far-reaching fling of
+her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Ouch! Bertha! Just be sure you've got the
+space, then, before you get used to it," retorted Tilly,
+aggrievedly, straightening her hat which had been
+knocked awry by one of the wide-flung arms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Happy Hexagons met, of course, to study
+Texas, and to talk Texas; though, as Bertha
+Brown's brother, Charlie, somewhat impertinently
+declared, they did not need to meet to <i>talk</i> Texas&mdash;they
+did that without any meeting! All of which
+merely meant, of course, retaliated the girls, that
+Charlie was jealous because he also could not go to
+Texas.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>PLANS FOR TEXAS</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was a pretty little grove in which the Happy
+Hexagons met to study and to talk Texas. Nor
+were they the only ones that met there. Though
+Harold Day, Alma Lane's cousin, was not to be of
+the Texas party, the girls invited him to meet with
+them, as he was Texas-born, and was one of Genevieve's
+first friends in Sunbridge. On the outskirts
+of the magic circle, sundry smaller brothers and
+sisters and cousins of the members hung adoringly.
+Even grown men and women came sometimes, and
+stood apart, looking on with what the Happy Hexagons
+chose to think were admiring, awestruck eyes&mdash;which
+was not a little flattering, though quite
+natural and proper, decided the club. For, of course,
+not every one could go to Texas, to be sure!</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning, at least, of each meeting, affairs
+were conducted with the seriousness due to so important
+a subject. In impressive silence the club
+seated itself in a circle; and solemnly Cordelia Wilson,
+the treasurer, opened the meeting, being (according
+to Tilly) a "perfect image of her uncle in
+the pulpit."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Fellow members, once more we find ourselves
+gathered together for the purpose of the study of
+Texas," she would begin invariably. And then perhaps:
+"We will listen to Miss Bertha Brown, please.
+Miss Brown, what new thing&mdash;I mean, what new
+features have you discovered about Texas?"</p>
+
+<p>If Miss Brown had something to say&mdash;and of
+course she did have something (she would have been
+disgraced, otherwise)&mdash;she said it. Then each in
+turn was asked, after which the discussion was open
+to all.</p>
+
+<p>They were lively meetings. No wonder small
+brothers and sisters and cousins hung entranced on
+every word. No wonder, too, that at last, one day,
+quite carried away with the enthusiasm of the moment,
+they made so bold as to have something to say
+on their own account. It happened like this:</p>
+
+<p>"Texas is the largest state in the Union," announced
+Bertha Brown, who had been called on first.
+"It has an area about one twelfth as large as that
+of the whole United States. If all the population of
+the country were placed there, the state would not be
+as thickly settled as the eastern shore of Massachusetts
+is. Six different flags have waved over it since
+its discovery two hundred years ago: France, Spain,
+Mexico, Republic of Texas, Confederate States of
+America, and the Star Spangled Banner."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! I said most of that two days ago," muttered
+Tilly, not under breath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can't help it," pouted Bertha; "there
+isn't very much new left to say, Tilly Mack, and you
+know it. Besides, I didn't have a minute's time this
+morning to look up a single thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Order&mdash;order in the court," rapped Cordelia,
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but it doesn't matter a bit if we do say the
+same things," protested Alma Lane, quickly. (Alma
+was always trying to make peace between combatants.)
+"I'm sure we shall remember it all the
+better if we do repeat it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we shall," agreed Cordelia, promptly.
+"Now, Alma&mdash;I mean Miss Lane&mdash;" (this
+title-giving was brand-new, having been introduced
+as a special mark of dignity fitting to the occasion;
+and it was not easy to remember!)&mdash;"perhaps you
+will tell us what you have found out."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the climate is healthful," began Alma,
+hopefully. "Texas is less subject to malarial diseases
+than any of the other states on the Gulf of
+Mexico. September is the most rainy month; December
+the least. The mean annual temperature
+near the mouth of the Rio Grande is 72&deg;; while
+along the Red River the mean annual temperature
+is only 80&deg;. In the northwestern part of the state
+the mean annual&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Alma, please," begged Tilly, in mock horror,
+raising both her hands, "<i>please</i> don't give us any
+more of those mean annual temperatures. I'm sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+if they can be any <i>meaner</i> than the temperature right
+here to-day is," she sighed, as she fell to fanning
+herself vigorously, "I don't want to know what it
+is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, in shocked disapproval.
+"What would Genevieve say!"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Say? She wouldn't say anything&mdash;she
+couldn't," declared Tilly, unexpectedly, "because
+she'd be laughing at us so for digging into Texas
+like this and unearthing all its poor little secrets!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Tilly, I think we ought to study it," reproved
+Cordelia, majestically, above the laugh that
+followed Tilly's speech. "Elsie&mdash;I mean, Miss
+Martin,&mdash;what did you find out to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie wrinkled her nose in a laughing grimace at
+Tilly, then began to speak in an exaggeratedly solemn
+tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I find Texas is so large, and contains so great a
+variety of soil, and climate, that any product of the
+United States can be grown within its limits. It is
+a leader on cotton. Corn, wheat, rice, peanuts,
+sugar cane and potatoes are also grown, besides
+tobacco."</p>
+
+<p>"And watermelons, Elsie," cut in Bertha Brown.
+"I found in a paper that just last year Texas grew
+140,000,000 watermelons."</p>
+
+<p>"I was coming to the watermelons," observed
+Elsie, with dignity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wish I were&mdash;I dote on watermelons!"
+pouted Tilly in an audible aside that brought a
+chuckle of appreciation from Harold Day.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia gave her a reproachful look. Elsie
+went on, her chin a little higher.</p>
+
+<p>"Texas is the greatest producer of honey in the
+United States. As for the cattle&mdash;prior to 1775
+there were vast ranches all over Southwestern Texas,
+and herds of hundreds of wild cattle were gathered
+and driven to New Orleans. I found some figures
+that told the number of animals in 1892, or about
+then. I'll give them. They're old now, of course,
+but they'll do to show what a lot of animals there
+were there then."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie paused to take breath, but for only a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"There were 7,500,000 head of cattle, 5,000,000
+sheep, and 1,210,000 horses, besides more than
+2,321,000 hogs."</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden giggle from Tilly&mdash;an explosive
+giggle that brought every amazed eye upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, really, Tilly," disapproved Elsie, aggrievedly,
+"I'm sure I don't see <i>what</i> there was so
+very funny in that!"</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't," choked Tilly; "only I was
+thinking, what an awful noise it would be if all
+those 2,321,000 hogs got under the gate at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" scolded Cordelia; but she laughed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She could not help it. They all laughed. Even the
+little boys and girls on the outskirts giggled shrilly,
+and stole the opportunity to draw nearer to the
+magic circle. Almost at once, however, Cordelia
+regained her dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Mack, we'll hear from you, please&mdash;seriously,
+I mean. You haven't told us yet what you've
+found."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly flushed a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't find anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Tilly Mack!" cried a chorus of condemning
+voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't," defended Tilly. "In the first
+place I've told everything I can think of: trees,
+fruits, history, and everything; and this morning
+I just had to go to Mrs. Miller's for a fitting."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tilly, <i>another</i> new dress?" demanded Elsie
+Martin, her voice a pathetic wail of wistfulness.</p>
+
+<p>"But there are still so many things," argued Cordelia,
+her grave eyes fixed on Tilly, "so many things
+to learn that&mdash;" She was interrupted by an eager
+little voice from the outskirts.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got something, please, Cordelia. Mayn't
+I tell it? It's a brand-newest thing. Nobody's said
+it once!"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia turned to confront her ten-year-old
+cousin, Edith.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Edith!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I have, too," piped up Edith's brother,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+Fred, with shrill earnestness. (Fred was eight.)
+"And mine's new, too."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia frowned thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"But, children, you don't belong to the club.
+Only members can talk, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! let's hear it, Cordelia," shrugged Tilly.
+"I'm sure if it's <i>new</i>, we need it&mdash;of all the old
+chestnuts we've heard to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," agreed Cordelia, "what is it, Edith?
+You spoke first."</p>
+
+<p>"It's gypsies," announced the small girl, triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Gypsies!" chorused the Happy Hexagons in
+open unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. There's lots of 'em there&mdash;more than
+'most anywhere else in the world."</p>
+
+<p>The girls looked at each other with puzzled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I never heard Genevieve say anything
+about gypsies," ventured Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they're there, anyhow," maintained Edith;
+"I read it."</p>
+
+<p>"You read it! Where?" demanded Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"In father's big sac'l'pedia." Edith's voice
+sounded grieved, but triumphant. "I was up in
+auntie's room, and I saw it. It was open on her
+bed, and I read it. It said there was coal and iron
+and silver, and lots and lots of gypsies."</p>
+
+<p>There was a breathless hush, followed suddenly
+by a shrieking laugh from Tilly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, girls, girls!" she gasped. "That blessed
+child means 'gypsum.' I saw that in papa's encyclopedia
+just the other day."</p>
+
+<p>"But what is gypsum?" demanded Alma Lane.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! don't ask me," shuddered Tilly. "I
+looked it up in the dictionary, but it only said it was
+a whole lot of worse names. All I could make out
+was that it had crystals, and was used for dressing
+for soils, and for plaster of Paris. <i>Gypsies!</i> Oh,
+Edith, Edith, what a circus you are!" she chuckled,
+going into another gale of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>It was Fred's injured tones that filled the first
+pause in the general hubbub that followed Tilly's
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't heard mine, yet," he challenged.
+"Mine's right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" questioned Cordelia, wiping her eyes.
+(Even Cordelia had laughed till she cried.) "What
+is yours, Fred?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's boats. There hasn't one of you said a single
+thing about the boats you were going to ride in."</p>
+
+<p>"Boats!" cried the girls in a second chorus of
+unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you needn't try to talk me out of that,"
+bristled the boy. "I <i>know</i> what <i>I'm</i> talking about.
+Old Mr. Hodges told me himself. He's been in 'em.
+He said that years and years ago, when he was a
+little boy like me, he and his father and mother
+went 'way across the state of Texas in a prairie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+schooner; and I asked father that night what a
+schooner was, and he said it was a boat. Well, he
+did!" maintained Fred, a little angrily, as a shout
+of laughter rose from the girls.</p>
+
+<p>"And so 'tis a boat&mdash;some kinds of schooners,"
+Harold Day soothed the boy quickly, rising to his
+feet, and putting a friendly arm about the small
+heaving shoulders. "Come on, son, let's you and
+I go over to the house. I've got a dandy picture of
+a prairie schooner over there, and we'll hunt it up
+and see just what it looks like." And with a ceremonious
+"Good day, ladies!" and an elaborate
+flourish of his hat toward the Happy Hexagons,
+Harold drew the boy more closely into the circle
+of his arm and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>It was the signal for a general breaking up of the
+club meeting. Cordelia, only, looked a little anxiously
+after the two boys, as she complained:</p>
+
+<p>"Harold never tells a thing that he knows about
+Texas, and he must know a lot of things, even if
+he did leave there when he was a tiny little baby!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you fret, Cordy," retorted Tilly. (Cordelia
+did not like to be called "Cordy," and Tilly
+knew it.) "Harold Day will talk Texas all right
+after Genevieve gets back. Besides, you couldn't
+expect a boy to join in with a girls' club like us,
+just as if he were another girl&mdash;specially as he
+isn't going to Texas, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all he ever does is just to sit and look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+bored&mdash;except when Tilly gets in some of her
+digs," chuckled Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad I'm good for something, if nothing but to
+stir up Harold, then," laughed Tilly, as she turned
+away to answer Elsie Martin's anxious: "Tilly,
+what color is the new dress? Is it red?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the next day that the letter came from
+Genevieve. Cordelia brought it to the club meeting
+that afternoon; and so full of importance and excitement
+was she that for once she quite forgot to
+open the meeting with her usual ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, girls, just listen to this!" she began
+breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>The Happy Hexagons opened wide their eyes.
+Never before had they seen the usually placid Cordelia
+like this.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cordelia, you're almost girlish!" observed
+Tilly, cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia did not seem even to hear this gibe.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a letter from Genevieve," she panted, as she
+hurriedly spread open the sheet of note paper in her
+hand.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dear Cordelia, and the whole Club," read Cordelia,
+excitedly. "I came up yesterday from New
+Jersey with the Hardings for two days in New
+York. I have been to see the animals at the Zoo
+all the afternoon, and I'm going to see the Hippodrome
+this evening. That sounds like another animal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+but it isn't one, they say. It's a place all lights
+and music and crowds, and with a stage 'most as
+big as Texas itself, with scores of real horses and
+cowboys riding all over it.</p>
+
+<p>"I am having a perfectly beautiful time, but I
+just can't wait to see my own beloved home on the
+big prairie, and have you all there with me. I
+sha'n't see it quite so soon though, for father has
+been delayed about some of his business, and he
+can't come for me quite so soon as he expected. He
+says we sha'n't get away from Sunbridge until the
+fifth; but he's engaged five sections in a sleeper
+leaving Boston at eight <span class="smcap">p. m.</span> So we'll go then sure.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Harding is calling me. Good-by till I see
+you. We're coming the third. With heaps of love
+to everybody, Your own</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">Genevieve Hartley.</span>"<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Well, I like that," bridled Tilly. "Just think&mdash;not
+go until the fifth!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but just think of going at all," comforted
+Alma Lane, hurriedly; "and in sleepers, too!
+Sleepers are loads of fun. I rode in one fifty miles,
+once&mdash;it wasn't in the night, though."</p>
+
+<p>"I rode in one at night!" Tilly's voice rose
+dominant, triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>"My stars!"</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What was it like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Was it fun?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell us?"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly laughed in keen enjoyment of the commotion
+she had created.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you wish you knew?" she teased. "Just
+you wait and see!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but, Tilly, do they lay you down on a little
+narrow shelf, really?" worried Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"I sha'n't take off a single thing, anyhow," announced
+Bertha, with decision, "not even my shoes.
+I'm just sure there'll be an accident!"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly laughed merrily.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine traveler you'll make, Bertha," she
+scoffed. "Sleepers are made to sleep in, young
+lady&mdash;not to lie awake and worry in, for fear
+there'll be an accident and you'll lose your shoes.
+As for you, Cordy, and the shelf you're fretting
+over&mdash;there are shelves, in a way; but you lay
+yourself down on them, my child. Nobody else
+does it for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," returned Cordelia, a little stiffly.
+Cordelia did not like to be called "my child"&mdash;specially
+by Tilly, who was not quite sixteen, and
+who was the youngest member of the club.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Tilly, are&mdash;are sleepers nice, daytimes?"
+asked Edith Wilson, who, as usual, was hovering
+near. "I should think they'd be lovely for nights&mdash;but
+I wouldn't like to have to lie down all day!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tilly laughed so hard at this that Edith grew red
+of face indeed before Alma patched matters up and
+made peace.</p>
+
+<p>It was the trip to Texas that was the all-absorbing
+topic of discussion that day; and it was the
+trip to Texas that Cordelia Wilson was thinking of
+as she walked slowly home that night after leaving
+the girls at the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder&mdash;" she began just under her breath;
+then stopped short. An old man, known as "Uncle
+Bill Hodges," stood directly in her path.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Cordelia, I&mdash;I want to speak to ye, just a
+minute," he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir." Cordelia smiled politely.</p>
+
+<p>The old man threw a suspicious glance over his
+shoulder, then came a step nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't tellin' this everywhere, Miss Cordelia,
+and I don't want you to say nothin'. You're goin'
+to Texas, they tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Hodges, I am." Cordelia tried to
+make her voice sound properly humble, but pride
+would vibrate through it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I&mdash;" The man hesitated, looked around
+again suspiciously, then blurted out a storm of
+words with the rush of desperation. "I&mdash;years
+ago, Miss Cordelia, I let a man in Boston have a lot
+of money. He said 'twas goin' into an oil well out
+in Texas, and that when it came back there'd be a
+lot more with it a-comin' to me. So I let him have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+it. I liked Texas, anyhow&mdash;I'd been there as a
+boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," nodded Cordelia, smiling as she remembered
+the prairie schooner that was Fred's "boat."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, for a while I did get money&mdash;dividends,
+he called 'em. Then it all stopped off short. They
+shut the man up in prison, and closed the office.
+And there's all my money! They do be sayin', too,
+that there ain't no such place as this oil well there&mdash;that
+is, not the way he said it was&mdash;so big and fine
+and promisin'. Well, now, of course I can't go to
+see, Miss Cordelia&mdash;an old man like me, all the
+way to Texas. But you are goin'. So I thought I'd
+just ask you to look around a little if you happened
+to hear anything about this well. Maybe you could
+go and see it, and then tell me. I've written down
+the name on this paper," finished the man, thrusting
+his trembling fingers into his pocket, and bringing
+out a small piece of not over-clean paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of&mdash;of course, Mr. Hodges," promised
+Cordelia, doubtfully, as she took the paper. "I'd
+love to do anything I could for you&mdash;anything!
+Only I'm afraid I don't know much about oil wells,
+you see. Do they look just like&mdash;water wells, with
+a pump or a bucket? Bertha's aunt has one of those
+on her farm."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, child, I don't know," murmured
+the old man, shaking his head sadly, as he turned
+away. "Sometimes I think there ain't any such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+things, anyhow. But you'll do your best, I know.
+I can trust <i>you!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," returned Cordelia, earnestly,
+slipping the bit of paper into the envelope of Genevieve's
+letter in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>In her own room that night Cordelia Wilson got
+out her list marked "Things to do in Texas," and
+studied it with troubled eyes. She had now one
+more item to add to it&mdash;and it was already so long!</p>
+
+<p>She had started the list for her own benefit.
+Then had come the request from queer old Hermit
+Joe to be on the lookout for his son who had gone
+years ago to Texas. After that, commissions for
+others followed rapidly. So many people had so
+many things they wanted her to do in Texas!&mdash;and
+nobody wanted them talked about in Sunbridge.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, with careful precision, she wrote down
+this last one. Then, a little dubiously, she read
+over the list.</p>
+
+<p>See the blue bonnet&mdash;the Texas state flower.
+Find out if it really is shaped like a bonnet.</p>
+
+<p>Bring home a piece of prairie grass.</p>
+
+<p>See a real buffalo.</p>
+
+<p>Find Hermit Joe's son, John, who ran away to
+Texas twenty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>See an Osage orange hedge.</p>
+
+<p>See a broncho bursted (obviously changed over
+from "busted").</p>
+
+<p>Find out for Mrs. Miller if cowboys do shoot at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+sight, and yell always without just and due provocation.</p>
+
+<p>See a mesquite tree.</p>
+
+<p>Inquire if any one has seen Mrs. Snow's daughter,
+Lizzie, who ran away with a Texas man named
+Higgins.</p>
+
+<p>Pick a fig.</p>
+
+<p>See a rice canal.</p>
+
+<p>Find out what has become of Mrs. Granger's
+cousin, Lester Goodwin, who went to Texas fourteen
+years ago.</p>
+
+<p>See cotton growing and pick a cotton boll, called
+"Texas Roses."</p>
+
+<p>See peanuts growing.</p>
+
+<p>Inquire for James Hunt, brother of Miss Sally
+Hunt.</p>
+
+<p>See a real Indian.</p>
+
+<p>Look at oil well for Mr. Hodges, and see if there
+is any there.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Now if I can just fix all those people's names
+in my mind," mused Cordelia, aloud; "and seems
+as if I might&mdash;there are only four. John Sanborn,
+Lizzie Higgins, Lester Goodwin, and James Hunt,"
+she chanted over and over again. She was still
+droning the same refrain when she fell asleep that
+night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMING OF GENEVIEVE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Genevieve was to arrive in Sunbridge at three
+o'clock on the afternoon of the third of July. Her
+father was to remain in Boston until one of the
+evening trains. The Happy Hexagons, knowing
+Genevieve's plans, decided to give her a welcome befitting
+the club and the occasion. They invited
+Harold Day, of course, to join them.</p>
+
+<p>Harold laughed good-humoredly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll be there all right, at the station," he
+assured them. "I've got Mrs. Kennedy's permission
+to bring her up to the house; but I don't think
+I'll join in on your show. I'll let you girls do that."</p>
+
+<p>The girls pouted a little, but they were too excited
+to remain long out of humor.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't our dresses look pretty! I know Genevieve'll
+be pleased," sighed Elsie Martin, as, long
+before the train was due that afternoon, the girls
+arrived at the station.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she'll be pleased," cried Alma Lane.
+"She can't help it. I can hear her laugh and clap
+her hands now, when she sees us&mdash;and hears us!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So can I," echoed Bertha. "And how her
+eyes will dance! I love to see Genevieve's eyes
+dance."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," chorused the others, fervently.</p>
+
+<p>Sunbridge was a quiet little town in southern
+New Hampshire near the state line. It had wide,
+tree-shaded streets, and green-shuttered white
+houses set far back in spacious lawns. The station
+at this hour was even quieter than the town, and
+there were few curious eyes to question the meaning
+of the unusual appearance of five laughing, excited
+young girls, all dressed alike, and all showing
+flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>At one minute before three o'clock, a tall, good-looking
+youth drove up in a smart trap, and was
+hailed with shouts of mingled joy and relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Harold, we were just sure you were going
+to be late," cried Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Late? Not I&mdash;to-day!" laughed the boy.
+Then, with genuine admiration: "Say, that is
+pretty slick, girls. I'll take off my hat to the Happy
+Hexagons to-day all right!" he finished, with an
+elaborate flourish.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," twittered Tilly, saucily. "Now
+don't you wish you had joined us? But then&mdash;<i>you</i>
+couldn't have worn a white frock!"</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 322px;">
+<img src="images/gs02.jpg" width="322" height="400" alt="&quot;A TALL, SLENDER GIRL ... APPEARED AT A CAR DOOR&quot;" title="&quot;A TALL, SLENDER GIRL ... APPEARED AT A CAR DOOR&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;A TALL, SLENDER GIRL .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. APPEARED AT A CAR DOOR&quot;</span>
+</div>
+<p>A prolonged bell-clanging and the rumble of an
+approaching train prevented Harold's reply, and
+sent the girls into a flutter of excitement. A moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+later they stood in line, waiting, breathless
+with suspense.</p>
+
+<p>They made a wonderfully pretty picture. Each
+girl was in white, even to her shoes and stockings.
+Around each waist was a sash of a handsome shade
+of blue. The same color showed at the throat and
+on the hair.</p>
+
+<p>Quietly they watched the train roll into the station,
+and still quietly they stood until a tall, slender
+girl with merry brown eyes and soft fluffy brown
+hair appeared at a car door and tripped lightly down
+the steps to the platform. They waited only till she
+ran toward them; then in gleeful chorus they
+chanted:</p>
+
+<div>
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">"Texas, Texas, Tex&mdash;Tex&mdash;Texas!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4.5em;">GENEVIEVE!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>What happened next was a surprise. Genevieve
+did not laugh, nor cry out, nor clap her hands. Her
+eyes did not dance. She stopped and fumbled with
+the fastening of her suit-case. The next minute the
+train drew out of the station, and the girls were left
+alone in their corner. Genevieve looked up, at that,
+and came swiftly toward them.</p>
+
+<p>They saw then: the brown eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>The girls had intended to repeat their Texas yell;
+but with one accord now they cried out in dismay:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve! Why, Genevieve, you're&mdash;crying!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know I am, and I could shake myself," choked
+Genevieve, hugging each girl in turn spasmodically.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Genevieve, what is the matter?" appealed
+Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, I don't know&mdash;and that's what's
+the trouble," wailed Genevieve. "I don't know why
+I'm crying when I'm so g-glad to see you. But I
+reckon 'twas that&mdash;'Texas'!"</p>
+
+<p>"But we thought you'd like that," argued Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"I did&mdash;I do," stammered Genevieve, incoherently;
+"and it made me cry to think I did&mdash;I mean,
+to think I do&mdash;so much!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we're glad you did, or do, anyhow,"
+laughed Harold Day, holding out his hand. "And
+we're glad you're back again. I've got Jerry here
+and the cart. This your bag?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, right here; and thank you, Harold," she
+smiled a little mistily. "And girls, you're lovely&mdash;just
+lovely; and I don't know why I'm crying. But
+you're to come over&mdash;straight over to the house
+this very afternoon. I want to hear that 'T-Texas'
+again. I want to hear it six times running!" she
+finished, as she sprang lightly into the cart.</p>
+
+<p>On the way with Harold, she grew more calm.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, once, last fall, I said I hated Sunbridge,
+and that I wouldn't stay," she explained a
+little shame-facedly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You said you hated it!" cried Harold. "You
+never told me that. Why, I thought you liked it
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"I do, now, and I did&mdash;very soon, specially
+after I'd met some one I could talk Texas to all I
+wanted to&mdash;<i>you</i>, you know! I reckon I never told
+you, but you were a regular safety valve for me in
+those days."</p>
+
+<p>"Was I?" laughed the lad.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, even from that first day," nodded Genevieve,
+with a half-wistful smile. "Did I ever tell
+you the reason, the real reason, why Aunt Julia
+called you into the yard that afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no&mdash;not that I know of." Harold's face
+showed a puzzled frown.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, 'twas this. I'd been here a week, and I
+was so homesick and lonesome for father and the
+ranch and all. I was threatening to go back. I
+declared I'd walk back, if there was no other way.
+Poor Aunt Julia! She tried everything. Specially
+she tried to have me meet some nice girls, but I just
+wouldn't. I said I didn't want any girls that weren't
+Texas girls. I didn't want anything that wasn't
+Texas. That's what I'd been saying that very day
+out under the trees there, when Aunt Julia looked
+toward the street, saw you, and called you into the
+yard."</p>
+
+<p>"Is <i>that</i> why she introduced me as the boy who
+was born in Texas?" laughed Harold.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and you know how I began to talk Texas
+right away."</p>
+
+<p>"But I couldn't help much&mdash;I left there when I
+was a baby."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, but you'd been there," laughed Genevieve,
+"and that helped. Then, through you, I met
+your cousin Alma, and the rest was easy, for I always
+had you for that safety valve, to talk Texas
+to. You see, it was just that I got homesick. All
+my life I'd lived on the ranch, and things here were
+so different. I didn't like to&mdash;to mind Mrs. Kennedy
+and Miss Jane, very well, I suspect. You see,
+at the ranch I'd always had my own way, and&mdash;I
+liked it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sure that's natural," nodded Harold.</p>
+
+<p>"I know; but I wasn't nice about it," returned
+the girl, wistfully. "Father said I must do everything&mdash;everything
+they said. And I tried to. But
+Miss Jane had such heaps of things for me to do,
+and such tiresome things, like dusting and practising,
+and learning to cook and to sew! And it
+all was specially hard when you remember that I
+didn't want to come East in the first place. But I
+love it here, now; you know I do. Every one has
+been so good to me! Aunt Julia is a dear."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;Miss Jane?" queried Harold, eyeing
+her a little mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve blushed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Miss Jane? Well, she's 'most a dear, too&mdash;sometimes.
+As for Sunbridge&mdash;I love both the
+East and the West now. Don't you see? But, to-day,
+coming up from Boston, I got to thinking
+about it&mdash;my dear prairie home; and how I had
+hated to leave it, and how now I was going back
+to it with Aunt Julia and the girls all with me.
+And I was so happy, so wonderfully happy, that a
+great big something rose within me, and I felt so&mdash;so
+queer, as if I could fly, and fly, and <i>fly!</i> And
+then, when I saw the girls all dressed alike so
+prettily, and heard the 'Texas, Texas, Texas'&mdash;what
+did I do? I didn't do anything but cry&mdash;<i>cry</i>,
+Harold, just as if I didn't like things. And
+the girls were so disappointed, I know they
+were!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind; I guess you can make them understand&mdash;anyhow,
+you have me," said Harold,
+trying to speak with a lightness that would hide the
+fact that her words had made him, too, feel "queer."
+Harold did not enjoy feeling "queer."</p>
+
+<p>A moment later they turned into the broad white
+driveway that led up to the Kennedy home.</p>
+
+<p>On the veranda of the fine old house stood a
+sweet-faced, motherly-looking woman with tender
+eyes and a loving smile. Near her was a taller,
+younger woman with eyes almost as interested,
+and a smile almost as cordial.</p>
+
+<p>"You dears&mdash;both of you!" cried Genevieve,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+running up the steps and into the arms of the two
+women.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Harold," smiled Mrs. Kennedy over
+Genevieve's bobbing head; "thank you for bringing
+our little girl home."</p>
+
+<p>"As if I wasn't glad to do it!" laughed the boy,
+gallantly, as he picked up the reins and sprang into
+the cart. To the horse he added later, when quite
+out of earshot of the ladies: "Jerry, I'm thinking
+Genevieve isn't the only one in that house that has
+'improved' since last August. It strikes me that
+Miss Jane Chick has done a little on her own account.
+Did you see that smile? That was a really,
+truly smile, Jerry. Not the 'I-suppose-I-must'
+kind!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve and the two ladies were still on the
+veranda when the five white-clad girls turned in at
+the broad front walk.</p>
+
+<p>"We came around this way home," announced
+Tilly. "You <i>said</i> you wanted us."</p>
+
+<p>"Want you! Well, I reckon I do," cried Genevieve,
+springing to her feet. "Come up here this
+minute! Now say it&mdash;say it again&mdash;that thing
+you did at the station. I want Aunt Julia to hear
+it&mdash;and Miss Jane."</p>
+
+<p>The change in Genevieve's voice and manner was
+unconscious, but it was very evident. No one noticed
+it apparently, however, but Tilly; and she
+only puckered her lips into an odd little smile as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+formed in line with the other girls: Tilly was not
+without some experience herself with Miss Jane
+and her ways.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, one, two, three, ready!" counted Cordelia,
+sternly, her face a tragedy of responsibility
+lest this final triumph of their labors should be anything
+less than the glorious success the occasion demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Once more five eager, girlish countenances faced
+squarely front. Once more five fresh young voices
+chanted with lusty precision:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Texas, Texas, Tex&mdash;Tex&mdash;Texas!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">GENEVIEVE!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It was finished. Cordelia, with the expression of
+one from whom the weight of nations has been
+lifted, drew a happy sigh, and looked confidently
+about for her reward. Almost at once, however,
+her face clouded perplexedly.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was dancing lightly on her toes and
+clapping her hands softly. Mrs. Kennedy was
+laughing with her handkerchief to her lips. But
+Miss Jane Chick&mdash;Miss Jane Chick was sitting
+erect, her eyes plainly horrified, her hands clapped
+to her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Children, children!" she gasped, as soon as
+there was a chance for her voice to be heard. "You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+don't mean to say that you did <i>that</i>&mdash;at a public
+railroad station!"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia looked distressed. The other girls bit
+their lips and lifted their chins just a little: they
+did not like to be called "children."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Miss Chick," stammered Cordelia, "we
+didn't think&mdash;that is, we wanted to do something
+to welcome Genevieve, and&mdash;and&mdash;" Cordelia
+stopped, and swallowed chokingly.</p>
+
+<p>"But to shout like that," protested Miss Chick.
+"You&mdash;<i>young ladies!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The girls bit their lips still harder and lifted their
+chins still higher: they were not quite sure whether
+they more disliked to be "children" or "young
+ladies"&mdash;in that tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Miss Jane," argued Genevieve, "you
+know Sunbridge station is just dead, simply dead at
+three o'clock in the afternoon. Nobody ever comes
+on that train, hardly, and there wasn't a soul around
+but that sleepy Mr. Jones and the station men, and
+that old Mrs. Palmer. And you know <i>she</i> wouldn't
+hear a gun go off right under her nose."</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, my dear!" murmured Mrs. Kennedy&mdash;but
+her eyes were twinkling.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia still looked troubled.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Genevieve," she frowned anxiously,
+"but I never thought of it that way&mdash;what others
+would think. Maybe we ought not to have done it,
+after all. But I'm sure we didn't mean any harm."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Promptly, now, Mrs. Kennedy came to the
+rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you did not, dear child," she said,
+smiling into Cordelia's troubled eyes; "and it was
+very sweet and lovely of you girls to think of giving
+Genevieve such a pretty welcome. Oh, of course,"
+she added with a whimsical glance at her sister,
+"we shouldn't exactly advise you to make a practice
+of welcoming everybody home in that somewhat
+startling fashion. That really wouldn't do, you
+know. Sunbridge station might not be quite so
+dead next time," she finished, meeting Genevieve's
+grateful eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"That really was dear of you, Aunt Julia," confided
+Genevieve some time later, after the girls had
+gone, and when she and Mrs. Kennedy were alone
+together. (Miss Jane had gone up-stairs.) "Only
+think of the pains they took&mdash;to get themselves
+up to look so pretty, besides learning to give that yell
+so finely. I was so afraid they'd be hurt at what
+Miss Jane said! And I wouldn't want them hurt&mdash;after
+all that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you wouldn't," smiled Mrs. Kennedy;
+"and my sister wouldn't either, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve stirred restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know she wouldn't, Aunt Julia; but&mdash;but
+the girls don't know it. They&mdash;they don't understand
+Miss Jane."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And do you&mdash;always?" The question was
+gently put, but its meaning was unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve colored.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe not&mdash;quite always; but&mdash;Miss Jane
+is so&mdash;so shockable!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy made a sudden movement. Apparently
+she only stooped to pick up a small thread
+from the floor, but when she came upright her face
+was a deeper red than just that exertion would seem
+to occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, have you been to your room since
+you came home?" she asked. There were times
+when Mrs. Kennedy could change the subject almost
+as abruptly as could Genevieve herself.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Aunt Julia. You know Nancy carried up
+my suit-case, and I've been too busy telling you all
+about my visit to think of anything else."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," smiled Mrs. Kennedy. "I was just wondering."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve frowned in puzzled questioning.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm going up right away, anyhow," she
+said. "Mercy! I reckon I'll go up right now," she
+added laughingly, springing to her feet as there
+came through the open window behind her the
+sound of a clock striking half-past five. "I had no
+idea it was so late."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was not many minutes in her room before
+she ceased to wonder at Mrs. Kennedy's questioning;
+for in plain sight on her dressing-table<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+she soon found a small white box addressed to Genevieve
+Hartley. The box, upon being opened, disclosed
+in a white velvet nest a beautiful little chatelaine
+watch in dark blue enamel and gold.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+"To keep Genevieve's time.<br />
+With much love from<br />
+Jane Chick."<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>read Genevieve on the little card that was with the
+watch.</div>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh, oh, how lovely!" breathed the girl,
+hovering over the watch in delight. "And to think
+what I said!" With a heightened color she turned,
+tripped across the room and hurried down the hall
+to Miss Jane's door.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Jane!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"May I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I want to thank you&mdash;oh, I do want to
+thank you, but I don't know how." Genevieve's
+eyes were misty.</p>
+
+<p>"For the watch? You like it, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like it! I just love it; and I never, never saw
+such a beauty!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you like it."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's pause. Over by the dressing-table
+Miss Jane was carefully smoothing a refractory
+lock of hair into place. She looked so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+calm, so self-contained, so&mdash;far away, thought
+Genevieve; if it had been Aunt Julia, now!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the girl gave a little skipping run and
+enveloped the lady in two wide-flung young arms,
+thereby ruffling up more than ever the carefully
+smoothed lock of hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss, Jane, I&mdash;I've just got to hug you, anyway!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Genevieve, my dear!" murmured Miss
+Jane, a little dazedly.</p>
+
+<p>From the door Genevieve called back incoherently&mdash;the
+hug had been as short in duration as it had
+been sudden in action:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I can be late now, Miss Jane, ever&mdash;with
+that lovely thing to keep time for me. And
+I wanted you to know&mdash;next year, when I come
+back, I'm just sure I shall cook and sew beautifully,
+and do my practising and everything, without once
+being told. And if I do sprain my ankle I'll be a
+perfect angel&mdash;truly I will. And I won't ever keep
+folks waiting, either, or&mdash;mercy! there's Nancy's
+first ring now, and I'm not one bit ready!" she
+broke off, as the musical notes of a Chinese gong
+sounded from the hall below. The next moment
+Miss Jane was alone with her thoughts&mdash;and with
+the lock of hair that she was still trying to smooth.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear child!" smiled the lady. Then she turned
+abruptly and hastened from the room, her hair still
+unsmoothed. "I'll just tell Nancy to be a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+slow about ringing that second gong," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>When Genevieve came down-stairs to supper
+that night, she brought with her two books: one a
+small paper-covered one, the other a larger one
+bound in dark red leather.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the latest 'Pathfinder'&mdash;only I call it
+'Path<i>loser</i>,'" she laughed, handing the smaller
+book to Miss Jane Chick; "and here is&mdash;well, just
+see what is here," she finished impressively, spreading
+open the leather-covered book before Mrs.
+Kennedy's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Chronicles of the Hexagon Club,'" read Mrs.
+Kennedy. "Oh, a journal!" she smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Aunt Julia. Isn't it lovely?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed it is! Who will keep it?"</p>
+
+<p>"All of us. We are going to take turns. We
+shall write a day apiece&mdash;we six Happy Hexagons
+of the Hexagon Club."</p>
+
+<p>"Do the girls know about it?" asked Miss Jane.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. I just thought of it yesterday when
+I saw the book in the store. Father bought it for
+the club&mdash;of course <i>my</i> money was gone long ago&mdash;at
+such a time as <i>this</i>," she explained with laughing
+emphasis. "I'm going to show the book to the
+girls to-morrow. Won't they be tickled&mdash;I mean
+pleased," corrected Genevieve, throwing a hasty
+glance into Miss Jane's smiling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I think they will," agreed that lady, pleasantly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girls were pleased, indeed, when Genevieve
+told of her plan and showed the book the next day.
+But even so entrancing a subject as a journal kept
+by each in turn could not hold their attention long;
+for time was very short now, and in every household
+there were a dozen-and-one last things to be
+done before the momentous fifth of July. Even the
+Fourth, with its fun and its firecrackers had no
+charms for the Happy Hexagons. Of so little consequence
+did they consider it, indeed, that at last
+one small boy quite lost his patience.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't fire my crackers, you won't take me
+to the picnic, you won't play ball, you won't do anything,"
+he complained to his absorbed sister. "I
+shall be just glad when this old Texas thing is
+over!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>ON THE WAY</h3>
+
+
+<p>All the girls' friends came to see them off at the
+station that fifth of July.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! it would never do to spring our Texas
+yell to-day," chuckled Tilly, eyeing the assembled
+crowd; "but wouldn't I like to, though!"</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing dead about Sunbridge now,
+sure," laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"I should say not," declared Harold Day, who
+had begged the privilege of going to Boston to see
+them aboard their train for Washington.</p>
+
+<p>"For you see," he had argued, "it's to my state,
+after all, that you are going, so I ought to be allowed
+to do the honors at this end of the trip as long as
+I can't at the other!"</p>
+
+<p>They were off at last, Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Hartley,
+the six girls, and Harold. But what a scrambling
+it was, and what a confusion of chatter,
+laughter, "good-byes," and "write soons"!</p>
+
+<p>In Boston there was a thirty-minute wait in the
+South Station before their train was due to leave;
+but long before the thirty minutes were over, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+usually serene face of Mrs. Kennedy began to look
+flushed and worried.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, my dear," she expostulated at last,
+"can't you keep those flutterbudget girls somewhere
+near together? It will be time, soon, to take our
+train, and only Cordelia is in sight. Not even
+Harold and your father are here!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Aunt Julia; but they'll be here, I'm
+sure. There's still lots of time," she added, glancing
+proudly at her pretty new watch.</p>
+
+<p>"But where are they all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly and Elsie have gone for some soda water,
+and Bertha for a sandwich at the lunch counter.
+She said she just couldn't eat a thing before she left
+home. Alma Lane has gone to a drug store across
+the street. I don't know where father and Harold
+are. They went off together, and&mdash;oh, here they
+are!" she broke off in relief, as the two wanderers
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," summoned Mr. Hartley, "we'll be
+off to our car! Why, where are the rest of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they&mdash;they aren't all here," frowned
+Genevieve, a little anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>As at Sunbridge, it was a rush and a scramble at
+the last. Tilly, Elsie, and Bertha came back, but
+Genevieve went to look for Alma Lane; and when
+Alma returned without having seen Genevieve,
+Harold had to run post-haste for her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sure, dearie," said Mr. Hartley to his
+daughter, laughingly, when at last he had his
+charges all in the car, "this is a little worse than
+trying to corral a bunch of bronchos!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we won't be so bad again," promised
+the girl, waving her hand to Harold, who stood
+alone outside the window, watching them a little
+wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>They had a merry time getting settled, and more
+than one tired countenance in the car brightened at
+sight of the six eager young faces.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't get all five sections together,"
+frowned Mr. Hartley. "I got three here, but the
+other two are down near the end of the car&mdash;you
+know the porter showed you. Do you think we can
+make them go, some way?" he questioned Mrs.
+Kennedy, anxiously. "I planned for you to have
+one of the sections down there by yourself, perhaps,
+with two of the young ladies in the other. Will
+that do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it will&mdash;and finely, too," declared
+the lady. "Genevieve, you and I will go down
+there and take one of the girls with us&mdash;perhaps
+Bertha. That will leave your father for one up
+here, Elsie and Alma for another, and Tilly and
+Cordelia for the third."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew she'd put you with Cordelia," chuckled
+Bertha to Tilly, under cover of their scramble to
+pick out their suit-cases from the pile in which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+porter had left them. "And I'm sure you ought to
+be," she laughed. "There'll be some hopes then
+that you'll be kept in order!"</p>
+
+<p>"Just look to yourself," retorted Tilly, serenely.
+"Mrs. Kennedy put <i>you</i> down there near <i>her</i>&mdash;remember
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, I felt just like an orange," giggled
+Elsie, "with all that talk about 'sections.'"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see where the shelves are," whispered
+Cordelia, craning her short little neck to its full
+extent.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll see them all right," promised Tilly.
+"Just wait till it's dark, then&mdash;'The goblins'll get
+ye if ye don't watch out!'" she quoted, with mock
+impressiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if I were ten years old, and playing
+house," chirped Alma Lane, as she happily frowned
+over just the proper place for her bag.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if it were all a dream, and that I shall
+wake up right at home," breathed Cordelia.
+"Seems as if it just couldn't be true&mdash;that we're
+really going to Texas! Oh, Genevieve, we can't
+ever thank you and your father enough," she finished,
+as Genevieve came up the aisle.</p>
+
+<p>"As if we wanted thanks, after what you've done
+for me!" cried Genevieve. "Besides, you girls
+can't be half so glad to go as I am to have you!"</p>
+
+<p>Some time later the porter began to make up the
+berths.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tilly nudged Cordelia violently.</p>
+
+<p>"There's shelf number one, Cordy. How do
+you think you'll like it?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia was too absorbed even to notice the
+hated "Cordy." With wide-eyed, breathless interest
+she was watching the porter.</p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;it's the most wonderful thing&mdash;I
+ever saw," she breathed in an awestruck voice.</p>
+
+<p>It was after the car was quiet that night that
+Genevieve, in her upper berth, pulled apart the
+heavy curtains and peeped out into the long narrow
+aisle between the swaying draperies.</p>
+
+<p>The train was moving very rapidly. The air was
+heavy and close. The night was an uncomfortably
+warm one. Genevieve had been too excited to sleep.
+Even yet it did not seem quite real&mdash;that the Happy
+Hexagons were all there with her, and that they
+were going to her far-away Texas home.</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh the girl fell back on her pillow, and
+tried to coax sleep to come to her. But sleep refused
+to come. Instead, the whole panorama of her
+Eastern winter unrolled itself before her, peopled
+with little fairy sprites, who danced with twinkling
+feet and smiled at her mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I know you," murmured Genevieve,
+drowsily. "I know you all. You&mdash;you little black
+one&mdash;you're the cake I forgot in the oven, and let
+burn up. And you're the lessons I didn't learn&mdash;there
+are heaps of you! And you&mdash;you're those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+horrid scales I never could catch up with. My, how
+you run now! And you&mdash;you little shamed one
+over in the corner&mdash;you're the prank I played on
+Miss Jane.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. Oh, you can dance now&mdash;but you
+won't, by and by! Next year there won't be any of
+you&mdash;not a one left. I'm going to be so good, so
+awfully good; and I'm not going to ever forget, or
+to cause anybody any trouble, or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a start Genevieve sat erect in her berth, fully
+awake.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! What a jounce that was!" she cried,
+just above her breath. "But we seem to be going
+all right now."</p>
+
+<p>Cautiously she parted her curtains and peeped
+out again. The next instant she almost gave a little
+shriek: she was looking straight into Bertha
+Brown's upraised, startled eyes, just below her.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that an accident?" chattered Bertha. "I
+told you there'd be one! I'm all dressed, anyhow&mdash;if
+'tis!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-h! No, goosey," chuckled Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>She would have said more but, at that moment,
+from up the aisle sounded a sibilant "S-s-s-s!"
+They turned to see a somewhat untidy fluff of red
+hair above a laughing, piquant face.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Tilly! She's motioning to us. Say, let's
+go," whispered Genevieve. And cautiously she began
+to let herself down from her perch.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Bertha, fully dressed, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+Genevieve in her long, dark blue kimono, were tripping
+softly up the aisle.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you're both down here," exulted Genevieve,
+as she climbed into the lower berth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Cordelia was afraid," giggled Tilly, "so
+I came down."</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!&mdash;I was not," disputed Cordelia, in an
+indignant whisper. "You came of your own accord."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! Tilly's fooling, and we know it,"
+soothed Bertha, climbing into the berth after Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Bertha Brown, you've got your shoes
+on!" gasped Tilly, forgetting to whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I have," retorted Bertha. "Do you
+suppose&mdash;sh!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a tug at the curtains, and Elsie Martin's
+round, good-natured face peered in.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I like this," she bridled. "A special
+meeting of the Hexagon Club, and me not notified!
+I heard Genevieve and Bertha giggling in the aisle.
+Are you all here?"</p>
+
+<p>"All but Alma," rejoined Tilly, in an exultant
+whisper. "Say, get her, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, if this isn't just a lark," crowed
+Bertha, gleefully, when the last of the six girls had
+crowded themselves into the narrow berth.</p>
+
+<p>"Ouch! my head," groaned Genevieve, as a soft
+thud threw the other girls into stifled laughter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! I've been hitting my head against the
+up-stairs flat ever since I went to bed," quoth Elsie.
+"Isn't it fun! Now let's talk."</p>
+
+<p>"What about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Texas, of course," cut in Tilly. "Girls, girls,
+wouldn't it be glorious to give our Texas yell,
+though, and see what happened!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" gasped the shocked Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wasn't going to, of course," chuckled
+Tilly, softly. "I was just imaginin', you know."</p>
+
+<p>"But even this&mdash;I'm not sure we ought&mdash;" began
+Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not; you never are, Cordy,"
+agreed Tilly, smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>"But let's talk Texas&mdash;we can whisper, you
+know. Tell us about Texas, Genevieve," cut in
+pacifier Alma, hurriedly. "What's it like&mdash;the
+ranch?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve drew a happy sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's like&mdash;it's like nothing in Texas, we
+think," she breathed. "Of course we don't think
+any other ranch could come up to the Six Star!"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly gave a sudden cry.</p>
+
+<p>"The what?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Six Star&mdash;our ranch, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean it's named the 'Six Star Ranch'?"
+demanded Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! Didn't I ever tell you?" retorted Genevieve
+in plain surprise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tilly clapped her hands softly.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Did</i> you! Well, I should say not! You've always
+called it just 'the ranch.' And now&mdash;why,
+girls, don't you see?&mdash;it's <i>our</i> ranch. It couldn't
+have had a better name if we'd had it built to order.
+It's the Six Star Ranch&mdash;and we're the six star
+girls&mdash;the Happy Hexagons. And to think we
+never knew it before!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a chorus of half-stifled exclamations
+of delight; then Cordelia demanded anxiously:</p>
+
+<p>"But, Genevieve, will they be glad to see us,
+really&mdash;all your people out there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Glad! I reckon they will be," averred Genevieve,
+warmly. "The boys will give us a rousing
+welcome, and there won't be anything too good for
+Mr. Tim and Mammy Lindy to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are they?" asked Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tim is the ranch foreman, 'the boss,' the
+boys call him. He's been with us ever since I can
+remember, and he's so good to me! Mammy Lindy
+is&mdash;well, Mammy Lindy is a dear! You'll love
+Ol' Mammy. She's been just a mother to me ever
+since my own mother died eight years ago." Genevieve's
+voice faltered a little, then went on more
+firmly. "She's a negro woman, you know. Her
+people were slaves, once."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;the&mdash;boys?" asked Cordelia, dubiously.
+"Are they your&mdash;brothers, Genevieve?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed&mdash;a little more loudly than
+perhaps she realized.</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers!&mdash;well, hardly! The boys are the
+cowboys&mdash;on the ranch, you know. My, but they'll
+give us a welcome! I reckon they'll ride into town
+to give it, too, in all their war paint. Just you wait
+till you see the boys&mdash;and hear them!" And Genevieve
+laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>All in the dark Cordelia looked distinctly shocked;
+but, being in the dark, nobody noticed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I for one just can't wait," began Tilly,
+hugging herself with her arms about her knees.
+"Only think, it'll be whole days <i>now</i> before we get
+there, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Young ladies!"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly stopped with a little cry of dismay. A man's
+voice had spoken close to her ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Young ladies," came the mellow tones again. "I
+begs yo' pardon, but de lady what belongs down in
+number ten says maybe you done forgot dat dis am
+a <i>sleepin'</i> car."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Julia!" breathed Genevieve. "She's
+number ten."</p>
+
+<p>"She sent the porter," gasped Cordelia. "How&mdash;how
+awful!&mdash;and you're in my house, too," she
+almost sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I know we're playing house," tittered
+Alma Lane, hysterically, as she followed Genevieve
+out of the berth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Once more in her own quarters, Genevieve lay
+back on her pillow with a remorseful sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why it's so much easier to <i>say</i> you'll
+never give anybody any trouble than 'tis to <i>do</i> it,"
+she lamented, as she turned over with a jerk.</p>
+
+<p>The girls began the "Chronicles of the Hexagon
+Club" the next morning. Genevieve made the first
+entry. She dwelt at some length on the confusion
+of the train-taking, both at Sunbridge and Boston.
+She also had something to say of Tilly Mack. She
+gave a full account, too, of the midnight session
+of the Hexagon Club in Cordelia's berth.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm ashamed that Aunt Julia had to be
+ashamed of me so soon," she wrote contritely.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia Wilson had agreed to make the second
+entry in the book; but the heat, the loss of sleep,
+and the strangeness and excitement added to her
+distress that "her house" should have been made
+to seem a disgrace in the eyes of the whole car, all
+conspired to make her feel so ill that she declared
+she could not think of writing for a day or
+two.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, then, you sha'n't write; we'll hand
+the book to Tilly," said Genevieve, "and then we'll
+give it to some of the others. But I'll tell you what
+we will do, Cordelia; you shall make the last entry
+in the book just before we leave the train at Bolo.
+And you can make it a sort of retrospect&mdash;a 'review
+lesson' of the whole, you know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I thought the others&mdash;won't they each
+tell their day?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's <i>just</i> what they'll tell&mdash;their day," retorted
+Genevieve, whimsically. "You <i>know</i> what
+most of them are. Alma Lane would be all right,
+and would give a true description of everything;
+only she would go into particulars so, that she would
+tell everything she saw from the windows, and just
+what she had to eat all day, down to the last
+olive."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," nodded Cordelia, with a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>"As for Tilly&mdash;you can't get real sense, of
+course, from her part. If there's any nonsense going,
+Tilly Mack will find it and trot it out. Bertha
+Brown will take up the most of her space by saying
+'I always said that&mdash;' etc., etc. Bertha is a dear&mdash;but
+you know she does just love to say 'I told
+you so.' Elsie will write clothes, of course. We
+shall find out what everybody has on when Elsie
+writes."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia laughed aloud&mdash;then clapped her hand
+to her aching head.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor dear! What a shame," sympathized
+Genevieve. "But, Cordelia, why does Elsie think
+so much of clothes? Mercy! for my part I think
+they're the most tiresome sort of things to bother
+with; and it's such a waste of time to be having
+to change your dress always!"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia smiled; then her face sobered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Poor Elsie! I'm sorry for Elsie. She does
+have such an unhappy time over clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? How?&mdash;or isn't it fair to tell?" added
+Genevieve, with quick loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, it's fair. Everybody knows it, 'most,
+and I supposed you did. Elsie herself tells of it.
+You know she lives with her aunt, Mrs. Gale.
+Well, Mrs. Gale has three daughters, Fannie, about
+twenty-one, I guess, and the twins, nineteen; and
+she just loves to make over their things for Elsie&mdash;so
+she does it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are they so very&mdash;poor, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; they aren't poor at all. I don't think
+she really has to do it. Aunt Mary says she's just
+naturally thrifty, and that she loves to make them
+over. But you see, poor Elsie almost never has
+a new dress&mdash;of new material, I mean. Now
+Elsie loves red; but Fannie wears blue a lot,
+and the twins like queer shades like faded-out
+greens and browns which Elsie abhors. Poor
+Elsie&mdash;no wonder she's always looking at
+clothes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m; no wonder," nodded Genevieve, her
+pitying eyes on Elsie far down the aisle&mdash;Elsie,
+who, in a mustard-colored striped skirt and pongee
+blouse, was at that moment trying to perk up the
+loppy blue bows on a somewhat faded tan straw
+hat. "Well, anyhow," added Genevieve, with a
+sigh, "just remember, Cordelia, that you're to do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+the last day of the trip in the Chronicles. Now lie
+down and give your poor head a rest."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Long before the last day of the journey came,
+Cordelia had quite recovered from her headache;
+but, in accordance with Genevieve's plan, she did
+not add her share to the Chronicles until the appointed
+time. Then, with almost a reverent air,
+she accepted the book and pen from Genevieve's
+hands, and returned to the seclusion of her seat,
+rejoicing that Tilly was playing checkers with
+Bertha, and so would not, presumably, disturb her&mdash;for
+a time, at least.</p>
+
+<p>"To-day, at noon, we are to arrive at Bolo," she
+wrote a little unevenly; then with a firmer hand
+she went on. "Genevieve says this ought to be a
+retrospect, and touch lightly upon the whole trip;
+so I will try to make it so.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been a beautiful journey. Nothing serious
+has happened, though Bertha has worn her shoes
+all the time expecting it. The best thing, so far,
+was our lovely day in Washington that Mr. Hartley
+gave us, and the President. (I mean, we saw him
+and he smiled.) And the worst thing (except that
+first night in my berth that Genevieve wrote of)
+was the time we lost Tilly for three whole hours,
+and Mrs. Kennedy got so nervous and white and
+frightened. We supposed, of course, she had fallen
+off, or jumped off, or got left off at some station.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+But just as we were talking with the porter about
+telegraphing everywhere, she danced in with two
+very untidy, unclean little Armenian children. It
+seems she had been in the emigrant car all the time
+playing with the children and trying to make the
+men and women talk their queer English. I never
+knew that gentle Mrs. Kennedy could speak so
+sharply as she did then to Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"And now&mdash;since Tuesday, some time&mdash;we
+have really been in Texas. Some things look just
+like Eastern things, but others are so strange and
+queer. It is very hot&mdash;I mean, very warm, too.
+But then, we have just as warm days in Sunbridge,
+I guess. The windmills look so queer&mdash;there are
+such a lot of them; but they look pretty, too. Some
+of the towns are very pretty, also, with their red
+roofs and blue barns and houses. Genevieve says
+lots of them are German villages.</p>
+
+<p>"In some places lots of things are growing, but
+in others it is all just gray and bare-looking with
+nothing much growing except those queer prairie-dog
+cities with the funny little creatures sitting on
+top of their houses, or popping down into their
+holes only to turn around and look at you out of
+their bright little eyes. We had a splendid chance
+to see them once when our train stopped right in
+the middle of a prairie for a long time. We got off
+and walked quite a way with Mr. Hartley. I saw
+a rattlesnake, and I'm afraid I screamed. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+screamed again when the horrid thing wiggled into
+one of the dog houses. Mr. Hartley says they live
+together sometimes, but if I were that dog he
+wouldn't live with me!</p>
+
+<p>"We have seen lots of cattle and goats and hogs&mdash;though
+Tilly says she hasn't seen any of the
+latter under any gate yet. I have seen a mesquite
+tree (so I have done one of my things), and it <i>does</i>
+have thorns. We are on another prairie now, and
+oh, how big it is, and such a lot of grass as there
+is on it&mdash;just as far as you can see, grass, grass,
+grass! I guess there won't be any danger of my not
+having plenty of that to take home. I have seen
+lots of men on horseback, but I don't know whether
+they were cowboys or not. They did not shoot, anyway,
+but some of them did yell.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve says cowboys are to meet us, and
+that probably they will come away to Bolo in full
+war paint. I thought it was only Indians who
+painted&mdash;except silly ladies, of course&mdash;and I was
+going to say so; but Tilly was there, so I didn't
+like to. Of course I ought not to mind the cowboys&mdash;if
+Genevieve likes them, and they are her
+friends; but I can't help remembering what Mrs.
+Miller told me about their 'shooting up towns' in
+a very dreadful way when they were angry. I hope
+none of the men I want to find will turn out to be
+cowboys." (Here there were signs of an attempted
+erasure, but the words still stood, and immediately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+after them came another sentence.) "That is, I
+mean I should hate to find that any friends of mine
+had become cowboys.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just been reading over what I have written,
+and I am disappointed in it. I am sure I ought
+to have mentioned a great many things about which
+I have been silent. But there were so many things,
+and they all crowded at once before me, so that I
+had to just touch on the big things and the tall
+things&mdash;like windmills, for instance.</p>
+
+<p>"We are getting nearer Bolo now, and I must
+stop and eat some luncheon, Genevieve says, as we
+sha'n't have anything else till supper on the ranch.
+Oh, I am so excited! Seems as if I couldn't draw
+a breath deep enough. And the idea of trying to
+eat when I feel like this!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BOYS PREPARE A WELCOME</h3>
+
+
+<p>On the back gallery of the long, low ranch house,
+the boys were waiting for Teresa to ring the bell
+for supper. Comfortably they lolled about on hammocks,
+chairs, and steps, with their shirts open at
+the neck and plentifully powdered with the dust of
+the corral.</p>
+
+<p>From the doorway, Tim Nolan, the ranch foreman,
+spoke to them hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, boys, I'm right sorry, but I've got to
+see Benson to-morrow about those steers. That
+means that I've got to go as far as Bolo to-night,
+and that I sha'n't be back in time to start with the
+rest of you to meet the folks. But I'll see you in
+Bolo day after to-morrow at noon. The train is
+due then. Now be on hand, all of you that can.
+We want Miss Genevieve and her friends to have a
+right royal welcome. I reckon now I'd better be
+off. So long! Now remember&mdash;day after to-morrow
+at noon!" he finished, turning away.</p>
+
+<p>"As if we'd be a-forgettin' it," grinned Long
+John, a tall, lank fellow sprawled in a hammock,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+"when the little mistress hain't set her pretty foot
+on the place since last August!"</p>
+
+<p>"If only she wa'n't bringin' all them others,"
+groaned the short, sandy-haired man on the steps.
+"I'd just like to rope the whole bunch and send 'em
+back East again, old lady and all&mdash;all but the little
+mistress, of course. Boys, what are we a-goin' to
+do with an old lady&mdash;even though she ain't so
+awful old&mdash;and five tom-fool girls on the Six Star
+Ranch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ees not the Se&ntilde;orita a gurrl, also?" laughed a
+dark-eyed Mexican from his perch on the gallery
+railing. "Eh, Reddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Pedro," retorted the sandy-haired man,
+testily. (Pedro was the only Mexican cowboy at
+the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.) "But
+the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't
+howl at a rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog;
+and she knows how to ride, and which end of a gun
+goes off!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a general laugh, followed by a long
+silence&mdash;the boys did not usually talk so much together,
+but to-night a curious restlessness pervaded
+them all. Suddenly the tall man in the hammock
+pulled himself erect.</p>
+
+<p>"Look a-here, boys, that's jest it," he began in a
+worried voice. "What if the little mistress has
+changed? What if she hain't no use for us and the
+ranch any more? I never told ye, but at the first,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+last August, 'fore she went away, I heard the boss
+and Mr. Hartley a-talkin'. They was sayin' she'd
+got to go East to learn how to live like a lady
+should&mdash;to know girls, and books, and all that.
+They said she was runnin' wild here with only us
+for playmates, and that they had just got ter pasture
+her out where the grass was finer, and the
+fences nearer tergether."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they say&mdash;that?" gasped half a dozen
+worried voices.</p>
+
+<p>"They sure did&mdash;and more. They said two
+real ladies was a-goin' ter take her and make her
+like themselves&mdash;a lady. And, boys, I was wonderin'&mdash;how
+is a lady goin' ter like us, and the
+ranch?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's tense silence. The boys
+were staring, wide-eyed and appalled, into each
+other's faces.</p>
+
+<p>From somewhere came a deep sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Gorry!&mdash;she can't, she just can't, after all
+her book-learnin' and culturin'," groaned a new
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>For a time no one spoke; then Reddy cleared his
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Look a-here, there ain't but jest one thing to
+do. If she don't like the ranch&mdash;and us&mdash;we'll
+jest have to make the ranch&mdash;and us&mdash;so she will
+like 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" demanded a skeptical chorus.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Slick 'em up&mdash;and us," retorted the sandy-haired
+man, with finality. "I was raised East, and
+I know the sort of doin's they hanker after. To-morrow
+mornin' we'll begin. I'll show you; you'll
+see," he finished in a louder tone, as Teresa's clanging
+supper bell sent them in a stampede through
+the long covered way that led to the dining-room
+which, with the cook room, occupied the large, low
+building thirty feet to the rear of the ranch house.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When Tim Nolan arrived at the Bolo station a
+little before noon two days later, he stared in open-mouthed
+wonder at the sight that greeted his eyes.
+In a wavering, straggling line stood ten stiff, red-faced,
+miserable men, dressed in what was, to Tim
+Nolan, the strangest assortment of garments he had
+ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the men were in dead black, from head
+to foot. Four wore stiff, not over-clean white shirts.
+Six sported flaming red neckties. One had unearthed
+from somewhere a frock coat three sizes
+too small for him, which he wore very proudly,
+however, over a flannel shirt adorned with a red-and-green
+silk handkerchief knotted at the throat.
+Another displayed a somewhat battered silk hat.
+But, whatever they wore, each showed a face upon
+which hope, despair, pride, shame, and physical
+misery were curiously blended.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Tim Nolan peered at them with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+unrecognizing eyes; then he gave a low ejaculation.</p>
+
+<p>"Reddy! Carlos! Jim! Boys!" he gasped.
+"What in the world is the meaning of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eet ees that we welcome the little Se&ntilde;orita an'
+her frien's," bowed Pedro, doffing his sombrero
+which was the only part of his usual costume that
+he had retained.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;I don't understand," demurred the foreman;
+"these rigs of yours! Reddy, where in time
+did you corral that coat?"</p>
+
+<p>Reddy shifted from one uneasy foot to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Pedro's told you&mdash;we're here to welcome the
+little mistress, of course. We've slicked up. We&mdash;we
+didn't want the shock too sudden&mdash;from the
+East, you know."</p>
+
+<p>For another moment Tim Nolan stared; then
+he threw back his head and laughed&mdash;laughed till
+the faces of the men before him grew red with
+something more than discomfort.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a pretty young girl in khaki and
+a cowboy hat made her appearance astride a frisky
+little mustang. She wore a cartridge belt about her
+waist&mdash;though there was no revolver in her holster.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Genevieve coming to-day, sure?" she called
+out joyfully. "I heard she was, and I've come to
+meet her."</p>
+
+<p>"There, boys," bantered the ranch foreman,
+"now here's a young lady who knows how to welcome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+the mistress of the Six Star Ranch!" Then,
+to the girl: "Sure, Miss Susie, we do expect Genevieve,
+and we're here to welcome her, as you see,"
+he finished with a sweep of his broad-brimmed
+hat.</p>
+
+<p>It looked, for a moment, as if the wavering, straggling
+men would break ranks and run; but a sudden
+distant whistle, and a sharp command from
+Reddy brought them right about face.</p>
+
+<p>"Buck up, boys," he ordered sharply. "I reckon
+the little mistress ain't a-goin' ter turn us down!
+She'll like it. You'll see!"</p>
+
+<p>The train had scarcely come to a stop before
+Genevieve was off the car steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tim, Mr. Tim&mdash;here I am! Oh, how
+good you look!" she cried, holding out both her
+hands. A minute later she turned to introduce the
+embarrassed foreman to Mrs. Kennedy and the girls,
+who, with her father, were following close at her
+heels. This task was not half completed, however,
+when she spied the red-faced, anxious-eyed men.</p>
+
+<p>As Mr. Tim had done, she stared dumbly for a
+moment; then, leaving the rest of the introductions
+to her father, she ran toward them.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's the boys&mdash;our boys! Carlos, Long
+John, Reddy! But what <i>is</i> the matter? How queer
+you look! Is anybody sick&mdash;or&mdash;dead?" she
+stammered, plainly in doubt what to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, it's for you&mdash;we're a-welcomin' you,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+exploded Long John, jerking at his collar which was
+obviously too small for him.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve's face showed a puzzled frown.</p>
+
+<p>"But these clothes!&mdash;why are you like this?&mdash;and
+after all I've promised the girls about you, too!"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;you don't like it&mdash;this?" demanded
+Reddy, incredulous hope in his eyes and
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I don't like it! I've been promising
+the girls all the way here that you'd give them a
+welcome that <i>was</i> a welcome! And now&mdash;but why
+did you do it, boys?"</p>
+
+<p>Long John drew himself to his full height.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? 'Cause Reddy said to," he answered.
+"Reddy said we'd better ease up on the shock it
+would be to you&mdash;here, after all you'd been used
+to back East&mdash;fine clothes, fine feed, and fine doin's
+all around, to say nothin' of books and learnin' in
+between times; so we&mdash;we tried to break ye in
+easy. That's all," he finished, a little lamely.</p>
+
+<p>"And then these clothes mean&mdash;that?" demanded
+the girl.</p>
+
+<p>Long John nodded dumbly.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve gave a ringing laugh, but her eyes
+grew soft as she extended her hand to each man in
+turn.</p>
+
+<p>"What old dears you are&mdash;every one of you!"
+she exclaimed. "Now go home quick, and get
+comfortable." She would have said more, but some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+one called her and she turned abruptly. Cordelia
+Wilson, looking half frightened, half exultant, but
+wholly excited, was pulling at her sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, Genevieve, quick," she was panting;
+"is that a cowboy&mdash;that, over there&mdash;talking to
+your father?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve turned with a wondering frown. The
+next moment she burst into a merry laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia, you will be the death of
+me, yet! No, that isn't a cowboy. It's Susie Billings.
+She lives on a ranch near here."</p>
+
+<p>"A girl&mdash;dressed like that&mdash;and carrying a
+revolver! Just a common 'Susie!'" gasped Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;just a common 'Susie,'" twinkled
+Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought she was a&mdash;a cowboy," quavered
+Cordelia. "You <i>said</i> they'd be here in&mdash;in all
+their war paint!"</p>
+
+<p>From behind them sounded a muffled snort and
+a low-voiced:</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, she thinks that's a cowboy! Come on&mdash;say
+we show 'em! Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed softly at what Cordelia had
+said, and at the disappointment in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Cowboys? Well, they <i>are</i> here," she acknowledged
+with twitching lips, "and in their war paint,
+too&mdash;of a kind! They're right here&mdash;Why,
+they're <i>gone</i>," she broke off. "Never mind," she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+laughed, as she caught sight of a silk hat and a black
+coat hurrying toward a group of saddled ponies.
+"I reckon you'll see all the cowboys you want to
+before you go back East again. Now come up and
+meet Susie&mdash;and she hasn't, really, any revolver
+there, Cordelia, in spite of that cartridge belt and
+holster. She's always rigging up that way. She
+likes it!"</p>
+
+<p>Susie proved to be "a girl just like us," as Cordelia
+amazedly expressed it to Alma Lane. She
+was certainly a very pleasant one, they all decided.
+But even Susie could not keep their eyes from wandering
+to the unfamiliar scene around them.</p>
+
+<p>It was a bare little station set in the midst of a
+bare little prairie town, and quite unlike anything
+the Easterners had ever seen before. Broad, dusty
+streets led seemingly nowhere. Low, straggling
+houses stretched out lazy lengths of untidiness, except
+where a group of taller, more pretentious buildings
+indicated the stores, a hotel or two, several
+boarding houses, and numerous saloons and dance
+halls.</p>
+
+<p>From the station doorway, a blanketed Indian
+looked out with stolid, unsmiling face. Leaning
+against a post a dreamy-eyed Mexican in tight
+trousers, red sash, and tall peaked hat, smoked a
+cigarette. Halfway down the platform a tired-looking
+man in heavy cowhide boots and rough
+clothes, watched beside a huge canvas-topped wagon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+beyond which could be seen the switching tails of
+six great oxen.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Fred's 'boat,'" remarked Bertha,
+laughingly, to Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Where? What?" Cordelia had been trying to
+look in all directions at once.</p>
+
+<p>"That prairie schooner down there."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that looks like the pictures," asserted
+Cordelia. "I wonder if the cowboys will."</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, the whole thing is worse than a three-ring
+circus," declared Tilly, aggrievedly, to Genevieve.
+"I simply can't see everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"All aboard for the ranch," called Mr. Hartley,
+leading the way around to the other side of the
+station; and like a flock of prairie chickens, as
+Genevieve put it, they all trooped after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what funny horses!" cried Tilly, as Mr.
+Hartley stopped before a large, old-fashioned three-seated
+carriage drawn up to the platform.</p>
+
+<p>At Genevieve's chuckling laugh, Tilly threw a
+sharper glance toward the two gray creatures attached
+to the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they aren't horses at all&mdash;yes, they are&mdash;no,
+they aren't, either!"</p>
+
+<p>"I always heard young ladies were a bit changeable,"
+grinned Tim Nolan, mischievously; "but do
+they always change their minds as often as that,
+Miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they do&mdash;when the occasion demands it,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+retorted Tilly, with a merry glance; and Tim Nolan
+laughed appreciatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they aren't horses," smiled Mr. Hartley,
+as he gave his hand to help Mrs. Kennedy into the
+carriage. "They happen to be mules. Now, Miss
+Tilly, if you'll come in here with Mrs. Kennedy,
+we'll put two other young ladies and myself in the
+other two seats, and leave Genevieve to do the
+honors in one of the ranch wagons with the rest of
+you. The baggage, the boys are already putting in
+the other wagon, I see," he added, looking back to
+where two men were busy with a pile of trunks and
+bags. "They'll come along after us. Mr. Tim is
+on his horse, of course. We'll let him show us the
+way. Now stow yourselves comfortably," he admonished
+his guests. "You know we have an
+eighteen-mile ride ahead of us!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>CORDELIA SEES A COWBOY</h3>
+
+
+<p>Through the broad, dusty streets, by the straggling
+houses, and out on to the boundless sea of
+grass trailed the carriage and the ranch wagons,
+with Mr. Tim in the lead.</p>
+
+<p>Five pairs of eyes grew wide with wonder and
+awe.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't suppose anything in the world could be
+so&mdash;so far," breathed Cordelia, who was with Mr.
+Hartley on the front seat of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder Genevieve was always talking about
+'space, wide, wide space,'" cried Bertha. "Why,
+it's just like the ocean&mdash;only more so, because
+there aren't any waves."</p>
+
+<p>"As if anything could be more like the ocean
+than the ocean itself," giggled Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley laughed good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Miss Bertha," he nodded. "Just
+you wait till there's a little more wind, and you'll
+see some waves, I reckon. It's mighty still just
+now; and yet&mdash;there, look! Over there to the
+right&mdash;see?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They all looked, and they all saw. They saw far
+in the distance the green change to gray, and the
+gray to faint purple, and back again to green, while
+curious shifting lights and shadows glancing across
+the waving blades of grass, made them ripple like
+water in the sunlight. At the same time, from
+somewhere, came a soft, cool wind.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it is&mdash;it is just like the ocean," exulted
+Cordelia. "I've seen it look like that down to Nantasket,
+'way, 'way off at sea."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you 'twas," triumphed Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyway," observed Tilly, demurely,
+"they must be awfully dry waves&mdash;not much fun
+to jump!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly, how can you?" protested Cordelia.
+"How you do take the poetry out of anything!
+I believe you'd take the poetry out of&mdash;of Shakespeare
+himself!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! Never saw much in him to take out,"
+shrugged Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly can't see poetry in anything that doesn't
+jingle like 'If you love me as I love you, no knife
+can cut our love in two,'" chanted Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"My dears!" remonstrated Mrs. Kennedy,
+feebly.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly turned with swift pacification.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry, Mrs. Kennedy. I'm used to
+it. They can't trouble me any!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was Mr. Hartley who broke the silence that
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Cordelia," he asked laughingly,
+"what is the matter? You've been peering in all
+directions, and you look as if you hadn't found
+what you were hunting for. You weren't expecting
+to find soda fountains and candy stores on the
+prairie, were you?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia smiled and shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not, Mr. Hartley! I was looking for
+the blue bonnets&mdash;the flowers, you know. Genevieve
+said they grew wild all through the prairie
+grass."</p>
+
+<p>"And so they do&mdash;specially, early in the spring,
+my dear. I wish you could see them, then."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could&mdash;Genevieve has told me so
+much about them. She says they're the state flower.
+I thought they had such a funny name; I wanted
+to pick one, if I could. She says they're lovely,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"They are, indeed, and I wish you could see
+them when they are at their best," rejoined Mr.
+Hartley; then he turned to Bertha, who had been
+listening with evident interest. "In the spring it's
+a blue ocean, Miss Bertha&mdash;I wish you could see
+the wind sweep across it then! And I wish you
+could smell it, too," he added with a laugh. "I
+reckon you wouldn't think it much like your salty,
+fishy east wind," he finished, twinkling.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we just love that salty, fishy east wind,
+every time we go near the shore," retorted a chorus
+of loyal Eastern voices; and Mr. Hartley laughed
+again.</p>
+
+<p>In the ranch wagon behind them, Genevieve was
+doing the honors of the prairie right royally. Here,
+there, and everywhere she was pointing out something
+of interest. In the ranch wagon, too, the
+marvelous hush and charm of limitless distance had
+wrought its own spell; and all had fallen silent.</p>
+
+<p>It was Alma Lane who broke the pause.</p>
+
+<p>"What are all those deep, narrow paths, such a
+lot of them, running parallel to the wheel tracks?"
+she asked curiously. "I've been watching them ever
+since we left Bolo. They are on both sides, too."</p>
+
+<p>"They're made by the cattle," answered Genevieve;
+"such a lot of them, you know, traveling
+single file on their way to Bolo. Bolo is a 'cow
+town'&mdash;that is, they ship cattle to market from
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor things," sighed Elsie, sympathetically.
+"I saw some yesterday from the train. I thought
+then I never wanted to eat another piece of beefsteak&mdash;and
+I adore beefsteak, too."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve sobered a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it; I know just how you feel. I hate
+that part&mdash;but it's business, I suppose. I reckon
+I hate business, anyhow&mdash;but I love the ranch!
+I can't get used to the branding, either."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" asked Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve shook her head. A look of pain crossed
+her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ask me, Elsie, please. You'll find out
+soon enough. Branding is business, too, I suppose&mdash;but
+it's horrid. Mammy Lindy says that
+the first time I saw our brand on a calf and realized
+what it meant and how it got there, I cried for
+hours&mdash;for days, in fact, much of the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Genevieve," cried Elsie, wonderingly.
+"How dreadful! What is a brand? I thought
+'brand' meant the kind of coffee or tea one drank."</p>
+
+<p>Alma frowned and threw a quick look into Genevieve's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"What a funny little town Bolo is!" she exclaimed,
+with a swift change of subject. "I declare,
+it looked 'most as sleepy as Sunbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Sleepy!" laughed Genevieve, her face clearing,
+much to Alma's satisfaction. "You should see Bolo
+when it's really awake&mdash;say when some association
+of cattlemen meet there. And there's going to be
+one next month, I think. There's no end of fun
+and frolic and horse-racing then, with everybody
+there, from the cowboys and cattle-kings to the
+trappers and Indians. You wouldn't think there
+was anything sleepy about Bolo then, I reckon,"
+nodded Genevieve, gayly.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, quick&mdash;look!&mdash;off there," cried
+Elsie, excitedly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Some more of Fred's 'boats'&mdash;three of them
+this time," laughed Alma, her eyes on the three
+white-topped wagons glistening in the sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"Boats?" questioned Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what little Fred Wilson told us we were
+going to ride in," explained Alma. "He said they
+had prairie schooners here, and schooners were
+boats, of course."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed merrily.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish Fred could see these 'boats,'" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know; I feel as if they were
+boats," declared Alma, stoutly. "I'm sure I don't
+think anybody on the ocean could be any more glad
+to see a sail than I should be to see one of these,
+if I were a lonely traveler on this sea of grass!"</p>
+
+<p>"But where are they going?" questioned Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;nor do they, probably," rejoined
+Genevieve, with a quizzical smile. "They're
+presumably emigrants hunting up cheap land for a
+new home. There used to be lots of them, Father
+says; but there aren't so many now. See&mdash;they're
+going to cross our way just ahead of us. We'll get
+a splendid view of them."</p>
+
+<p>Nearer and nearer came the curiously clumsy,
+yet curiously airy-looking wagons. Sallow-faced
+women looked out mournfully, and tow-headed
+children peeped from every vantage point. Brawny,
+but weary-looking men stalked beside their teams.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at the men&mdash;<i>walking!</i>" cried Elsie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They're 'bull-whackers,'" nodded Genevieve,
+mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"Bull-whackers!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, because their teams happen to be oxen;
+if they were mules, now, they'd be 'mule-skinners.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that what you are, then?" asked Elsie, with
+a demureness that rivaled Tilly's best efforts.
+"You're driving mules, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you better not call me that," laughed
+Genevieve. "See, they've stopped to speak to
+Father. I reckon we'll have to stop, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I 'reckon' we shall," mimicked Elsie, good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"They've got all their household goods and gods
+in those wagons," said Genevieve, musingly. "I
+can see a tin coffeepot hanging straight over one
+woman's head."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't think they had anything but children,"
+laughed Alma, as from every wagon there
+tumbled a scrambling, squirming mass of barefoot
+legs, thin brown arms, and touseled hair above wide,
+questioning eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Long minutes later, from the carriage, Cordelia
+Wilson followed with dreamy eyes the slow-receding
+wagons, now again upon their way.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel just like 'ships that pass in the night,'"
+she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. I feel just like supper," whispered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+Tilly. Then she laughed at the frightened look
+Cordelia flung at Mr. Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>On and on through the shimmering heat, under
+the cloudless sky, trailed the carriage and the ranch
+wagons. Mr. Tim had long ago galloped out of
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>It was when they were within five miles of the
+ranch that Cordelia, looking far ahead, saw against
+the horizon a rapidly growing black speck. For
+some time she watched it in silence; then, suddenly,
+she became aware that, large as was the speck now,
+it had broken into other specks&mdash;bobbing, shifting
+specks that promptly became not specks at all, but
+men on horseback.</p>
+
+<p>Spasmodically she clutched Mr. Hartley's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;are&mdash;those?" she questioned, with
+dry lips.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley gave an indifferent glance ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"Cowboys, I should say," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia caught her breath. At that moment a
+shot rang out, then another, and another.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley looked up now, sharply, a little
+angrily. The indifference was quite gone from his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Genevieve's voice came clear and
+strong from the wagon behind.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the boys, Father&mdash;our boys!" she called.
+"I know it's the boys. I told them I'd promised
+the girls a welcome, and they're giving it to us!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"By George! it is our boys," breathed Mr. Hartley.
+And the scowl on his face gave way to a
+broad smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really all&mdash;fun?" quavered Cordelia,
+breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Every bit," Mr. Hartley assured her. And
+then&mdash;though still breathlessly&mdash;Cordelia gave
+herself up to the excitement of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>They were all about them soon&mdash;those lithe,
+supple figures, swaying lightly, or sitting superbly
+erect in their saddles. From the top of their broad-brimmed
+hats to the tips of their high-heeled cowboy
+boots they were a wonder and a joy to the
+amazed eyes of Cordelia. With stirrups so long
+the chains clanked musically, they galloped back and
+forth, shouting, laughing, and shooting wildly into
+the air. With their chaparejos, or leather overalls,
+their big revolvers, their spurs, their bright silk
+handkerchiefs knotted loosely around their necks
+over the open collar of their flannel shirts, they made
+a brave show, indeed. Nor was the least of the
+wonders about them the graceful swirls of loosely-coiled
+lariats hanging from the horns of their saddles.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it lasted only a minute before the revolvers
+were thrust into the waiting holsters, and
+before the men, bareheaded, were making a sweeping
+bow from their saddles.</p>
+
+<p>It was Genevieve who led the clapping.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, boys, thank you! That was fine&mdash;just
+fine!" she crowed. "Now I reckon Cordelia thinks
+she has seen a cowboy all right!"</p>
+
+<p>And Cordelia did. A little white, but bravely
+smiling, she was sitting erect, apparently serene.
+And only Mr. Hartley knew that one of her hands
+was clutched about his arm in a grasp that actually
+hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"They did that&mdash;all that shooting and yelling&mdash;just
+for a joke, then?" she asked Mr. Hartley, a
+little later.</p>
+
+<p>"Only that. They were giving you a welcome
+to the Six Star Ranch."</p>
+
+<p>"Then they don't act like that all the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly!" laughed the man. "I reckon they
+wouldn't get much work done if they did."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia drew a relieved sigh. Her eyes, a little
+less fearful, rested on the erect figure of the nearest
+cowboy, just to the right of the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad," she murmured. "I'll tell Mrs.
+Miller. She thought they did, you know&mdash;yell always
+without just and due provocation, and shoot
+at sight."</p>
+
+<p>The man's lips twitched; but the next moment
+they grew a bit stern at the corners.</p>
+
+<p>"That's exactly it, Miss Cordelia&mdash;exactly the
+idea that some people have of the boys, and I'll
+grant that when they&mdash;they drink too much
+whiskey, they aren't exactly what you might call<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+peaceable, desirable companions&mdash;though three-fourths
+of their antics then are caused by reckless
+high spirits rather than by real ugliness&mdash;with exceptions,
+of course. But when sober they are quiet,
+straightforward, generous-hearted good fellows,
+hard-working and honest; certainly my boys are."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley hesitated, then went on, still gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"There's just as much difference in ranches, of
+course, Miss Cordelia, as there is in folks; and all
+the ranches are changing fast, anyway, nowadays.
+Lots of the owners are quitting living on them at
+all. They've gone into the towns to live. On the
+Six Star the boys take their meals with the family;
+and in many places they don't do that, I know, even
+where the owner lives on the ranch. Our boys are
+very loyal to us, and very much interested in all
+that concerns us. They fairly worship Genevieve,
+and have, all the way up."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad," murmured Cordelia, again; and
+this time there was a look very much like admiration
+in the eyes that rested on Long John just
+ahead.</p>
+
+<p>It was some time later that Mr. Hartley said,
+half turning around:</p>
+
+<p>"Look straight ahead, a little to the right, young
+ladies, and you'll get a very good view of the Six
+Star Ranch."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, and you've got a windmill," cried Tilly.
+"I can see it against the sky; I know I can!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we've got a windmill," nodded Mr. Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>"I love windmills," exulted Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"So does Genevieve," observed Mr. Hartley,
+raising his eyebrows a little.</p>
+
+<p>Only Cordelia noticed the odd smile he gave as he
+spoke, and she did not know what it meant. Later,
+however, she remembered it. She was too much
+excited now to think of anything but the fact that
+the Six Star Ranch was so near.</p>
+
+<p>Bertha craned her neck to look ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"Only think, we haven't passed a house, not a
+house since we left Bolo," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Miss Bertha, Bolo, eighteen miles
+away, is our nearest neighbor; and you'll have to
+go even farther than that in any other direction
+to strike another neighbor."</p>
+
+<p>"My stars!" gasped Bertha. "How awful lonesome
+it must be, Mr. Hartley."</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, you can't be much bothered with
+neighbors running in to borrow two eggs and a
+little soda, can you?" giggled Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"No; that isn't one of the difficulties we have
+to deal with," smiled Mr. Hartley; but Bertha
+bridled visibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, really, Tilly Mack," she exclaimed in pretended
+anger, "I should like to know if you mean
+anything special! You see," she added laughingly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+to Mr. Hartley, "I happen to live next to Tilly,
+myself!"</p>
+
+<p>From both carriage and wagon, now, came a
+babel of eager chatter. There was so much to be
+seen on the one hand, so much to be explained on
+the other. The buildings and corrals were plainly
+visible by this time, and each minute they became
+more clearly defined.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that all that belongs to just one
+ranch?" demanded Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" twinkled Mr. Hartley. "You see, if
+folks can't borrow of us, we can't borrow of them,
+either; so it's rather necessary that we have all the
+comforts of home ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I guess you've got them," laughed Tilly,
+looking wonderingly about her.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon we have," nodded Mr. Hartley, as he
+began to point out one and another of the buildings.</p>
+
+<p>There was the long, low ranch house facing the
+wide reach of the prairie. Behind it, and connected
+with it by a covered way, were the dining room and
+the cook room. Beyond that was the long bunk
+house where the men slept, flanked by another building
+for the Mexican servants. There were stables,
+sheds, a storehouse and saddle-room, and a blacksmith's
+shop. Below the house an oblong bit of
+fenced ground showed a riot of color&mdash;Genevieve's
+flower garden. Below that was a vegetable garden.
+There was a large corral for the cattle, and a smaller<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+one, high and circular, for the horses. There were
+three or four green trees near the house&mdash;tall, thin
+cottonwoods that had grown up along the slender
+streams of waste water from the windmill.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RANCH HOUSE</h3>
+
+
+<p>"And here we are at the Six Star Ranch," cried
+Mr. Hartley, as he leaped from the carriage before
+the wide-open door of the ranch house. "Well,
+Mammy Lindy," he added, as the kindly, wrinkled
+old face of a colored woman appeared in the doorway,
+"I've corralled the whole bunch and brought
+them West with me!"</p>
+
+<p>A little stiffly the girls got down from their seats&mdash;all
+but Genevieve. She, in the space of a breath,
+seemingly, had leaped to the ground and run up on
+to the wide gallery where the negress, with adoring
+eyes, awaited her.</p>
+
+<p>"Laws, chil'e," Tilly, who was nearest, heard a
+tenderly crooning voice say, "but I am jes' pow'ful
+glad to see ye, honey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mammy, you old darling!" cried Genevieve,
+giving the rotund, gayly-clad figure a bear-like hug.
+"You look just as good as you used to&mdash;and my,
+my! just see all this new finery to welcome me," she
+added, holding off her beaming-faced old nurse at
+arms' length. "I reckon you'll think something has
+come, Mammy Lindy, when we all get settled," she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+added laughingly, as she turned to present the old
+woman to Mrs. Kennedy and the girls.</p>
+
+<p>A little later, Tilly, in the wide, center hallway,
+was looking wonderingly about her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Genevieve Hartley, I didn't think you
+<i>could</i> have room enough for us all," she declared;
+"but I'll give it up. I should think you
+might entertain the whole state of Texas in this
+house!"</p>
+
+<p>"We try to, sometimes," laughed Genevieve.
+"You know we Texans pride ourselves on always
+having room for everybody."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I should think you did&mdash;and, only think,
+all on one floor, too!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve did not answer. She was looking
+around her with a thoughtful little frown between
+her eyebrows as if she saw something she did not
+quite understand.</p>
+
+<p>The girls were standing in the wide center hallway
+that ran straight through the house. On one
+side, through a wide archway, could be seen a large
+living-room with piano, bookshelves, comfortable
+chairs, a couch, and a good-sized table. Beyond
+that there was a narrow hall with two large rooms
+leading from it. From the other side of the center
+hall opened another narrow hall at right angles,
+from which led the six remaining rooms of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"This is more fun than getting settled in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+sleepers," declared Elsie Martin, as Genevieve began
+to fly about arranging her guests.</p>
+
+<p>The boys made quick work of bringing in the
+trunks and bags; and then for a brief half-hour
+there was quiet while eight pairs of hurried hands
+attempted to remove part of the dust of travel and
+to unearth fresh blouses and clean linen from long-packed
+trunks.</p>
+
+<p>It was a hungry, merry crowd, a little later, that
+trooped through the long covered way leading to
+the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I know why this house has got so much
+room in it," declared Tilly. "We could have room
+in the East if we banished our dining-rooms
+and kitchens and pantries to the neighbors like
+this!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve did not answer. They had reached
+the long narrow room with the big table running
+lengthwise of it. Only one end of the table was set
+with places for eight.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, where are the boys?" questioned Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>Mammy Lindy shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Dey ain't here, chil'e."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Mammy, you are mistaken. They are
+here. They came home with us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yas'm, dey done come home, sure 'nuf, but dey
+ain't eatin' now, honey."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Again the old woman shook her head. She did
+not answer. She turned troubled eyes first on the
+two young Mexican maids by the doorway, then on
+Mr. Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, do you know what this means?" demanded
+Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dearie, I must say I don't," frowned Mr.
+Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall find out," avowed the mistress of
+the Six Star Ranch. "Mammy Lindy, please seat
+my guests, and have the supper served right away.
+I'll find Mr. Tim."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear," remonstrated Mrs. Kennedy,
+gently, "wouldn't it be better if you ate your own
+supper first&mdash;with your guests?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve shook her head. Her face flushed
+painfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Aunt Julia, of course, what you mean.
+You don't think it's civil in me to run off like this.
+But it's the boys&mdash;something is the matter. They
+always eat with us. Why, they may be thinking we
+don't <i>want</i> them, Aunt Julia. Please, please excuse
+me, everybody," she entreated, as she ran from the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Halfway to the bunk house Genevieve met the
+ranch foreman.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mr. Tim, supper is ready. Didn't you
+know?" she called, hurrying toward him. "Where
+are the boys?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>An odd expression crossed the man's kindly,
+weather-beaten face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they're 'round&mdash;in spots."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't they come to supper?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tim's eyebrows went up.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as near as I can make out, that's part of
+the welcome they're giving you."</p>
+
+<p>"Welcome!&mdash;to stay away from supper!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tim laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon maybe I'll have to explain," he replied.
+"Long John told me they'd got it all fixed up that,
+after your fine doings back East, you wouldn't take
+to things on the ranch very well. So for two days
+the whole bunch has been slicking things up, including
+themselves. They hunted up every stiff
+hat and b'iled shirt in this part of Texas, I reckon,
+for that splurge at Bolo; and Mammy Lindy says
+they've been pestering the life out of her, slicking
+up the house."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve drew in her breath with a little cry.</p>
+
+<p>"There! That's what was the matter with the
+rooms," she ejaculated. "Nothing looked natural&mdash;but
+some things weren't exactly 'slicked up,' Mr.
+Tim. I couldn't turn around without finding a book
+at my elbow. There's scarcely one left on the
+shelves!"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I can explain that," returned the man,
+with a twinkle in his eyes. "Reddy said the East
+was mighty strong on books and culturing, so I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+s'pose he thought he'd have 'em 'round handy. It's
+lucky your father had all them books come out while
+you was studying, or else I reckon the boys would
+have hit the trail for the nearest book-store and
+roped every book in sight."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed appreciatively.</p>
+
+<p>"But, the supper?" she frowned again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's part of the outfit&mdash;and Reddy said
+it was 'dinner,' too. He said that he was raised
+back East, and that he knew; and that 'twas
+more seemly that you ate it without their company."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! Well, it isn't, and I sha'n't," settled
+Genevieve, emphatically. "Where is Reddy? Go
+in to supper," she laughed, "and I'll round up the
+boys&mdash;I mean, I'll find them," she corrected demurely.
+"Miss Jane doesn't like me to say 'round
+up,' Mr. Tim."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tim smiled, but his eyes grew tender&mdash;almost
+anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon they haven't spoiled you back East,
+after all, little girl. You're the same true blue, like
+you was, before."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed and colored a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I am," she declared. "Now I'm
+going for the boys."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tim laid a detaining hand on her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-night; it's late, and it would make no
+end of fuss all around. But I'll tell them. They'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+be on hand for breakfast, all right. Now go back
+to your own supper, yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," agreed Genevieve, reluctantly.
+"But&mdash;to-morrow, remember!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't forgetting&mdash;to-morrow," nodded the
+man.</p>
+
+<p>In the dining-room Genevieve was greeted with a
+merry clamor, under cover of which she said hurriedly
+to her father:</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right. They'll come to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you won't find we've left you much to
+eat," gurgled Elsie Martin, her mouth full of fried
+chicken.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I shall&mdash;in Texas," retorted Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm so ashamed," apologized Cordelia. "I
+don't think we ought to eat so much."</p>
+
+<p>"I do," disagreed Tilly, "when everything is so
+perfectly lovely as this is. They are just the nicest
+things! And just guess how many hot biscuits I've
+eaten with this delicious plum sauce! Mr. Hartley
+says they're wild&mdash;the plums, I mean, not the biscuits."</p>
+
+<p>"And it's all such a surprise, too," interposed
+Alma Lane; "milk, and butter, and all."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve stared frankly.</p>
+
+<p>"Surprise!&mdash;<i>milk and butter!</i>" she exclaimed.
+"Didn't you suppose we had milk and butter?"</p>
+
+<p>Alma blushed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, Genevieve, I&mdash;I didn't mean anything,
+you know, truly I didn't," she stammered. "It's
+only that&mdash;that ranches don't usually have them,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't usually have them!" frowned Genevieve.
+"Alma Lane, what <i>are</i> you talking
+about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, we read it, you know, in a book," explained
+Cordelia, hastily, coming to the rescue.
+"They said in spite of there being so many cows
+all around everywhere, there wasn't any butter or
+milk, and that the cowboys wouldn't like to be asked
+to milk, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"You read it? Where?" Genevieve's forehead
+still wore its frown.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley gave a chuckling laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon Genevieve doesn't know much about
+such ranches," he observed. "As I was telling you,
+Miss Cordelia, coming out this afternoon, there's
+just as much difference in ranches as there is in
+folks; and ours happens to be the kind where we
+like all the comforts of home pretty well. To be
+sure, I wouldn't just like to ask Reddy or Long
+John to milk, maybe," he added, with a whimsical
+smile; "but I don't have to, you see. I've got
+Carlos for just such work. He looks after the
+vegetable garden, too, and Genevieve's flowers. By
+the way, dearie,"&mdash;he turned to his daughter&mdash;"Tim
+says Carlos has been putting in his prettiest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+work on your garden this summer. Be sure you
+don't forget to notice it."</p>
+
+<p>"As if I could help noticing it," returned Genevieve.
+She was about to say more when there came
+an earnest question from Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hartley, please, what did you call those
+two men?"</p>
+
+<p>"What men?"</p>
+
+<p>"The ones you&mdash;you wouldn't wish to ask to
+milk."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the boys? I don't remember&mdash;I reckon
+'twas Reddy and Long John that I mentioned,
+maybe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; that's the one I mean&mdash;the John
+one. What is his other name, please?"</p>
+
+<p>"His surname? Why, really, Miss Cordelia, I
+reckon I've forgotten what it is. The boys all go
+by their first names, mostly, else by a nickname.
+Why? Found a long-lost friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, sir. Well, I mean&mdash;that is&mdash;he may
+be lost, but he isn't mine," stammered Cordelia, who
+was always very literal.</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't blush so, Cordy," bantered Tilly,
+wickedly, "else we shall think he is yours."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia blushed a still deeper pink, but she said
+nothing; and in the confusion of leaving the dining-room
+she managed to place herself as far from Tilly
+as possible. On the back gallery she saw the ranch
+foreman. As the others went chattering through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+the hall to the gallery beyond, she lingered
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Nolan, would&mdash;would you please tell me
+Mr.&mdash;Mr. John's other name?"</p>
+
+<p>"John? Oh, you mean 'Long John,' Miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but&mdash;'John' what?"</p>
+
+<p>Tim Nolan frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, let me see,"&mdash;he bit his lip in thought&mdash;"'Pierce'&mdash;no,
+'Proctor.' Yes, that's it&mdash;'John
+Proctor.'"</p>
+
+<p>A look of mingled disappointment and relief
+crossed Cordelia's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Nolan, very much," she faltered,
+as she hurried after her companions.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether I'm glad or sorry," she
+was thinking. "Of course 'twould have been nice
+if he'd been John Sanborn, only I'm afraid Hermit
+Joe wouldn't like a cowboy for a son, specially as
+there wouldn't be anything for him to do in Sunbridge
+at his trade."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy announced soon after supper that
+she should take matters in hand very sternly that
+night and insist upon an early bedtime hour.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been a long, hot, fatiguing day," she
+said, "but you are all so excited you'd sit up half the
+night asking questions and telling stories; so I
+shall take advantage of my position as chaperon,
+and send you to bed very soon."</p>
+
+<p>"O dear!" sighed Tilly. "If only it would come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+morning quick! Just think, we've got to wait a
+whole night before we can do any of the things
+we're dying to do!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind; there are lots of days coming,"
+laughed Mr. Hartley. "What a fine family of
+young folks I have, to be sure," he gloried, looking
+around him contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>They were all about him on the front gallery, in
+hammocks and chairs, or sitting on the steps; and
+a very attractive group they made, indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it would help the waiting if Genevieve
+would go in and sing to us," suggested Bertha, after
+a moment's silence. "It will be so heavenly to sit
+out here and listen to it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sing that lovely Mexican 'Swallow Song,'"
+coaxed Elsie. "'<i>La Gol&mdash;</i>' <i>&mdash;Gol</i>-something, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't swear, Elsie," reproved Tilly, with becoming
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>'La Golondrina'?</i>" laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's a dear," sighed Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd rather have that Creole Love Song that you
+say Mammy Lindy taught you," breathed Cordelia.
+"That would be perfect for such a scene as this."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! I'd rather have one of those tinkly little
+tunes where you can hear the banjos and the tambourines,"
+averred Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! At this rate I don't see how I'm going
+to sing at all," laughed Genevieve, "with so many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+conflicting wishes. Anything different anybody
+wants?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," declared Mr. Hartley, promptly. "I
+want them all."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" cried half a dozen voices.</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" rejoined Genevieve, laughingly,
+springing to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>And so while everybody watched the stars in the
+far-reaching sky, Genevieve, in the living room,
+played and sang till the back gallery and the long
+covered way at the rear of the house were full of
+the moving shadows of soft-stepping Mexican servants
+and cowboys. And everywhere there was the
+hush of perfect content while from the living room
+there floated out the clear, sweet tones, the weird,
+dreamy melodies, and the tinkle of the tambourines.</p>
+
+<p>One by one, an hour later, the lighted windows
+in the long, low ranch house became dark. The last
+to change was the one behind which sat Cordelia
+Wilson in the room she shared with Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Cordelia, why don't you put out that light and
+go to bed?" demanded Tilly at last, drowsily.
+"Morning will never come at this rate!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Tilly, I'm going to bed in just a minute,"
+promised Cordelia, as carefully she wrote in the
+space opposite Mrs. Miller's name on her list of
+"things to do":</p>
+
+<p>"Cowboys are good, kind gentlemen; but they
+are noisy, and some rough-looking."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later, Cordelia, from her little
+bed on one side of the room called a soft
+"good night" across to Tilly. But Tilly was already
+asleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MISTRESS OF THE SIX STAR RANCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>Breakfast was an early matter at the Six Star
+Ranch. It came almost with the sunrise, in fact.
+Genevieve had assured her guests, on the night of
+their arrival, however, that their breakfast might
+be hours later&mdash;that it might, indeed, be at any
+hour they pleased. But on this first morning at the
+ranch, there was not one guest that did not promptly
+respond to the breakfast-bell except Mrs. Kennedy.
+The stir of life out of doors had proved an effectual
+rising-bell for all; and it was anything but a sleepy-looking
+crowd of young people that tripped into the
+dining-room to find the boys already waiting for
+them&mdash;a little quiet and shy, to be sure, but very
+red and shiny-looking as to face and hands, speaking
+loudly of a vigorous use of soap and water.</p>
+
+<p>Before the meal was half over, Mrs. Kennedy
+came in, only to meet a chorus of remonstrances
+that she should have disturbed herself so early.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve, however, assumed a look of mock
+severity.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Julia," she began reprovingly in so perfect
+an imitation of Miss Jane Chick's severest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+manner that Mrs. Kennedy's lips twitched; "didn't
+you hear the rising-bell, my dear? How often must
+I ask you not to be late to your meals?"</p>
+
+<p>For one brief moment there was a dazed hush
+about the table; then, at sight of Cordelia's horrified
+face, Genevieve lost her self-control and giggled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but that was such a good chance," she
+chuckled. "Please, Aunt Julia, I just couldn't help
+it. I had to!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't doubt it," smiled back Mrs. Kennedy;
+and at the meaning emphasis in her voice there was
+a general laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what shall we do first?" demanded Tilly,
+when breakfast was over.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve put her finger to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder, now. Oh, I know! Let's go out
+and see if they've driven in the saddle band yet;
+then we'll watch the boys rope them and start to
+work."</p>
+
+<p>"What's a saddle band?&mdash;sounds like a girth,"
+frowned Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! I reckon it isn't one, all the same,"
+laughed Genevieve. "It's the horses the boys ride.
+Each one has his own string, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't know," retorted Tilly, aggrievedly.
+"And you needn't use all those funny words&mdash;'string'
+and 'saddle band' and 'rope them'&mdash;without
+explaining them, either, Genevieve Hartley.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+You've been talking like that ever since we came.
+Just as if we knew what all that meant!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't, of course," she admitted, "any
+more than I understood some of your terms back
+East. But come; let's go out and watch the boys.
+One of the sheds has a lovely low, flat roof, and we
+can see right over into the horse corral from there.
+It's easy; there's a ladder. Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what a lot of horses!" cried Tilly, a moment
+later, as they stepped out of doors. "Do they
+ride all those?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not this morning," laughed Genevieve. "You
+see, each man has his own string of horses, and he
+picks out some one of the bunch, and lets the rest
+go. That's Reddy, now, driving them into the corral.
+The other boys will be here pretty quick now,
+and the fun will begin. You'll see!"</p>
+
+<p>The horse corral was high and circular, and there
+was a fine view of it from the shed roof. A snubbing
+post was in the middle of the corral, and a
+wing was built out at one side from the entrance
+gate, so that the horses could be driven in more
+easily; yet Reddy quite had his hands full as it was.
+At last they were all in, and a merry time they were
+having of it, racing in a circle about the enclosure,
+heads up, and tails and manes flying.</p>
+
+<p>"Regular merry-go-round, isn't it?" giggled
+Tilly. But Cordelia clutched Genevieve's arm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, look&mdash;they've got ropes! Genevieve,
+what <i>are</i> they going to do?" she gasped,
+her eyes on the boys who were running from
+all directions now, toward the corral. "Why,
+Genevieve, they're going <i>in</i> there, with all those
+horses!"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon they are," rejoined the mistress of the
+Six Star Ranch. "Now watch, and you'll see.
+There!&mdash;see there?&mdash;in the middle by that post!
+Each man will pick out one of his own horses and
+rope him; then he'll lead him out and saddle him,
+and the deed's done."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess that's easier to say than to do," observed
+Bertha, dryly. "I notice there aren't any
+of those horses just hanging 'round waiting to be
+caught!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, there aren't, to-day," laughed Genevieve;
+"though some of the horses will do just that, at
+times&mdash;specially Long John's. They're pretty
+lively now, however, and it <i>does</i> take some skill to
+make a nice job of it when they're jamming and
+jostling like that. But the boys are equal to it.
+We've got some splendid ropers!" This time there
+was a note of very evident pride in the voice of the
+mistress of the Six Star Ranch.</p>
+
+<p>It was a brief but exciting time that followed,
+filled, as it was, with the shouts of the boys&mdash;the
+jeers at some failure, the cheers at some success&mdash;the
+thud of the horses' hoofs, the swirl of the skillfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+flung ropes. It was almost as exciting when
+the boys, their horses once caught, led out, and saddled,
+rode off for their morning's work. To Cordelia,
+especially, it was an experience never to be
+forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to turn cowboy, Miss Cordelia?" asked
+Mr. Hartley, with a smile, as he met the girl coming
+into the house a little later. Mr. Hartley, in
+his broad-brimmed hat, and his gray tweed trousers
+tucked into his high boots, looked the picture of the
+prosperous ranchman at home.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia showed a distinctly shocked face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, sir!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think you could learn to swing the rope&mdash;eh?"
+he teased.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, no!"</p>
+
+<p>A half-proud, wholly-gratified smile crossed the
+man's face.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't as easy as it looks to be," he said.
+"Once in a while we get a tenderfoot out here,
+though, who thinks he's going to learn it all in a
+minute&mdash;or, rather, do it without any learning.
+But to be a good roper, one has to give it long, hard
+practice. The best of 'em begin young. Reddy, the
+crack roper in my outfit, tells me he began with his
+mother's clothes-line at the age of four years, with
+his rocking-horse for a victim. It seems there was
+a picture in one of his books of a cowboy roping a
+pony, and&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley stopped, as if listening. From the
+rear of the house had sounded the creak of the
+windmill crank. The man turned, entered the hall,
+and crossed to the window. Then he shook his
+head with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid Genevieve is up to her old tricks,"
+he said. "She's stopping the windmill so she can
+climb to the top of the tower, I reckon."</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve!&mdash;at the top of that tower!" exclaimed
+Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley's lips twitched.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That used to be a daily stunt of hers, and&mdash;I
+let her," added the man, a little doggedly. "It
+made her well and strong, anyhow, and helped to
+develop her muscle. You see, we&mdash;we don't have
+gymnasiums on the ranch," he concluded whimsically,
+as they stepped together out on to the back
+gallery.</p>
+
+<p>A babel of gleeful shouts and laughter greeted
+their ears. A moment later Mr. Hartley and Cordelia
+came in sight of the windmill. At its base
+four chattering, shrieking girls were laughing and
+clapping their hands. Above their heads, Genevieve,
+in a dark blue gymnasium suit, was swinging
+herself gracefully from cross-piece to cross-piece in
+the tower.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," smiled Mr. Hartley; but he was interrupted
+by a shocked, frightened voice behind
+him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, my dear!" gasped Mrs. Kennedy,
+hurrying forward.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve did not hear, apparently. To the girls
+she waved a free hand, joyously. She was almost
+at the top.</p>
+
+<p>"It's fine&mdash;mighty fine up here," she caroled.
+"I can see 'way, 'way over the prairie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve! Genevieve Hartley, come down this
+instant," commanded Mrs. Kennedy. Then her
+voice shook, and grew piteously frightened, as she
+stammered: "No, no&mdash;don't come down, dear!
+Genevieve, how <i>can</i> you come down?" Mrs. Kennedy
+was wringing her hands now.</p>
+
+<p>This time Genevieve heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Aunt Julia, what is it? What is the matter?"
+The girl's voice expressed only concerned
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?" echoed Mrs. Kennedy,
+faintly. "Genevieve, how can you come
+down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come down? Why, that's easy! But I don't
+want to come down."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy's lips grew stern.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve," she said, with an obvious effort to
+speak quietly; "if you can come down, I desire you
+to do so at once."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve came down. Her eyes flashed a little,
+and her cheeks were redder than usual. She did not
+once glance toward the girls, clustered in a silent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+frightened little group. She did not appear to notice
+even her father, standing by. She went straight
+to Mrs. Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come down, Aunt Julia."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy had been seriously disturbed, and
+genuinely frightened. To her, Genevieve's climb
+to the top of the windmill tower was very dangerous,
+as well as very unladylike. Yet it was the
+fright, even more than the displeasure that made
+her voice sound so cold now in her effort to steady
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Genevieve. Please see that there
+is no occasion for you to <i>come down</i> again," she said
+meaningly. Then she turned and went into the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Just how it happened, Genevieve did not know,
+but almost at once she found herself alone with her
+father on the back gallery. The girls had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was very angry now.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, it wasn't fair, to speak like that," she
+choked, "before the girls and you, when I hadn't
+done a thing&mdash;not a thing! Why, it&mdash;it was just
+like Miss Jane! I never knew Aunt Julia to be like
+that."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment her father was silent. His face
+wore a thoughtful frown.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it, dearie," he said at last. "But I don't
+think Mrs. Kennedy quite realized, quite understood&mdash;how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+<i>you'd</i> feel. She didn't think it just
+right for you to be there."</p>
+
+<p>"But I was in my gym suit, Father. I skipped in
+and put it on purposely, while the others were doing
+something else; then I climbed the tower. I'd
+planned 'way ahead how I'd surprise them."</p>
+
+<p>The man hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, dearie," he nodded, after a moment;
+"but I reckon it was just a little too much of a
+surprise for Mrs. Kennedy. You know she isn't
+used to the West; and&mdash;do Boston young ladies
+climb windmill towers?"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her anger, Genevieve laughed. The
+mention of Boston had put her in mind of some
+Boston friends of Mrs. Kennedy's, whom she knew.
+She had a sudden vision of what Mr. and Mrs.
+Thomas Butterfield's faces would have been, had
+their stern, sixty-year-old eyes seen what Mrs.
+Kennedy saw.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon, too," went on Mr. Hartley, with a
+sigh, "that I have sort of spoiled you, letting you
+have your own way. And maybe Mammy Lindy
+and I, in our anxiety that you should be well and
+strong, and sit the saddle like a Texas daughter
+should, haven't taught you always just the dainty
+little lady ways&mdash;that you ought to have been
+taught."</p>
+
+<p>"You've taught me everything&mdash;everything
+good and lovely," protested the girl, hotly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. A far-away look came into
+his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't, dearie&mdash;and that's why I sent you
+East."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't want to go East, in the first place,"
+she stormed. "I wanted to stay here with you.
+Besides, Aunt Julia isn't really any relation,&mdash;nor
+Miss Jane, either. They haven't any right to&mdash;to
+speak to me like that."</p>
+
+<p>A dull red stole to John Hartley's cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Tut, tut, dearie," he demurred, with a shake
+of the head. "You mustn't forget how good they've
+been to you. Besides&mdash;they have got the right. I
+gave it to them. I told them to make you like
+themselves."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. Genevieve's eyes were
+moodily fixed on the floor. Her father gave her a
+swift glance, then went on, softly:</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect, too, maybe we're both forgetting,
+dearie. After all, Mrs. Kennedy did it every bit
+through&mdash;love. She was frightened. She was so
+scared she just shook, dearie."</p>
+
+<p>"She&mdash;was?" Genevieve's voice was amazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I reckon that's more than half why she
+spoke so stern, and why she's in her room crying
+this minute&mdash;as I'll warrant she is. I saw her eyes,
+and I saw how her hands shook. And I saw it was
+all she could do to keep from falling right on your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+neck&mdash;because she had you back safe and sound.
+Maybe you didn't see that, dearie."</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, their <i>ways</i> back East, and ours, aren't
+alike," resumed the man, after a time; "but I reckon
+their&mdash;<i>love</i> is."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve drew a long breath. Her brown eyes
+were not clear.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon maybe I'll go and find&mdash;Aunt Julia,"
+she said in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment her father sat alone on the back
+gallery.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>REDDY AND THE BRONCHO</h3>
+
+
+<p>There was no lack of interesting things to do
+that first day at the ranch. There was one half-hour,
+to be sure, when five of the Happy Hexagons
+sat a little quietly on the front gallery and tried to
+talk as if there were no such thing as a windmill,
+and no such person as a girl who could climb to the
+top of it; but after Genevieve and Mrs. Kennedy,
+arm in arm, came through the front door&mdash;with eyes
+indeed, a little misty, but with lips cheerfully
+smiling&mdash;every vestige of constraint fled. Genevieve,
+once more in her pretty linen frock, was again
+the alert little hostess, and very soon they were all
+off to inspect the flower garden, the vegetable garden,
+the cow corral, the sheds, the stables, and the
+blacksmith's shop, not forgetting Teresa, the cook,
+who was making tamales in the kitchen for them,
+nor Pepito, Genevieve's own horse that she rode
+before she went East.</p>
+
+<p>"And we'll have the boys pick out some horses
+for you, too," cried Genevieve, smoothing Pepito's
+sleek coat in response to his welcoming whinny of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+delight. "I'm sure they can find something all
+right for us."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly's eyes brightened, so, too, did Bertha's;
+but Cordelia spoke hastily, her eyes bent a bit distrustfully
+on the spirited little horse Genevieve was
+petting.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I don't believe they'll have time to hunt
+up horses for us, Genevieve. Really, I don't think
+we ought to ask them to."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe we won't, then&mdash;for <i>you</i>," teased Tilly,
+saucily. "We'll just let them take time for ours."</p>
+
+<p>It is a question, however, if that afternoon, even
+Tilly wanted to ride; for, according to Cordelia's
+notes that night in "Things to do," they saw a
+broncho "bursted."</p>
+
+<p>It was Mr. Tim who had said at the dinner table
+that noon:</p>
+
+<p>"If you young people happen to be on hand, say
+at about four o'clock, you'll see something doing.
+Reddy's got a horse or two he's going to put
+through their paces&mdash;and one of 'em's never been
+saddled."</p>
+
+<p>Privately, to Mr. Hartley, Mrs. Kennedy objected
+a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure, Mr. Hartley, the girls ought to
+witness such a sight?" she asked uneasily. "Of
+course I don't want to be too strict in my demands,"
+she went on with a little twinkle in her eyes that
+Mr. Hartley thoroughly understood. "I realize the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+West isn't the East. But, will this be&mdash;all
+right?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it will&mdash;even in your judgment," he
+assured her. "It's no professional broncho-buster
+that they'll see to-day. I seldom hire them, anyway,
+as I prefer to have our own men break in the
+horses&mdash;specially as we're lucky enough to have
+three or four mighty skillful ones right in our own
+outfit. There'll be nothing brutal or rough to-day,
+Mrs. Kennedy. Only one beast is entirely wild, and
+he's not really vicious, Reddy says. Genevieve tells
+me the girls have heard a lot about broncho-busting,
+and that they're wild to see it. They wouldn't think
+they'd been to Texas, I'm afraid, if they didn't see
+something of the sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," agreed Mrs. Kennedy, with visible
+reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course," went on Mr. Hartley, his eyes
+twinkling, "you mustn't expect that they'll see exactly
+a pony parade drawing baby carriages down
+Beacon Street; but they will see some of the best
+horsemanship that the state of Texas can show. I
+take it you never saw a little beast whose chief aim
+in life was to get clear of his rider&mdash;eh, Mrs. Kennedy?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I never did," shuddered the lady; "and I'm
+not sure that I'd want to," she finished decisively,
+as she turned away.</p>
+
+<p>The new horse proved to be a fiery little bay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+mustang, and the fight began from the first moment
+that the noose settled about his untamed little neck.
+As Tilly told of the affair in the Chronicles of the
+Hexagon Club, it was like this:</p>
+
+<p>"We saw a broncho busted this afternoon.
+Reddy busted it, and he was splendid. Mercy! I
+shall never think anything my old Beauty does is
+bad again. Beauty is a snail and a saint beside this
+jumping, plunging, squealing creature that never by
+any chance was on his feet properly&mdash;except when
+he came down hard on all four of them at once with
+his back humped right up in the middle in a perfectly
+frightful fashion&mdash;and I suppose that wasn't
+'properly.' Anyhow, I shouldn't have thought it
+was, if I had had to try to sit on that hump!</p>
+
+<p>"But that wasn't the only thing that he did.
+Dear me, no! He danced, and rolled, and seesawed
+up and down&mdash;'pitching,' Mr. Hartley called it.
+And I'm sure it looked like it. First he'd try standing
+on his two fore feet, then he'd give them a rest,
+and take the other two. And sometimes he couldn't
+seem to make up his mind which he wanted to use,
+or which way he wanted to turn, and he'd change
+about right up in the air so he'd come down facing
+the other way. My, he was the most uncertain
+creature!</p>
+
+<p>"It didn't seem to make a mite of difference
+where the horse was, or what he did with his feet,
+though. Reddy was right there every time, and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+<i>ready</i>, too. (Yes, I know a pun is the lowest order
+of wit. But I don't care. I couldn't help it, anyway&mdash;it
+was such a <i>ready</i> one!) There he sat, so
+loose and easy, too, with his quirt (that's a whip),
+and it looked sometimes just as if he wasn't half
+trying&mdash;that he didn't need to. But I'm sure he
+was trying. Anyhow, I know I couldn't have stayed
+on that horse five minutes; and I don't believe even
+Genevieve could. (I said that to Mr. Tim Nolan,
+and he laughed so hard I thought I'd put it in here,
+and let somebody else laugh.)</p>
+
+<p>"Of course every one of us was awfully excited,
+and the boys kept shouting and cheering, and yelling
+'Stay with him!' and telling him not to 'go to
+leather'&mdash;whatever that may mean! And Reddy
+did stay. He stayed till the little horse got tired
+out; then he got off, and led the horse away, and
+some of the other boys went through a good deal
+the same sort of thing with other horses, only these
+had all been partly broken before, they told us. But,
+mercy, they were bad enough, anyhow, I thought,
+to have been brand-new. Reddy did another one,
+too, and this time he put silver half-dollars under
+his feet in the stirrups: And when the little beast&mdash;the
+horse, I mean, not Reddy&mdash;got through his
+antics, there the half-dollars were, still there in the
+same old place. How the boys did yell and cheer
+then!</p>
+
+<p>"After that, they all just 'showed off' for us,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+throwing their ropes over anything and everything,
+and playing like a crowd of little boys on a picnic,
+only Mr. Hartley said they were doing some
+'mighty fine roping' with it all. Their ropes are
+mostly about forty feet long, and it looked as if they
+just slung them any old way; but I know they don't,
+for afterward, just before we went in to supper,
+Reddy let me take his rope, and I tried to throw
+it. I aimed for a post a little way ahead of me,
+but I got Pedro, the Mexican cowboy, behind
+me, right 'in the neck,' as Mr. Tim said. Pedro
+grinned, and of course everybody else laughed
+horribly.</p>
+
+<p>"And thus endeth the account of how the
+bronchos were busted. (P.S. I hope whoever
+reads the above will own up that for once Tilly
+Mack got some sense into her part. So there!) I
+forgot to say we took a nap after dinner. Everybody
+does here. 'Siestas' they call them, Genevieve
+says."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was after supper that Genevieve said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now let's go out on to the front gallery and
+watch the sunset. Supper was too late last night
+for us to see much of it, but to-night it will be fine&mdash;and
+you've no idea what a sunset really can be
+until you've seen it on the prairie!"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly pursed her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"There, Genevieve Hartley, there's another of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+those mysterious words of yours; and it isn't the
+first time I've heard it here, either."</p>
+
+<p>"What word?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Gallery.' What is a gallery? I'm sure I don't
+see what there can be about a one-story house to be
+called a 'gallery'!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You call them 'verandas' or 'piazzas,' back
+East, Tilly. We call them 'galleries' in Texas."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is that it?" frowned Tilly. "But you
+never called Sunbridge piazzas that."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No; it's only when I get back here that the
+old names come back to me so naturally. Besides&mdash;when
+I was East, I very soon found out what
+you called them; so I called them that, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyhow," retorted Tilly, saucily, "I've
+got my opinion of folks that will call a one-story
+piazza a 'gallery.' I should just like to show them
+what we call a 'gallery' at home&mdash;say, the top
+one in the Boston Theater, you know, where it runs
+'way back."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve only laughed good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>On the front gallery all settled themselves comfortably
+to watch the sunset. Already the sun was
+low in the west, a huge ball of fire just ready to
+drop into the sea of prairie grass.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't seem nearly so hot here as I thought
+it would," observed Bertha, after a time. "Oh, it's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+been warm to-day, of course&mdash;part of the time
+awfully warm," she added hastily. "But I've been
+just as hot in New Hampshire."</p>
+
+<p>"We think we've got a mighty fine climate,"
+spoke up Mr. Hartley. "Now, last year, you in the
+East, had heaps of prostrations from the heat.
+Texas had just three."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that was owing to the Northers,"
+murmured Cordelia, interestedly. "Now, feel it!"
+She put up her hand. "There's a breeze, now. Is
+that a Norther?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley coughed suddenly. Genevieve
+stared.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know about Northers?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I&mdash;I read about them. It said you&mdash;you
+had them."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve broke into a merry laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I should think, by the way you put it, that they
+were the measles or the whooping cough! We do
+have them, Cordelia&mdash;in the winter, specially, but
+not so often in July. Besides, they don't feel much
+like this little breeze&mdash;as you'd soon find out, if
+you happened to be in one."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment there was silence; then Genevieve
+spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, where'd you find out all these things
+about Texas&mdash;that we didn't have butter, and did
+have Northers?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Before Cordelia could answer, Tilly interposed
+with a chuckling laugh:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you, Genevieve, just where they found
+out," she cut in, utterly ignoring her own share of
+the "they." "Now, listen! How do you suppose
+they spent all the time you were in New Jersey?
+I'll tell you. They were digging up Texas every
+single minute; and they dug, and dug, and dug,
+until there wasn't a mean annual temperature, or a
+mean anything else that they didn't drag from its
+hiding-place and hold up triumphantly, and shout:
+'Behold, this is Texas!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Girls&mdash;you didn't!" cried Genevieve, choking
+with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"They did!" affirmed Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, <i>we</i> did&mdash;including Tilly," declared Cordelia,
+with unexpected spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody laughed this time, but it was Alma,
+the peacemaker, who spoke next.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look&mdash;look at the sun!" she exclaimed.
+"Aren't those rose-pink clouds gorgeous?"</p>
+
+<p>"My, wouldn't they make a lovely dress?"
+sighed Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and see the golden pathway the sun has
+made, straight down to the prairie," cried Bertha
+Brown.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look, look, Mr. Hartley! Is that grass on
+fire?" gasped Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley shook his head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>"But you do have prairie fires?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes; but not so often nowadays&mdash;though
+I've seen some bad ones, in my time."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. All eyes were turned
+toward the west. Above, a riot of rose and gold
+and purple flamed across the sky. Below, more
+softly, the colors seemed almost repeated in the
+waving, shifting, changing expanse of fairylike loveliness
+that the prairie had become.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how beautiful it all is, and how I do love
+it," breathed Genevieve, after a time, as if to herself.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the gorgeous rose and gold and purple
+changed, softened, and faded quite away. The
+slender crescent of the moon appeared, and one by
+one the stars showed in the darkening sky.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all so quiet, so wonderfully quiet," sighed
+Cordelia; then, abruptly, she cried: "Why, what's
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>There had sounded a far-away shout, then another,
+nearer. On the breeze was borne the muffled
+tread of hundreds of hoofs. A dog began to bark
+lustily.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Later, they swept into view&mdash;a troop of cowboys,
+and a thronging, jostling mass of cattle.</p>
+
+<p>"On the way to a round-up, probably," explained
+Mr. Hartley, as he rose to his feet and went<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+to meet the foreman, who was coming toward the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Still later, he explained more fully.</p>
+
+<p>"They've put them in our pens for the night.
+The boys have gone into camp a mile or so away."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate round-ups," she cried passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"What are round-ups?" asked Bertha Brown.</p>
+
+<p>"Where they brand the cattle," answered Genevieve,
+quickly, but in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia, who was near her, shuddered. She
+seemed now to see before her eyes that seething
+mass of heads and horns, sweeping on and on unceasingly.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia had two dreams that night. She wondered,
+afterward, which was the worse. She
+dreamed, first, that an endless stream of cattle
+climbed the windmill tower and jumped clear to the
+edge of the prairie, where the sun went down. She
+dreamed, secondly, that she was very hungry, and
+that twenty feet away stood a table laden with hot
+biscuits and fried chicken; but that the only way
+she could obtain any food was to "rope it" with
+Reddy's lariat. At the time of waking up she had
+not obtained so much as one biscuit or a chicken
+wing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>CORDELIA GOES TO CHURCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>"We're going to have church to-morrow," Genevieve
+had announced on the first Saturday night at
+the ranch. "A minister is coming from Bolo, and
+he holds the service out of doors. Everybody on
+the place comes, and we sing, and it's lovely!"</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, Cordelia had not been present
+when Genevieve made this announcement. It was
+left for Tilly, therefore, to tell her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Cordelia, I forgot. We're going to have
+church to-morrow," she said that night, as she was
+brushing her hair in their room.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia, who was taking off her shoes, looked
+up delightedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tilly&mdash;church? We're going to church?"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly laughed; then an odd little twist came to
+her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Cordelia; we're&mdash;going to church," she
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"What time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eleven o'clock, Genevieve said."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, won't that be fun&mdash;I mean, I'm very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+glad," corrected Cordelia, hastily, a confused red in
+her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>In Cordelia's bed that night, Cordelia thought
+happily:</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe now I can get some new ideas for Uncle
+Thomas to put in his services. They do everything
+so differently here in the West, and Uncle's audiences
+get so small sometimes, specially Sunday evenings."</p>
+
+<p>In Tilly's bed, Tilly, a little guilty as to conscience,
+was trying to excuse herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyhow," she was arguing mentally,
+"Genevieve said 'everybody comes,' and if they
+'come' they must 'go'; so of course we're 'going'
+to church."</p>
+
+<p>Not until Cordelia was dropping off to sleep did
+something occur to her. She sat up, then, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly," she called softly, "where is that church?
+Do we have to ride eighteen miles to Bolo?"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly did not answer. She was asleep, decided
+Cordelia&mdash;it was dark, and Cordelia could not see
+the pillow Tilly was stuffing into her mouth.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Just after breakfast Sunday morning, Elsie Martin
+said a low word in Genevieve's ear, and drew
+her out of earshot of the others. Her eyes were
+anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, do you have to dress up much for
+this kind of&mdash;of church?" she questioned.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit, dear. Don't worry. Anything you
+have will be lovely."</p>
+
+<p>"I know; but&mdash;well, you see, it's just this," she
+quavered. "Aunt Kate fixed up the girls' green
+chambray for me just before we came. I saw then
+it didn't look just right, but we were in such an
+awful hurry there wasn't time to do anything; and
+I was so excited, anyway, that I didn't seem to
+mind, much. But out here, in the bright light, it
+looks awfully!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! That's all your own notion, Elsie,"
+rejoined Genevieve, comfortingly. "I'm sure it
+looks lovely. Anyhow, it wouldn't matter if it
+didn't&mdash;here."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie shook her head despondently.</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't understand," she said. "You
+know the twins dress alike, and this was their green
+chambray. Aunt Kate always likes to use their
+things, she says, because there's always double quantity;
+but this time it didn't work so well. You see,
+Cora was sick a lot last summer, when they had this
+dress, and she didn't wear hers half so much as
+Clara did, so hers wasn't faded hardly any. It was
+an awful funny color to begin with; but it's worse
+now, with part of it one shade, and part another.
+You see, one sleeve's made of Cora's, and one of
+Clara's; and the front breadth is Cora's and the
+back is Clara's. Of course Aunt Kate cut it out
+where she could do it best, and didn't think but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+what they were alike; but you don't know what a
+funny-looking thing that dress is! I&mdash;I don't
+know whether to turn Clara toward folks, or Cora,"
+she finished with a little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve heard the laugh&mdash;but she saw that it
+came through trembling lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I just wouldn't fret," she declared, with
+an affectionate little hug. "If you don't want to
+wear it, wear something else. What a nuisance
+clothes are, anyhow! I've always said I wished we
+didn't have to change our dress every time we
+turned around!"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie's eyes became wistful. She shook her head
+sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know anything about it, Genevieve.
+Your clothes <i>haven't</i> been a nuisance to you&mdash;even
+if you think they have. You see, you don't realize
+how nice it is to have such a lot of pretty things&mdash;and
+all new," she sighed as she turned away.</p>
+
+<p>When Genevieve went to her room to dress for
+"church" that morning, she looked a little thoughtfully
+at the array of pretty frocks hanging in her
+closet.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could give some to Elsie," she sighed;
+"but Elsie isn't poor, of course, and I suppose
+she&mdash;she wouldn't take them. But I suspect I don't
+half appreciate them myself&mdash;just as Elsie said,"
+she finished, as she took down a fresh, white linen.</p>
+
+<p>At quarter before eleven Cordelia Wilson<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+knocked at Genevieve's door. Genevieve opened it
+to find Cordelia in a neat jacket suit, hat on, and
+gloves in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I all right, Genevieve?" she asked. "I
+wasn't quite sure just what to wear."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, y-yes&mdash;only you don't need the hat, nor
+the gloves, dear; and I shouldn't think you'd want
+that coat, it's so warm!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not want a hat, or gloves," burst out Cordelia,
+looking distinctly shocked. "Why, Genevieve Hartley!
+I know you do very strange things here in
+the West, but I did suppose you&mdash;you dressed
+properly to go to church!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't really church, Cordelia," smiled
+Genevieve. "I only call it so, you know. And of
+course we don't 'go' at all&mdash;only as far as the
+back gallery."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia stared, frowningly.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you don't drive off&mdash;anywhere?"
+she demanded. "That you have a service right
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I thought you knew."</p>
+
+<p>"But Tilly said&mdash;why, I don't know what she
+did say, exactly, but she let me think we were going
+to drive off somewhere. And look at me&mdash;rigged
+out like this! You know how she'll tease me!"
+There were almost tears in Cordelia's sensitive eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Has she seen you&mdash;in this?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but she will when I go back. I saw her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+whisk through the hall to our room just as I crossed
+through to come in here."</p>
+
+<p>"Then we won't let her see you," chuckled Genevieve.
+"Here, let's have your hat and gloves and
+coat. I'll hide them in my closet. You can get
+them later when Tilly isn't around. Now run back
+and put a serene face on it. Just don't let her suspect
+you ever thought of your hat and gloves."</p>
+
+<p>"But, do you think I ought to do&mdash;that? Won't
+it be&mdash;deceit?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear, it won't," declared Genevieve, emphatically;
+"not any sort of deceit that's any harm.
+It will just be depriving Miss Tilly of the naughty
+fun she expected to have with you. You <i>know</i> how
+Tilly loves to tease folks. Well, she'll just find the
+tables turned, this time. Now run back quick, or
+she'll suspect things!" And, a little doubtfully,
+Cordelia went.</p>
+
+<p>As she had expected, she found Tilly in their
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you get ready for church, Cordy?"
+demanded Tilly, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am ready. I dressed early, before you came
+in," returned Cordelia, trying to speak very unconcernedly.
+"Why? Don't you think this will do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, of course. You look very nice," murmured
+Tilly, a little hastily, sending a furtive glance
+into Cordelia's face. There was nothing, apparently,
+about Cordelia to indicate that anything unexpected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+had occurred, or was about to occur; and she herself
+could not, of course, ask why no preparations
+for an eighteen-mile journey were being made, specially
+when she had pretended to be asleep the night
+before when Cordelia asked her question about that
+same journey. "You look very nice, I'm sure,"
+murmured Tilly, again. And Cordelia, hearing the
+vague disappointment in Tilly's voice, was filled
+with joy&mdash;that yet carried a pang of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>It was a little later, just as Tilly was leaving the
+room, that Cordelia turned abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly, I did have on my hat and coat," she burst
+out hurriedly. "I did think we were going to drive
+'way off somewhere to church. But I found out and
+hid them in Genevieve's room, so you would not
+know and&mdash;and tease me," she finished breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly turned back with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You little rogue!" she began; then she stopped
+short. Her face changed. "But&mdash;why in the
+world did you tell me now?" she demanded curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I ought to."</p>
+
+<p>"Ought to!&mdash;ought to let me tease you!"
+echoed the dumfounded Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia stirred restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that, of course, exactly," she stammered.
+"It's only that&mdash;that it seemed somehow like&mdash;deceiving
+you."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For a moment Tilly stared; then, suddenly, she
+darted across the room and put both arms around
+the minister's niece. Cordelia was not quite sure
+whether she was hugging her, or shaking her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you&mdash;you&mdash;I don't know <i>what</i> you are!"
+Tilly was exclaiming. "But you're a dear, anyhow!"
+And it was actually a sob that the astounded
+Cordelia heard as Tilly turned and fled
+from the room.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>To Sunbridge eyes, "church" that morning was
+something very new and novel. At eleven o'clock
+Genevieve and her father piloted their guests to the
+back gallery where seats had been reserved for
+them. The minister, a dark-haired, tired-looking
+man with kind eyes, had arrived some time before
+on horseback. To Mrs. Kennedy, especially, he
+looked a little too unconventional in his heavy boots
+and coarse garments which, though plainly recently
+brushed, still showed the dust of the prairie in spots.
+He sat now at one side talking with Mr. Tim while
+his "congregation" was gathering.</p>
+
+<p>And what a congregation it was! As Genevieve
+had said, everybody on the ranch came, except those
+whose duties prohibited them from coming. Singly,
+or in picturesque groups, they settled themselves
+comfortably on the back gallery, or along the covered
+way leading to the dining-room. Even Teresa,
+in a huge fresh apron that made her great bulk look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+even greater, sat just outside the dining-room door,
+where she could easily run in from time to time, to
+see that the roast chickens in the oven were not
+burning, nor the beets on the stove boiling dry.</p>
+
+<p>The "pulpit" was a little stand placed at the
+house-end of the covered way. The "choir" was
+the piano in the living-room drawn up close to the
+window, with Genevieve herself seated at it. Nor
+was the "church" itself devoid of beauty, with its
+growing vines and flowers, and its shifting lights
+and shadows as the soft clouds sailed slowly through
+the blue sky overhead. As to the audience&mdash;no
+scholarly orator in a Fifth Avenue cathedral found
+that day more attentive listeners than did that tired-looking
+minister find in the curiously-assorted
+groups before him&mdash;the swarthy Mexicans, the
+picturesque cowboys, the eager-eyed, fresh-faced
+young girls from a far-away town in the East.</p>
+
+<p>They sang first, Genevieve's own clear voice
+leading; and even Tilly, who seldom sang in church
+at home, found herself joining heartily in "Nearer
+my God to Thee," and "Bringing in the Sheaves."
+There was something so free, so whole-souled about
+the music in that soft outdoor air, that she, as well
+as some of the others, decided that never before
+had any music sounded so inspiring.</p>
+
+<p>For the first two minutes after the preacher arose
+to begin his sermon, Mrs. Kennedy saw nothing
+but the dust on the right shoulder of his coat. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+after that she saw nothing but his earnest eyes.
+She had fallen then quite under the sway of his
+clear, ringing voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'While Josiah was yet young, in the sixteenth
+year of his age, he began to seek the God of his
+fathers,'" announced the clear, ringing voice as
+the text; and Genevieve, hearing it, wondered if
+the minister could have known that at least a part
+of his audience that day would be so exactly, or so
+very nearly, "in the sixteenth year" of their own
+age.</p>
+
+<p>It was a good sermon, and it was well preached.
+The time, the place, the occasion, the atmosphere
+all helped, too. All the Happy Hexagons paid
+reverent attention. Tilly, fresh from her somewhat
+amazing experience with Cordelia, made many and
+stern resolutions to be everything that was good
+and helpful, nothing that was bad and hateful.
+Genevieve, who had slipped off her piano stool to
+an easier chair, sat with dreamy, tender eyes. She
+was thinking of the dear mother, who, as she could
+so well remember, had told her that she must always
+be good and brave and true first, before anything
+else.</p>
+
+<p>"Good and brave and true!" She wondered if
+she could&mdash;always. It seemed so easy to do it now,
+with this good man's earnest voice in her ears. But
+it was so hard, so strangely hard, at other times.
+And there were so many things&mdash;so many, many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+<i>little</i> things&mdash;that to Aunt Julia and Miss Jane
+looked so big!&mdash;things, too, that to her seemed
+eminently all right.</p>
+
+<p>"'When Josiah was yet young, in the sixteenth
+year of his age, he began to seek the God of his
+fathers,'" quoted the minister again, impressively;
+and Genevieve realized then, with misty eyes, that
+the sermon was done.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The minister stayed to dinner, of course; and,
+in spite of her interest in the sermon, Teresa had
+seen to it that the dinner was everything that one
+could ask of it. The minister had the place of
+honor at the table, and proved to be a most agreeable
+talker. Genevieve had not caught his name
+distinctly, but she thought it was "Jones." He
+lived in Bolo, he said, having recently moved there
+from a distant part of the state. He hoped that he
+might be able to do good work there. Certainly
+there was need that somebody do something. In
+response to Mr. Hartley's cordial invitation to stay
+a few days at the ranch, he answered with visible
+regret:</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir. Nothing would please me
+more, but it is quite out of the question. I must go
+back this afternoon. I have a service in Bolo this
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be a busy man," observed Mr. Hartley,
+genially.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The minister sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am&mdash;yet I can't do half that I want to. This
+outside work among the ranches I shall try to carry
+on as best I can. But you're all so afraid you'll have
+a neighbor nearer than a score of miles," he added
+with a whimsical smile, "that I can't get among you
+very often."</p>
+
+<p>It was after dinner that the minister chanced to
+hear Genevieve speak of herself as a Happy Hexagon.</p>
+
+<p>"Hexagon?&mdash;Hexagon?" he echoed smilingly.
+"And are you, too, a Happy Hexagon?" he asked,
+turning to the mistress of the Six Star Ranch.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes. Do you mean you know another
+one?" questioned the girl, all interest immediately.
+"It's the name of our girls' club&mdash;the Hexagon
+Club."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I heard of one, once," rejoined the man.
+"And it isn't usual, you know, so it attracted my
+attention."</p>
+
+<p>"But where was it? When was it? We supposed
+we were the only Happy Hexagons in the
+world," cried Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>The minister smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I found my Happy Hexagons at the bottom of
+a letter from the East."</p>
+
+<p>"A letter from the East?" Genevieve's voice
+held now a curious note of wild unbelief.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It came before we moved to Bolo. My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+elder daughter was teaching in the East, and was
+taken ill. Some of her girls wrote to us."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve sprang to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;you can't be&mdash;the Rev. Luke
+Jones!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"That is my name."</p>
+
+<p>"And is Quentina your daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the minister's turn to look amazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes; but&mdash;how do you know? Are you&mdash;you
+can't be&mdash;<i>my</i> Happy Hexagons!" he ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded laughingly. She spoke, too; but
+what she said was not heard. All of the Happy
+Hexagons were talking by that time. The Rev. Mr.
+Jones, indeed, found himself besieged on all sides
+with eager questions and amazed comments.</p>
+
+<p>Under cover of the confusion, Mr. Hartley turned
+in puzzled wonder to Mrs. Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Will</i> you tell me what all this is about?" he
+begged.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! I think perhaps it is all new to you.
+Last winter Miss Alice Jones, a Texas lady and the
+girls' Latin teacher, was taken ill. The girls were
+very attentive, and did lots of little things for her;
+but she grew worse and had to leave. Just before
+she went, the mother wrote a letter thanking the
+girls, and in the letter was a note signed 'Quentina
+Jones.' Quentina was a younger sister, it seemed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+and she, too, wished to thank the girls. Of course
+the girls were delighted, and immediately answered
+it, signing themselves 'The Happy Hexagons.' The
+teacher went away then, and the girls heard nothing
+more. But they have talked of Quentina Jones
+ever since."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's all so wonderful," cried Genevieve, her
+voice rising dominant at last. "Where is Miss
+Alice Jones, and how is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is better, thank you, though not very strong
+yet. She is teaching in Colorado."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad," cried Genevieve, "but I wish
+we could see her, too. Only think, girls, of Quentina
+Jones being right here, only eighteen miles
+away!"</p>
+
+<p>"One would think eighteen miles were a mere
+step!" laughed Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"They are&mdash;in Texas," retorted Genevieve.
+Then, to the minister she said: "Now tell us, please,
+Mr. Jones, what we can do. We want to see Quentina
+right away, quick. We can't wait! Can
+she come over? <i>Can't</i> she? We'd love to have
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>The minister shook his head slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid not, Miss Genevieve&mdash;thank you
+just the same. I'd love to have her. It would do
+her such a world of good, poor little girl, to have
+one happy time with all you young people! But my
+wife has a lame foot just now, and Quentina simply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+cannot be spared. You know she has several
+brothers, so we have quite a family. But, I'll tell
+you what&mdash;you young ladies must all come to see
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you! We'd love to&mdash;and we will,
+too." (Back in her ranch home, it was easy for
+Genevieve to slip into her old independent way of
+consulting no one's will but her own.) "When do
+you want us?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear," interposed Mrs. Kennedy,
+hastily, "if Mrs. Jones is not well, surely we cannot
+ask her to take in six noisy girls as guests!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no&mdash;of course not," stammered Genevieve.
+The rest of the Happy Hexagons looked
+suddenly heartbroken. But the minister smiled reassuringly.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife isn't ill&mdash;only lame; and she loves
+young people. She'll be just as eager for you to
+come as Quentina will be&mdash;and Quentina just simply
+won't take 'no' for an answer, I'm sure. She
+talked for days of the Happy Hexagons, after your
+letter came. You must come, only&mdash;" he hesitated,
+"only I'm afraid you'll be a little cramped for room.
+A village parsonage isn't a ranch, you know. But,
+if you don't mind sort of&mdash;picnicking, and having
+to stand up in the corner to sleep&mdash;" he paused
+quizzically.</p>
+
+<p>"We adore standing up and sleeping in corners,"
+declared Genevieve, promptly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Then shall we call it Tuesday?" smiled Mr.
+Jones.</p>
+
+<p>"But how can they go?" questioned Mrs. Kennedy,
+in an anxious voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they might ride it," began Mr. Hartley,
+slowly; "still, that would hardly do&mdash;even should
+the ponies come in time&mdash;such a long trip when
+they haven't ridden any here, yet. I'll tell you.
+We'll let Carlos drive them over in the carriage
+early Tuesday morning. I reckon the seven of them
+can stow themselves away, somehow&mdash;it holds six
+with room to spare on every seat. Then, Wednesday
+afternoon, he can drive them back. Meanwhile,
+he can stay himself in the town and get some supplies
+that I'm needing."</p>
+
+<p>"But seems to me that gives us a very short
+visit," demurred Mr. Jones, as he rose to take his
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite long enough&mdash;for the good wife," declared
+Mrs. Kennedy, decisively. And thus the
+matter was settled.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>QUENTINA</h3>
+
+
+<p>Quite the most absorbing topic of conversation
+Monday was, of course, the coming visit to Quentina
+Jones.</p>
+
+<p>"But what <i>is</i> her name?" demanded Mr. Hartley
+at last, almost impatiently. "It isn't 'Quentina,'
+of course. I <i>know</i> that man who was here
+Sunday would never have named a daughter of his
+'Quentina.'"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Whew! I should think she would be," laughed
+Mr. Hartley. "Only fancy having to be called
+'Clorinda Dorinda' whenever you were wanted!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds like a rhyming dictionary to me,"
+chuckled Tilly. "'Clorinda, Dorinda, Lucinda,
+Miranda,'" she chanted.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley laughed, and walked off.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll leave her to you, anyhow, whatever
+she is," he called back.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet he's just dying to go with us, all the
+same," whispered Tilly, saucily.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia frowned, hesitated, then spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Auntie says ladies don't bet," she observed, in
+her severest manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't they?" snapped Tilly; then she, too,
+frowned, and hesitated. "All right, Cordy&mdash;Cordelia;
+see that you don't do it, then," she concluded
+good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>Monday was a very quiet day for the girls at the
+ranch. 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.</p>
+
+<p>Tuesday dawned clear, but very warm. The girls
+were all awake at sunrise, and were soon ready for
+the early breakfast. Almost at once, afterward,
+they stowed themselves&mdash;with little crowding but
+much giggling&mdash;in the carriage, and called gayly
+to Carlos: "We're all ready!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we're all aboard, Carlos," cried Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Good, Se&ntilde;orita! It is ver' glad I am to see you
+so prompt to the halter," grinned Carlos. "<i>Quien
+sabe?</i>&mdash;mebbe I didn't reckon on corrallin' the
+whole bunch of you so soon!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed, even while she made a wry
+face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid Carlos remembers that I was never
+on time, girls," she pouted. "But you don't know,
+Carlos, what a marvel of promptness I've become
+back East&mdash;specially since somebody gave me a
+watch," she finished, smiling into the old man's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"All ready!" grinned Carlos, climbing into his
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>And Cordelia did count. Once again her face expressed
+a tragedy of responsibility, and once again
+the resulting</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Texas, Texas, Tex&mdash;Tex&mdash;Texas!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">GENEVIEVE!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>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.</div>
+
+<p>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 herds of cattle they met, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+groups of cowboys they saw galloping 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!</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose she'll be like?" asked
+Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Quien sabe?</i>" laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"There! what does that mean?" demanded
+Tilly. "I've heard it lots of times since I've been
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"'Who knows?'" translated Genevieve,
+smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, who does know?" retorted Tilly, not understanding.
+"But what does it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what it means&mdash;'Who knows?'
+The Mexicans and the cowboys use it a lot here,
+and when I come back I get to saying it, too."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think you did," shrugged Tilly.
+"Well, anyhow, let's talk straight English for
+a while. Let's talk of Quentina. What do you suppose
+she's like, girls?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, let's guess. Let's make a game of
+it," cried Tilly. "We'll each tell what we think,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+and then see who comes the nearest. You begin,
+Genevieve."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I think she's quiet and tall, and very
+dark like a Spaniard," announced Genevieve, weighing
+her words carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she's bookish, and maybe stupid," declared
+Tilly. "Her letter sounded queer."</p>
+
+<p>"I think she's little, and got yellow hair and
+light-blue eyes," said Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she's got curls&mdash;black ones&mdash;and
+looks lovely in red," declared Elsie Martin.</p>
+
+<p>"We can trust you, Elsie, to get in something
+about her clothes," chuckled Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I think she's got brown eyes like Genevieve's,
+and brown hair like hers, too," asserted
+Alma Lane.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Cordelia," smiled Genevieve, "it's your
+turn. You haven't said, yet."</p>
+
+<p>"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 homely&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a general laugh at this; then, for a
+time, there was silence while the carriage rolled
+along the prairie road.</p>
+
+<p>Carlos had no difficulty in finding the home of
+the Rev. Mr. Jones in Bolo. It proved to be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+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 petunias.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! I guess we'll <i>have</i> to stand up in corners
+to sleep," gurgled Tilly, as the carriage stopped
+before the side door.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-h!" warned Genevieve. "Tilly, isn't it
+awful? Only think of our Quentina's living here!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the door of the little house
+opened, and Mr. Jones appeared. From around his
+feet there seemed literally to tumble out upon the
+steps several boys of "assorted sizes," as Tilly expressed
+it afterward. Then the girls saw her in
+the doorway&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"O Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons, welcome,
+welcome, Happy Hexagons!" breathed the
+girl in the doorway ecstatically, clasping her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds almost like our Texas yell," giggled
+Tilly, under her breath.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was the first to reach the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Quentina&mdash;I know you're Quentina; and I'm
+Genevieve Hartley," she cried, before Mr. Jones
+had a chance to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, this is Quentina," he said then, cordially
+shaking Genevieve's hand. "And now I'll let you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+present her to your young friends, please, because
+you can do it so much better than I."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm Cordelia, and I'm so glad to see you,"
+she stammered; "and I'm so glad you're not fat
+and homely, too&mdash;er&mdash;that is," she corrected
+feverishly, "I mean&mdash;we didn't any of us get you
+right, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Get me&mdash;right?" Quentina opened her dark
+eyes to their fullest extent.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia blushed, and tried to back away. With
+her eyes she implored Tilly or Elsie to take her
+place.</p>
+
+<p>It was Genevieve who came to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but we didn't get yours," chuckled Tilly,
+coming easily forward, with outstretched hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed we didn't," echoed Elsie, admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course we couldn't," stammered Cordelia,
+still red of face. "We never, never <i>could</i>
+think of anything so pretty as you really are!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Quentina laughed now, and raised hurried hands
+to hide the pretty red that had flown to her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you funny, funny Happy Hexagons!" she
+cried, in her sweet, Southern drawl.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"This is Paul, with the solemn face. And this
+grinning little chap is Edward&mdash;Ned, for short;
+and these are the twins, Bob and Rob."</p>
+
+<p>"Are they both 'Robert'?" questioned Tilly, interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Jones smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. Bob is Bolton, and Rob is Robert.
+The 'Rob and Bob' is Quentina's idea&mdash;she likes
+the sound of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you!&mdash;she <i>is</i> a rhyming dictionary,"
+whispered Tilly, in an aside that nearly convulsed
+the two girls that heard her.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the house they all met "mother."</p>
+
+<p>Mother, in spite of her lame foot, was a very
+forceful personality. She was bright and cheery,
+too, and she made the girls feel welcome and at
+home immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;lots better; and I
+shall soon be about again."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Trouble, dear child! I reckon we don't call <i>you</i>
+trouble," declared the minister's wife, fervently,
+"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&mdash;she's
+never ceased to talk and dream of the
+girls who sent it to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I did like it so much&mdash;indeed I did,"
+chimed in Quentina. "Why, Genevieve, I made a
+poem on it&mdash;a lovely poem just like Tennyson's
+'Margaret,' you know; only I put in 'Hexagons,'
+and changed the words to fit, of course."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly nudged Elsie violently, and Elsie choked a
+spasmodic giggle into a cough; but Quentina unhesitatingly
+went on.</p>
+
+<p>"It began:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"'O sweet pale Hexagons,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">O rare pale Hexagons,</span><br />
+What lit your eyes with tearful power,<br />
+Like moonlight on a falling shower?<br />
+Why sent you, loves, so full and free,<br />
+Your letter sweet to little me?'<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>That's just the first, you know," smiled Quentina,
+engagingly, "and of course when I wrote it I didn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+know you weren't really 'pale,' at all; but then,
+we can just call that part poetic license."</div>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed frankly. Tilly giggled. Cordelia
+looked nervously from them to Quentina.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure, that&mdash;that's very pretty," she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jones smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+jingles, but strangers are not."</p>
+
+<p>"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?&mdash;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&mdash;but
+they didn't put it in," she added, as an afterthought.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what a shame!" murmured Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve looked up quickly. Tilly was wearing
+her most innocent, most angelic expression, but
+Genevieve knew very well the naughtiness behind it.
+Quentina, however, accepted it as pure gold.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, wasn't it?" she rejoined cheerfully. "I
+felt right bad, particularly as I was going to send
+you all a copy when it was published."</p>
+
+<p>"You can give us a manuscript copy, Quentina.
+We would love that," interposed Genevieve, hurriedly.
+Behind Quentina's back she gave Tilly then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+a frowning shake of the head&mdash;though it must be
+confessed that her dancing eyes rather spoiled the
+effect of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe it's because her name rhymes&mdash;'Clorinda
+Dorinda,'" suggested Tilly, interestedly;
+"maybe that's why she likes to write poetry so well."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jones laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what her father says. But Clorinda herself
+changed her own name about as soon as she
+could talk. She couldn't manage the hard 'Clorinda'
+very well, and I had a Mexican nurse girl,
+Quentina, whose name she much preferred. So
+very soon she was calling herself 'Quentina,' and
+insisting that every one else should do the same."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's so much prettier," declared the minister's
+daughter, fervently. "Of course 'Clorinda
+Dorinda' are some pretty, because they rhyme so,
+but I like 'Quentina' better. Besides, there are
+lots more pretty words to make that rhyme with&mdash;Florena,
+Dulcina, Rowena, and verbena, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"And 'you've seen her,'" suggested Tilly,
+gravely.</p>
+
+<p>Quentina frowned a moment in thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Y-yes," she admitted; "but I don't think that's
+a very pretty one."</p>
+
+<p>It was Genevieve this time who choked a giggle
+into a cough, and who, a moment later, turned very
+eagerly to welcome an interruption in the person
+of the Rev. Mr. Jones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Soon after this Quentina suggested a trip through
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>"You see I want to show you where you're going
+to sleep," she explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Jones told us that," observed Tilly, as
+the seven girls trooped up the narrow stairway.
+"He said we were to stand up in the corners."
+Tilly spoke with the utmost gravity.</p>
+
+<p>Quentina turned, wide-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you couldn't! You'd never sleep a bit,"
+she demurred concernedly. "Besides, it isn't necessary."</p>
+
+<p>All but Tilly and Genevieve tittered audibly.
+Tilly still looked the picture of innocence.
+Genevieve frowned at her sternly, then stepped forward
+and put her arm around Quentina's waist.</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly was only joking, Quentina," she explained.
+"When you know Tilly better you'll
+find she never by any chance talks sense&mdash;but
+always nonsense," she finished, looking at Tilly
+severely.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly wrinkled up her nose and pouted; but her
+eyes laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"There, here's my room," announced Quentina, a
+moment later. "We've put a couch in it, and if you
+don't mind my sleeping with you, three can be here.
+Then across the hall here is the twins' room, and
+two more can sleep in this; and Paul and Ned's
+room down there at the end of the hall will take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+the other two. There! You see we've got it fixed
+right well."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes&mdash;well for us; but how about the
+boys?" cried Genevieve. "Where will they
+sleep?"</p>
+
+<p>Quentina's lips parted, but before the words were
+uttered, a new thought seemed to have come to her.
+With an odd little glance at Tilly, she drawled demurely:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they are going to sleep in the corners."</p>
+
+<p>They all laughed this time.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now we've done the whole house, and
+we'll take the yard," proposed Quentina, as, a little
+later, she led the way down-stairs and out of doors.
+"There! aren't my nasturtiums beautiful?" she
+exulted, with the air of a fond mother displaying
+her first-born. She was pointing to a bed of straggling,
+puny plants, beautifully free from weeds, and
+showing here and there a few brilliant blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly turned her back suddenly. Cordelia looked
+distressed. Bertha cried thoughtlessly:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you ought to see Genevieve's, Quentina,
+if you want to see nasturtiums!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I have Carlos," cut in Genevieve, hurriedly,
+"and Carlos can make anything grow.
+What a pretty dark one this is," she finished, bending
+over one of the plants.</p>
+
+<p>Quentina's face clouded.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose they are much, really," she admitted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+"But I've worked so hard over them!
+Father says the earth isn't good at all. I was so
+pleased when that big red one came out! I made
+a poem on it right off:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'O nasturtium, sweet nasturtium,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Did you blossom just for me?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where, oh, where did you unearth 'em&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All those colors that I see?'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>That's the way it began. Wasn't I lucky to think
+of that 'unearth 'em?' Besides, it's really true,
+you know. They do unearth 'em, and 'twas such a
+nice rhyme for nasturtium. Now there's petunia;
+I think that's a perfectly beautiful sounding word,
+but I've never been able to find a single thing that
+rhymed with it. I do love flowers so," she added,
+after a moment; "but we've never had many. They
+always burn up, or dry up, or get eaten up, or just
+don't come up at all. Of course we've never had
+a really pretty place. Ministers like us don't, you
+know," she finished cheerfully.</div>
+
+<p>There was no reply to this. Not one of the
+Happy Hexagons could think of anything to say.
+For once even Tilly was at a loss for words. It
+was Quentina herself who broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Now tell me all about the East. Let's go up
+on the gallery and sit down. I do so want to go
+East to school; but of course I can't."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it costs too much," returned Quentina.
+"You know ministers don't have money for such
+things." Her voice was still impersonally cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>"How old are you?" asked Elsie, as they seated
+themselves on chairs and steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Sixteen last month."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish you could go," cried Genevieve.
+"Wouldn't it be just lovely if you could come to
+Sunbridge and go to school with us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Sunbridge? I always thought of it
+as just 'East,' you know."</p>
+
+<p>"In New Hampshire."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Quentina, with a sigh of disappointment.
+"I hoped it was in Massachusetts, near
+Boston, you know. I thought Alice said it was near
+Boston."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we aren't so awfully far from Boston,"
+bridled Tilly. "It only takes an hour and a half
+or less to go there. I go with mother every little
+while when I'm home."</p>
+
+<p>Quentina sprang to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Boston! Oh, girls, you don't know how I want
+to see Boston, and Paul Revere's grave, and the
+Common, and the old State House, and Bunker
+Hill, and that lovely North Church where they
+hung the lantern, you know.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+'Listen, my children, and you shall hear<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,'"</span><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'>she began to chant impressively. "Oh, don't you
+just love that poem?"</div>
+
+<p>"Who was Paul Revere?" asked Tilly, pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Paul Revere!" exclaimed Quentina, plainly
+shocked. "Who was <i>Paul Revere!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" scolded Genevieve, as soon as she could
+command her voice. "Quentina, that's only some
+of Tilly's nonsense. Tilly knows very well who
+Paul Revere was."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course she does; and we all do," interposed
+Elsie Martin. "But I'll own right up, I
+don't know half as much about all those historical
+things and places as I ought to."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I," chimed in Bertha. "Just because
+they're right there handy, and we can go any
+time, we&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We <i>don't</i> go any time," laughed Alma Lane,
+finishing the sentence for her.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it," said Elsie. "We had a cousin with
+us for two weeks last summer, and she just doted
+on old relics and graveyards. She made us take her
+into Boston 'most every day, and she asked all sorts
+of questions which I couldn't answer."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know; but excuse me, please," put in
+Tilly, flippantly. "I don't want any graveyards
+and relics in mine."</p>
+
+<p>"That's slang, Tilly," reproved Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" murmured Tilly, serenely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Besides, people come from miles and miles just
+to see those things that we neglect, right at our
+doors, almost."</p>
+
+<p>"But how can you neglect them?" remonstrated
+Quentina. "Why, if I ever go to Boston, I
+sha'n't sleep nor eat till I've seen Paul Revere's
+grave!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shouldn't sleep nor eat if I did," shuddered
+Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean you've <i>never</i> seen it?" gasped Quentina,
+unbelievingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Guilty!" Tilly held up her hand unblushingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Never you mind, Quentina," soothed Genevieve.
+"We are interested in those things, really."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have seen it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Er&mdash;n-no, not that one," confessed Genevieve,
+coloring. "But I've seen heaps of other graves
+there," she assured her hopefully, as if graves were
+the only open door to Quentina's favor.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you've had such chances," envied Quentina.
+"Just think&mdash;Boston! You <i>said</i> you were
+near Boston?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Less than two hours away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes," exclaimed Tilly, "I told you.
+We're less than an hour and a half away."</p>
+
+<p>"And are you a D. A. R., and Colonial Dames,
+and Mayflower Society members, and all that?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! I don't know," laughed Genevieve.
+"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"And do you read the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, and eat
+beans Saturday night, and fishballs Sunday morning?"
+still hurried on Quentina. "You don't any
+of you wear glasses, and I don't think you speak
+very low."</p>
+
+<p>"Anything else?" asked Tilly politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, lots of things," answered Quentina,
+"but I've forgotten most of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Quentina, what <i>are</i> you talking about?"
+laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>Quentina smiled oddly, then she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't true, of course. I knew it couldn't
+be."</p>
+
+<p>"What wasn't true?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something I found in one of father's church
+papers about Rules for Living in New England. I
+cut it out. Wait a minute&mdash;it's here, somewhere!"
+And, to the girls' amazement, she dived into a pocket
+at the side of her dress, pulling out several clippings
+which seemed, mostly, to be verse. One was prose,
+and it was on this she pounced. "Here it is.
+Listen." And she read:</p>
+
+<p>"'Rules for Living in New England. You must
+be descended from the Puritans, and should belong
+to the Mayflower Society, or be a D. A. R., a Colonial
+Dame, or an S. A. R. You must graduate from
+Harvard, or Radcliffe, and must disdain all other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+colleges. You must quote Emerson, read the <i>Atlantic
+Monthly</i>, and swear by the <i>Transcript</i>. You
+must wear glasses, speak in a low voice, eat beans
+on Saturday night, and fishballs on Sunday morning.
+Always you must carry with you a green bag,
+and you should be a professional man, or woman,
+preferably of the literary variety. You should live
+not farther away from Boston than two hours' ride,
+and of course you will be devoted to tombstones,
+relics, and antiques. You may tolerate Europe, but
+you must ignore the West. You must be slow of
+speech, dignified of conduct, and serene of temper.
+You must never be surprised, nor display undue
+emotion. Above all, you must be <i>cultured</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Now you see you haven't done all those things,"
+she declared, as she finished the article.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon there are a few omissions&mdash;specially
+on my part," laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are happy there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"How I do wish I could go," sighed Quentina.
+"I should love Boston, I know. Alice did&mdash;though
+she still liked Texas better."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I know Boston would love you," chuckled
+Tilly, unexpectedly. "Girls, wouldn't she be a picnic
+in Sunbridge? She'd be more of a circus than
+you were, Genevieve!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," bowed Genevieve, with mock stiffness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we loved you right away&mdash;and we should
+Quentina, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," bowed Quentina, in her turn,
+laughingly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OPENING OF A BARREL</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was a merry afternoon and evening that the
+Happy Hexagons spent at Quentina's home, and it
+was still a merrier time that they had getting settled
+for the night. Even Tilly said at last:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Quentina, it's lucky a lame foot doesn't
+have ears. I don't know what your mother will say
+to us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Only fancy if Miss Jane were here," shivered
+Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>It was just as the family were finishing breakfast
+the next morning that there came a knock at the
+door, and a man rolled in a large barrel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's the missionary barrel&mdash;our barrel from
+the East!" cried Quentina. "I wonder now&mdash;what
+do you suppose there is in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't anything, I reckon, except old
+things," piped up Rob, shrilly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jones colored painfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Robert, my son!" she remonstrated, in evident
+distress.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, mother, you <i>know</i> there isn't&mdash;most
+generally," defended Robert.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And if they <i>are</i> new, they're the sort of things
+we couldn't ever use," added Ned.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, boys, that will do," commanded the minister,
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The minister, with Paul's help, had the barrel
+nearly open by this time.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't from Sunbridge, is it?" asked Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;though we get them from there sometimes;
+but this is from a little town in Vermont,"
+replied Mrs. Jones. "We had a letter last week
+from the minister. He&mdash;he apologized a little;
+said that times had been hard, and that they'd had
+trouble to fill it. As if it wasn't hard enough for us
+to take it, without that!" she finished bitterly, with
+almost a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"Rita, my dear!" murmured her husband, in a
+low, distressed voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jones dashed quick tears from her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I know; I don't mean to be ungrateful. But&mdash;times
+have been a little hard&mdash;with <i>us!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Silent, and a little awed, the Happy Hexagons
+stood at one side. Genevieve, especially, looked out
+from troubled eyes. Very slowly Genevieve was
+waking up to the fact that not every one in the world
+had luxuries, or even what she would call ordinary
+comforts of living. Mrs. Jones, seeing her face,
+spoke hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, girls, please forget what I said!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+It was very kind of those good people to send the
+barrel&mdash;very kind; and I am sure we shall find in
+it just what we want."</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you hope will be there," cried Bob,
+"a new coat for Father, and a dress for you, and
+some underclothes for us boys. I heard you say so
+last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and Quentina wants a ribbon&mdash;not dirty
+ones," observed Rob.</p>
+
+<p>"Robert!" cried Quentina, very red of face.
+"You know I don't <i>expect</i> anything of the sort."</p>
+
+<p>The barrel was open now, and eagerly the
+family gathered around it. Even Mrs. Jones's chair
+was drawn forward so that she, too, might peep
+into it.</p>
+
+<p>First there was a great quantity of newspapers&mdash;the
+people had, indeed, found trouble to fill it,
+evidently. Next came a pincushion&mdash;faded pink
+satin, frilled with not over-clean white lace.</p>
+
+<p>"I can use the lace for a collar," cried Quentina,
+taking prompt possession of the cushion. "I'm
+right glad of this!"</p>
+
+<p>A picture came next in a tarnished gilt frame&mdash;evidently
+somebody's early attempts to paint nasturtiums
+in oil.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a rival for your posies out in the yard,"
+murmured Tilly in Quentina's ear.</p>
+
+<p>A pair of skates was pulled out next, then three
+dolls, one minus an arm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"These might be good&mdash;on ice," remarked
+Paul, who had picked up the skates.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you ever have any ice to skate on, here?"
+asked Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in the part of Texas I've ever been in," he
+sighed.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jones was ruefully smoothing the one-armed
+doll's flimsy dress.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I <i>told</i> them there were no little girls in the
+family," she said, her worried eyes seeking her husband's
+face. "It&mdash;it's all right, of course; only&mdash;only
+these dolls did take space."</p>
+
+<p>Some magazines came next, and a few old books,
+upon which the boys fell greedily&mdash;though the
+books they soon threw to one side as if they were of
+little interest.</p>
+
+<p>Undergarments appeared then, plainly much
+worn and patched. To Genevieve they looked quite
+impossible. She almost cried when she saw how
+eagerly Mrs. Jones gathered the motley pile into her
+arms and began to sort them out with little
+exclamations of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Next in the barrel were found an ink-stained
+apron, a bath-robe, nearly new&mdash;which plainly
+owed its presence to its hideous colors&mdash;two or
+three tin dishes (not new), a harmonica, a box containing
+a straw hat trimmed with drooping blue
+bows, several fans, a box of dominoes, a pocket-knife
+with a broken blade, several pairs of new hose,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+marked plainly "seconds," some sheets and pillow-cases
+(half-worn, but hailed with joy by Mrs.
+Jones), a kimono, an assortment of men's half-worn
+shoes&mdash;pounced upon at once by Paul and
+his father, and not abandoned until it was found
+that only two were mates, and only one of these
+good for much wear.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this point that there came a muffled
+shout from Ned, whose head was far down in the
+barrel.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a package&mdash;a big one&mdash;and it's
+marked 'dress for Mrs. Jones.' Mother, you did
+get it, after all!" he cried, tumbling the package
+into his mother's lap.</p>
+
+<p>Tremblingly half a dozen pairs of hands attempted
+to untie the strings and to unwrap the
+coverings; then, across Mrs. Jones's lap there lay
+a tawdry dress of pale-blue silk, spotted and soiled.
+Pinned to it was a note in a scrawling feminine
+hand: "This will wash and make over nicely, I
+think, if you can't wear it just as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"We have so many chances to wear light-blue
+silk, too," was all that Mrs. Jones said.</p>
+
+<p>In the bottom of the barrel were a few new
+towels, very coarse, and some tablecloths and small,
+fringed napkins, also very coarse.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sure, these are handy," stammered
+the minister, who had not found his coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," answered his wife, wearily; "only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>&mdash;well,
+it so happens that every box for the last five
+years has held tea-napkins&mdash;and I don't give many
+teas, you know, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve choked back a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I never saw such a&mdash;a horrid thing in
+all my life, as that barrel was," she stormed hotly.
+"I don't see what folks were thinking of&mdash;to send
+such things!"</p>
+
+<p>"They weren't thinking, my dear, and that's just
+what the trouble was," answered Mrs. Jones, gently.
+"They didn't think, nor understand. Besides, there
+are very many nice things here that we can use
+beautifully. There always are, in every box, only&mdash;of
+course, some things <i>aren't</i> so useful."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say not!" snapped Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I didn't suppose anything could make me
+glad because Aunt Kate makes over the girls' things
+for me," spoke up Elsie Martin; "but something
+has now. She can't send them in any missionary
+boxes, anyhow!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Jones laughed, though she looked still more
+disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"But, girls, dear girls, please don't say such
+things," she expostulated. "We are very, very
+grateful&mdash;indeed we are; and it is right kind of
+them to remember us far-away missionaries with
+boxes and barrels!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Missionary'!" sputtered Genevieve. "'Missionary'!
+I should think somebody had better be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+missionary to them, and teach them what to send.
+Dolls and skates, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear," smiled Mrs. Jones, "those
+might have been just the things&mdash;in some places;
+and besides, some of the boxes are&mdash;are better than
+this. Indeed they are!"</p>
+
+<p>It was at this point that Cordelia came forward
+hurriedly, and touched Mrs. Jones's arm. Her face
+was a little white and strained looking.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Jones," she faltered, "I think I ought to
+tell you. I'm a minister's niece, and I've seen lots
+of missionary boxes packed. I know just how they
+do it, too. I know just how thoughtless they&mdash;I
+mean we&mdash;are; and I just wanted to say that I'm
+very, very sure the next time we pack a box for
+any missionary, we'll&mdash;we'll see that our old shoes
+are mates, and that we don't send dolls to boys!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a shout of gleeful appreciation from
+the boys, but there were only troubled sighs and
+frowns on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Jones.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! I&mdash;I wish the barrel hadn't come
+when you were here," regretted the minister's wife;
+"for indeed the things are all very, very nice. Indeed
+they are!"</p>
+
+<p>"And now let's go out to the flowers," proposed
+Quentina. "Maybe a new nasturtium has blossomed."</p>
+
+<p>All but one of the girls had left the room when
+Mr. Jones felt a timid touch on his arm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Jones, could I speak to you&mdash;just a
+minute, please?" asked a low voice. "I'm Cordelia
+Wilson, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, certainly, Miss Cordelia! What can I
+do for you?" he answered genially, leading the way
+to the tiny study off the sitting room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not sure you can do anything," replied
+Cordelia, with hesitating truthfulness. "But
+I wanted to ask: <i>do</i> you know anybody in Texas by
+the name of Mr. John Sanborn, or Mrs. Lizzie Higgins,
+or Mr. Lester Goodwin, or Mr. James Hunt?"</p>
+
+<p>The minister looked a little surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"N-no, I can't say that I do," he said, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia's countenance fell.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so sorry! You see I thought&mdash;being
+a minister out here, so,&mdash;you might know them."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;Texas is quite a large state," he reminded
+her, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," sighed the girl. "I've found that
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"Are these people friends of yours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; they're just a son, and a brother, and
+a cousin, and a runaway daughter that I'm looking
+up for Sunbridge people."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, indeed!" The minister hoped his voice
+was politely steady.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Of course I haven't had a chance to
+ask many people, yet&mdash;only one or two of the cowboys.
+One of them was named 'John,' but he wasn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+my John&mdash;I mean, he wasn't the right John," corrected
+Cordelia with a pink blush.</p>
+
+<p>The minister coughed a little spasmodically behind
+his hand. As he did not speak Cordelia went
+on, her eyes a little wistful.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be willing, please, to take those
+names down on paper, Mr. Jones?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, certainly, Miss Cordelia," agreed the
+man, reaching for his notebook.</p>
+
+<p>"You see you <i>are</i> a minister, and you do meet
+people, so you might find them. I'd be so glad if
+you could, or if I could. They're all needed very
+much&mdash;indeed they are. You see, Hermit Joe is
+so lonesome for his son, and Mrs. Snow so worried
+about Lizzie, and Mrs. Granger has lost her husband,
+so she hasn't anybody left but her cousin, now,
+and Miss Sally is so very poor and needs her brother
+so much."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, of course," murmured the minister.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later his notebook bore this
+entry, which had been made under Cordelia's careful
+direction:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Advertisement of missing persons">
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='3'>"Wanted:&mdash;Information about&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">John Sanborn</span></td><td align='left'>&nbsp;whose</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;father</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;is</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;lonesome,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mrs. Lizzie Higgins</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>mother</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;worried,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lester Goodwin</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>cousin</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;a widow,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 3em;">and</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 1em;">James Hunt</span></td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>sister</td><td align='center'>"</td><td align='left'>&nbsp;very poor."</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If I find any of these people I'll convey all your
+messages to the best of my ability," promised the
+minister.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. Then I'll go out now to the nasturtiums,"
+sighed the girl, contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>All too soon the visit came to a close, and all too
+soon Carlos appeared with the carriage. Then came
+hurried good-byes, full of laughter, tears, and promises,
+with all the Jones family except the mother,
+grouped upon the steps&mdash;and the mother's chair
+was close to the window.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Oh, Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Come again another day.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Oh, don't forget me, Happy Hexagons,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">When you are so far away!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>chanted Quentina, waving one handkerchief, and
+wiping her eyes with another.</div>
+
+<p>"Girls, quick!&mdash;give her the Texas yell," cried
+Genevieve in a low voice; "only say 'Quentina'
+at the end instead of my name. Now, remember&mdash;'Quentina'!"
+she finished excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" exulted Tilly. "Of course we will!
+Now count, Cordelia."</p>
+
+<p>A moment later, Quentina's amazed, delighted
+ears heard:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Texas, Texas, Tex&mdash;Tex&mdash;Texas!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Quentina!"</span><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'>Then, amidst a chorus of shouts and laughter, the
+carriage drove away.</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Well, young ladies," demanded Mr. Hartley,
+when the tired but happy Hexagon Club trooped up
+the front steps of the ranch house late that afternoon,
+"how about it? What did you think of the
+fair Quentina?"</p>
+
+<p>"Think of her! O Quentina, you should 'seen
+her!" sang Tilly, in so perfect an imitation of the
+minister's daughter that the girls broke into peals
+of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"She's lovely, Father&mdash;honestly, she is," declared
+Genevieve, as soon as she could speak.</p>
+
+<p>"And so pretty!" added Cordelia, "and has
+such a sweet, slow way of speaking!"</p>
+
+<p>"Such lovely dark eyes!"&mdash;this from Alma.</p>
+
+<p>"And such glorious hair&mdash;all golden and
+kinky!" breathed Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"And she looks just as pretty in her high-necked
+apron as she does in her white dress," cried
+Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, upon my soul! What is this young
+lady&mdash;a paragon?" laughed Mr. Hartley, raising
+his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you just what she is, sir," vouchsafed
+Tilly, confidentially. "She <i>is</i> a rhyming dictionary,
+Mr. Hartley, just as I said in the first place; and
+I'd be willing to guarantee any time that she'd find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+a rhyme for any word in this or any other language
+within two seconds after the gun is fired. If you
+don't believe it, you should hear her 'unearth 'em'
+on the 'nasturtium.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly, Tilly!" choked Genevieve, convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but she <i>said</i> she couldn't find one for
+petunia," broke in the exact Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean she actually writes&mdash;<i>poetry!</i>"
+ejaculated Mrs. Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Writes it!&mdash;my dear lady!" (Tilly had assumed
+her most superior air.) "If that were all!
+But she talks it, day in and day out. Everything
+is a poem, from a letter to a scraggly nasturtium.
+She carries an unfailing supply of her own verses in
+her head, and of other people's in her pocket. If
+you ask for the butter at the table, you're never
+sure she won't strike an attitude, and chant:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Butter, Butter, Oh, good-by!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Better butter ne'er did&mdash;er&mdash;fly.'"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"I think I should like to see this young person,"
+observed Mrs. Kennedy, when the laughter at
+Tilly's sally had subsided.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you will sometime. She wants to go
+East," rejoined Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"She does? What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Principally to see Paul Revere's grave, I believe;
+incidentally to go to school."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish she could come East to school!" exclaimed
+Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I&mdash;if she'd come to Sunbridge," laughed
+Tilly. "She takes things even more literally than
+Cordelia does. Sometime I'm going to tell her the
+moon <i>is</i> made of green cheese, and ask her if she
+doesn't want a piece. Ten to one if she won't answer
+that she doesn't care for cheese, thank you.
+Oh, I wouldn't ask to go to <i>another</i> show for a
+whole year if she should come to Sunbridge!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly! I don't think you ought to talk like
+that," remonstrated Cordelia. "One would think
+that Quentina was a&mdash;a vaudeville show."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly considered this gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cordelia, do you know?&mdash;I believe that
+is <i>just</i> what she is. Thank you so much for thinking
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, horrified.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"Honestly, Tilly, I don't think you are quite
+fair," she demurred. "Quentina isn't one bit of
+a show. She's sweet and dear and lovely, with
+just some funny ways to make her specially interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; we'll let it go at that, then," retorted
+Tilly, merrily. "She's just specially interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"She must be," smiled Mrs. Kennedy. "In fact,
+I should very much like to see her, and&mdash;I don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+believe Tilly means her comments to be quite so
+unkind as perhaps they sound," she finished with a
+gentle emphasis that was not lost on her young
+audience.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PRAIRIE&mdash;AND MOONLIGHT</h3>
+
+
+<p>One by one the long, happy July days slipped
+away. There was no lack of amusement, no time
+that hung heavy&mdash;there was so much to be seen,
+so much to be done!</p>
+
+<p>Very soon after the trip to Quentina's home, Mr.
+Tim produced from somewhere five stout little
+ponies, warranted to be broken to "skirts"&mdash;which
+Genevieve had said would be absolutely necessary,
+as the girls would never consent to ride astride.</p>
+
+<p>It was a nervous morning, however, for five of
+the Happy Hexagons when the horses were led up
+to the door. Cordelia was frankly white-faced and
+trembling. Even Tilly looked a little doubtful, as
+she said, trying to speak with her usual lightness:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we <i>know</i>, of course, Genevieve, that these
+little beasts won't teeter up and down like Reddy's
+broncho; and we hope they'll bear in mind that
+Westerners ought to be politely gentle with Easterners,
+who aren't brought up to ride jumping jacks.
+But still, we can't help wondering."</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, I&mdash;I really think I won't ride at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+all to-day," stammered Cordelia, faintly; "that is,
+if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do mind," rejoined Genevieve, looking
+much distressed. "Of course, girls, I wouldn't
+urge you against your will, for the world; but we
+can't have half the fun here unless you ride, for we
+go everywhere, 'most, in the saddle. And, honestly,
+Mr. Tim says these horses are regular cows.
+Father told him he must get steady ones. Won't
+you please&mdash;try it? It will break my heart, if you
+don't. You see I've said so much to the boys, since
+I came, about your riding! They were so surprised
+to think you could ride, and I was so proud to say
+you did!"</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you were?" stammered Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, young ladies," called Mr. Tim, at that
+moment, "here's the steadiest little string of horses
+going! Who'll have the first pick?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will," cried Cordelia, wetting her dry lips, and
+speaking with a stern determination that yet did not
+quite hide the shake in her voice. "That is&mdash;I
+don't care about my pick, but I'm going to ride&mdash;right
+away&mdash;quick!" she finished, determined that
+at least Genevieve should not be ashamed&mdash;of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it was only the first five minutes that
+were hard. The little horses were politeness itself,
+and seemed fully to realize the responsibilities of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+their position. The girls, determined not to shame
+Genevieve, acquitted themselves with a grace and
+ease that brought forth an appreciative cheer from
+the boys as the young people rode away.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I feel as if I were in Texas," exulted
+Tilly, drawing in a full breath of the fresh, early
+morning air.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad&mdash;so glad we're all in Texas," cried
+Genevieve, looking about her with shining eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>According to Tilly, there was always "something
+doing" at the ranch house. The boys&mdash;much to
+their own surprise, it must be confessed&mdash;had
+adopted "the whole bunch" (as Long John called
+the young people), and were never too busy or too
+tired to display their skill as ropers or riders. Always
+there was the fascinating morning start to
+work to watch, and frequently there was in the
+afternoon some wild little broncho that needed to
+be broken to the saddle, or to be trained to stop,
+wheel instantly, stand motionless, or to start at top
+speed, according to his master's wishes; all of
+which was a never-ending source of delight to unaccustomed
+Eastern eyes.</p>
+
+<p>For pleasant days there were, too, rides, drives
+to Bolo, picnic luncheons, and frolics of every sort.
+For rainy days there were games and music in the
+living room, to say nothing of letters from home to
+be read and answered. Most of the twilights&mdash;if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+fair&mdash;were spent by everybody on the front
+gallery watching the golden ball in the west set the
+whole prairie, as well as the sky itself, on fire. In
+the early afternoon, of course, there was the inevitable
+siesta&mdash;Tilly's abhorred "naps."</p>
+
+<p>There were callers at the ranch house, too.
+Sometimes a cowboy from a neighboring ranch
+came to look after a lost pony, or to see if his cattle
+had strayed off the range through a broken fence.
+Sometimes a hunter or trapper would stop for a
+chat on his way to or from Bolo. Once Susie
+Billings in her khaki suit and cowboy hat came to
+spend the day; and once, on Sunday, Mr. Jones
+came to hold service again. Much to the girls'
+disappointment, Quentina did not come with him.
+The mother's foot was better, Mr. Jones said, but
+the twins had come down with the whooping cough,
+and poor Quentina could not be spared to leave
+home.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a score of men and teams and cowboys
+with their strings of horses would pass on their
+way to a round-up; and once two huge prairie
+schooners "docked in the yard," as Tilly termed
+it; and their weary owners, at Mr. Hartley's invitation,
+stopped for a night's rest.</p>
+
+<p>That was, indeed, a time of great excitement for
+the Happy Hexagons, for under Genevieve's fearless
+leadership they promptly made friends with the
+sallow-faced women and the forlorn children, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+soon were shown the mysteries of the inside of the
+wagon-homes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! it looks just like play housekeeping;
+doesn't it?" gurgled Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't play at all, my dear," replied one
+of the women, a little sadly. "Seems now like as
+if I ever had a home again what stayed put, that
+I'd be happy, no matter where 'twas. Ain't that
+the way you feel, Mis' Higgins?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," nodded the other woman, dully, from
+her perch on the driver's seat. "But I reckon my
+man ain't never goin' ter quit wheelin', now."</p>
+
+<p>Even Genevieve seemed scarcely to know what
+to reply to this; but a few minutes later she had
+succeeded in gaining the confidence of the several
+children hanging about their mothers' skirts.
+Laughingly, then, the young people trooped away
+together to look at the flowers&mdash;all but Cordelia
+Wilson. Cordelia remained behind with the two
+women.</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;I beg your pardon&mdash;but did you say
+your name was 'Mrs. Higgins'?" she asked
+eagerly, turning to the woman on the driver's
+seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no&mdash;I didn't, Miss. But that's my
+name."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know; 'twas the other lady who called
+you that, of course; but it doesn't matter, so long
+as I know 'tis that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't it?" murmured the woman, a little
+curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"No; and&mdash;you came from New Hampshire,
+once, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>An odd look crossed the woman's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I ain't sayin' that."</p>
+
+<p>"But you did&mdash;please say that you did," begged
+Cordelia. "You see, I'm so anxious to find you!"</p>
+
+<p>A look that was almost terror came to the
+woman's eyes now.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know nothin' what you're talkin' about,
+and I don't want to know, neither," she finished
+coldly, turning squarely around in her seat.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia hesitated; then she stammered:</p>
+
+<p>"If&mdash;if you think it's because your mother will
+scold you, I can assure you that she will not. She
+is very anxious to hear from you&mdash;that's all. She's
+been so worried! She wants to know if you're doing
+well, and all that."</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>are</i> you talking about?" demanded the
+woman, turning sharply back to Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Your&mdash;mother."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother is&mdash;dead, Miss."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-h!" gasped Cordelia. "You mean you
+<i>aren't</i> Mrs. Lizzie Higgins&mdash;she that was Lizzie
+Snow of Sunbridge, New Hampshire, who eloped
+with Mr. Higgins and ran away to Texas years
+ago?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman laughed. Her face cleared. Whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+it was that she had feared&mdash;she evidently
+feared it no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Miss. My name isn't 'Lizzie,' and it
+wa'n't 'Snow,' and I never heard of Sunbridge,
+New Hampshire."</p>
+
+<p>"O dear!" quavered Cordelia. "Mrs. Snow
+will be so sorry&mdash;that is, of course she'll be glad,
+too; for you aren't&mdash;" With a little gasp of dismay
+Cordelia pulled herself up before the words
+were uttered, but not before their meaning was
+quite clear to the woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, she'll be glad, too, no doubt," she cut
+in bitterly; "because I'm not exactly what a woman
+would want for a lost daughter, now, am I?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia blushed painfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please, please don't talk like that! I am
+sure Mrs. Snow would be glad to find any one for
+a daughter&mdash;she wants her so! And she's her&mdash;mother,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>The woman's face softened.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she smiled, a little bitterly. "If I
+find her I'll send her to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, will you? Thank you so much," cried
+Cordelia. "And there are some others, too, that
+I'm hunting for. Maybe you can find them&mdash;traveling
+around so much as you do. If you've got a
+little piece of paper and a pencil, I'll just write them
+down, please."</p>
+
+<p>Thus it happened that when the prairie schooners<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+"sailed away" (again to quote Tilly), one of them
+carried a bit of paper on which had been written
+full instructions how to proceed should the wife
+of its owner ever run across John Sanborn, Lizzie
+Higgins, Lester Goodwin, or James Hunt.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was soon after this that the Happy Hexagons
+and Mr. Tim, returning on horseback from a long
+day on the range, met with a delay that would
+prevent their reaching the ranch house until some
+time after dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, goody! I don't care a bit," chuckled Genevieve,
+when she realized the facts of the case.
+"There is a perfectly glorious moon, and now you
+can see the prairie by moonlight. And you never
+really have seen the prairie until you do see it by
+moonlight, you know!"</p>
+
+<p>"But we have seen it by moonlight&mdash;right from
+your steps," cried Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but not the same as it will be out here&mdash;away
+from the ranch house," cried Genevieve.
+"You just wait! You'll see."</p>
+
+<p>And they did wait. And they did see.</p>
+
+<p>It did seem, indeed, that they never before had
+really seen the prairie; they all agreed to that, as
+they gazed in awed delight at the vast, silvery wonder
+all about them, some time later.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it looks more than ever like the ocean,"
+cried Bertha.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That grass over there actually ripples like
+water in the moonlight," declared Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't suppose anything could be so beautiful,"
+breathed Cordelia. "But, Genevieve, won't
+Mrs. Kennedy be dreadfully worried, at our being
+so late?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve gave a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm afraid so," she admitted. "Still, she
+has Father to comfort her, and he'll remind her that
+Mr. Tim is with us, and that delays are always happening
+on a day's run like ours."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she could see this beautiful sight herself,"
+cried Alma. "She wouldn't blame us, then, for
+going wild over it and not minding if we are a little
+hungry."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly, for once, was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" questioned Genevieve, after a time,
+riding up to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know any one&mdash;only Quentina&mdash;who
+could do justice to it," breathed Tilly. And, to
+Genevieve's amazement, the moonlight showed a
+tear on Tilly's cheek.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long minute of silence. The
+moon was very bright, yet the many swift-flying
+clouds brought moments of soft darkness, and
+cast weird shadows across the far-reaching
+prairie.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I smell a storm coming&mdash;sometime,"
+sniffed Mr. Tim, his face to the wind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be lovely to have it come while we
+were out here," gurgled Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly!" rejoined Mr. Tim with emphasis.
+"I reckon you needn't worry about that storm for
+some hours yet. I'll have you all safely corralled
+long before it breaks&mdash;never fear."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't fearing. I was hoping," retorted Tilly
+in a voice that brought a chuckle to the man's lips.</p>
+
+<p>A moment later Mr. Tim stopped his horse and
+pointed to the right.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you see that black shadow over there?" he
+asked Bertha Brown, who was nearest him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. From a cloud, isn't it?" Bertha, too,
+stopped to look.</p>
+
+<p>"I think not. It's a bunch of cattle, I reckon.
+I think I make out the guards riding round them."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Mr. Tim?" Genevieve and the
+other girls had caught up with them now.</p>
+
+<p>"Cattle&mdash;over there. See?" explained Mr.
+Tim, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the moon came out unusually
+clear.</p>
+
+<p>"I can see two men on horseback, passing each
+other," cried Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tim nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;the guard. They ride around the bunch
+in opposite ways, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go nearer! I want to see," proposed Tilly,
+trying to quiet the restless movements of her pony.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 313px;">
+<img src="images/gs03.jpg" width="313" height="366" alt="&quot;&#39;FOLLOW ME&mdash;QUICK!&#39; HE ORDERED&quot;" title="&quot;&#39;FOLLOW ME&mdash;QUICK!&#39; HE ORDERED&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;FOLLOW ME&mdash;QUICK!&#39; HE ORDERED&quot;</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon not, Miss Tilly. A stampede ain't
+what I'm looking for to amuse you all to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"What's a stampede?" asked Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tim, look&mdash;quick!" Genevieve's voice
+was urgent, a little frightened. But the man had
+not needed that. With a sharp word behind his
+teeth, he spurred his horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Follow me&mdash;quick!" he ordered. And with a
+frightened cry they obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve obeyed, too&mdash;but she looked back
+over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The moon was very bright now. The black
+shadow to the right had become a wedge-shaped,
+compact, seething mass, sweeping rapidly toward
+them. There was a rushing swish in the air, and
+the sound of hoarse shouts. A few moments later
+the maddened beasts swept across their path, well
+to the rear.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll answer your question, now, Miss Tilly,"
+said Mr. Tim, as they reined in their horses and
+looked backward at the shadowy mass. "That was
+a stampede."</p>
+
+<p>"But what will they do with them?" chattered
+Cordelia, with white lips. "How can they ever
+stop them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they'll head them off&mdash;get them to running
+in a circle, probably, till they can quiet them
+and make them lie down again."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And will they be all right&mdash;then?" shivered
+Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m; yes," nodded Mr. Tim, "&mdash;till the
+next thing sets them going. Then they'll be again
+on their feet, every last one of them&mdash;heads and
+tails erect. Oh, they're a pretty sight then&mdash;they
+are!"</p>
+
+<p>"They must be," remarked Tilly. "Still&mdash;well,
+I sha'n't ask you again what a stampede is&mdash;not
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tim laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Tilly, 'tain't likely I could show you
+one if you did. I don't always keep 'em so handy!
+And now I reckon we'd better hit the trail for the
+Six Star, and be right lively about it, too," he added,
+"or we'll be having Mis' Kennedy out here herself
+on a broncho after ye!"</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later a white-faced, teary-eyed little
+woman at the Six Star Ranch was trying to get her
+joyful arms around six girls at once.</p>
+
+<p>It was the next morning, and just before Mr.
+Tim's predicted storm broke, that the girls found
+the injured man almost hidden in the tall grass near
+the ranch house. They had gone out for a short
+ride, but had kept near shelter owing to the threatening
+sky. Tilly saw the man first.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, there's a man down there," she cried
+softly. "He's hurt, I think."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was off her horse at once. The man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+was found to be breathing, but apparently unconscious.
+He lay twisted in a little huddled heap,
+with one of his legs bent under him. He groaned
+faintly when Genevieve spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was a little white when she straightened
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we'll have to get a wagon, or something,
+and two of the boys," she said. "I'll ride
+back to the house if some of you girls will stay
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll all stay," promised Cordelia; "only be
+quick," she added, slipping from her pony's back,
+and giving the reins to Bertha. "Maybe if I could
+hold his poor head he'd be more comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>Cautiously she sat down on the ground and lifted
+the man's head to her lap. He groaned again
+faintly, and opened his eyes. They were large and
+dark. For a moment there was only pain in their
+depths; then, gradually, there came a look of profound
+amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I?" he asked feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh! Don't talk. You are on the prairie. You
+must have got hurt, some way."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to move, and groaned again.</p>
+
+<p>"Please be still," begged Cordelia. "You'll
+make things worse. We've sent for help, and they'll
+be here right away."</p>
+
+<p>The man closed his eyes now. He did not speak
+again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It seemed a long time, but it was really a very
+short one, before Genevieve came with Carlos and
+Pedro and one of the ranch wagons. The man
+groaned again, and grew frightfully white when
+they lifted him carefully into the wagon. Then he
+fainted. He was still unconscious when they
+reached the ranch house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>A MAN AND A MYSTERY</h3>
+
+
+<p>August came. The first few days of the month
+were particularly busy ones as some of the boys
+were off to a round-up on the fifth, and Mr. Hartley
+was going with them for a week. To the girls
+the big four-horse wagon for the food and bedding&mdash;the
+"wheeled house" that was to be home for
+the boys&mdash;was always an object of great interest.
+Then there was the excitement of the start on the
+day itself, which this time was made particularly
+momentous by the going of Mr. Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>The ranch house seemed very lonely without its
+genial, generous-hearted owner, and everybody was
+glad that he had promised to come back in a week.
+Meanwhile, of course, there was "the man."</p>
+
+<p>The man was he who had been found by the girls
+in the prairie grass. He was still almost as much
+of a mystery as ever. Mr. Hartley had insisted
+upon his staying&mdash;and, indeed (though no bones
+were broken), he was quite too badly injured to be
+moved for a time. He was able now to sit in the
+big comfortable chairs on the back gallery; and he
+spent hours there every day, sometimes reading,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+more often sitting motionless, with his dark eyes
+closed, and his hands resting on his crutches by his
+side.</p>
+
+<p>He had not seemed to care to talk of himself.
+He had merely said that his horse had thrown him,
+and that he had lain in the grass for some time before
+he was found. He was quiet, had good manners,
+and used good language. He said that his
+name was John Edwards. He seemed deeply grateful
+for all kindness shown him, but was plainly anxious
+to be well enough to be on his way again. Mr.
+Hartley, however, had won his promise to remain
+till he himself returned from the round-up.</p>
+
+<p>All the young people did their best to make the
+injured man's time pass as pleasantly as possible;
+and very often one or another of them might be
+found reading to him, or playing a game of checkers
+or chess with him.</p>
+
+<p>It was on such an occasion that Cordelia Wilson,
+at the conclusion of a game of checkers, found the
+courage to say something that had long been on
+her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Edwards, do&mdash;do you know Texas very
+well?"</p>
+
+<p>The man smiled a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Cordelia, Texas is rather large, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia sighed almost impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! I&mdash;I wish every one wouldn't always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+say that," she lamented. "It's so discouraging!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dis&mdash;couraging?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;when you're trying to find some one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! And are you trying to find some one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; four some ones."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I should think that might be difficult&mdash;in
+Texas, unless you know where they are," smiled
+the man.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't; and that's what's the matter," sighed
+Cordelia. "That's why I was going to ask you, to
+see if you didn't know, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask <i>me?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That is, if you had been around any&mdash;in
+Texas. You see I ask everybody, almost. I
+have to," she apologized a little wistfully. "And
+even then it looks as if I should have to go back to
+Sunbridge without finding one of them. And I'd
+so hate to do that!"</p>
+
+<p>The man started visibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back&mdash;where?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Sunbridge."</p>
+
+<p>"Sunbridge&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sunbridge, New Hampshire; home, you know."</p>
+
+<p>An odd expression crossed the man's face.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;I didn't know," he said, after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, didn't any of us ever tell you we were
+from the East?" cried Cordelia.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, lots of times. But you never happened
+to mention the town before, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how funny!" murmured Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>The man did not speak. He seemed to have
+fallen into a reverie. Cordelia stirred restlessly in
+her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you say you would help me?" she asked
+at last, timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Help you?" The man seemed to have forgotten
+what she had been speaking of.</p>
+
+<p>"Help me to find them, you know&mdash;those
+people I'm looking for."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," laughed the man, easily.
+"Who are&mdash;" He stopped abruptly. For the
+second time an odd expression crossed his face.
+"Are they&mdash;Sunbridge people?" he asked, stooping
+to pick up a dried leaf from the gallery
+floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Edwards. There are four of them&mdash;three
+men and one woman. They are John Sanborn,
+Lester Goodwin, James Hunt, and Mrs. Lizzie
+Higgins. Maybe you know some of them. Do
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Cordelia,"&mdash;the man stopped a
+minute, as he reached for a leaf still farther away&mdash;"is
+that quite to be expected?" he asked then,
+lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I suppose not," she sighed; "for, of course,
+Texas <i>is</i> big. But if you would please just put their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+names down on paper same as the others have, that
+would help a great deal."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, certainly," agreed the man, reaching into
+his pocket and bringing out a little notebook not
+unlike the minister's. "Now suppose you&mdash;you
+give me those names again, Miss Cordelia."</p>
+
+<p>"John Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt,
+and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins. And I am Cordelia Wilson,
+you know. Just 'Sunbridge, New Hampshire,'
+would reach me&mdash;if you found any of them."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll remember&mdash;if I find any of them," murmured
+the man, as he wrote the last name.</p>
+
+<p>"And thank you so much!" beamed Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence. The man was
+playing with his pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you say you were <i>asked</i> to find these
+people?" he inquired at last, examining the lead
+of his pencil intently.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! And may I inquire who asked
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course! The people who belong to
+them&mdash;who are so anxious for them to come back,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then they want them?" The man was
+still examining the point of his pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed they do, Mr. Edwards," cried Cordelia,
+glad to find her new audience so interested. "Mrs.
+Lizzie Higgins eloped years ago, and her mother,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+Mrs. Snow, is terribly worried. She's never heard
+a word from her. Mrs. Granger is a widow, and
+very poor. Her husband died last year. She hasn't
+any one left but her cousin, Lester Goodwin, now,
+and she so wishes she could find him. Lester's had
+some money left him, but if he isn't found this year,
+it'll go to some one else."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" The man gave a short little laugh that
+sounded not quite pleasant, as he lifted his head
+suddenly. "I begin to see. Mrs. Granger thinks
+if she had Lester, and Lester had the money, why
+she'd get the money, too, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, sir&mdash;not exactly," objected Cordelia.
+"You see, if he <i>isn't</i> found the money goes to <i>her</i>,
+so she thinks she ought to make a special effort to
+find him. She says she wouldn't sleep a wink if
+she took all that money <i>without</i> trying to find him;
+so she asked me. Of course the lawyers are hunting,
+anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-h!" said the man again; but this time he
+did not laugh. "Hm-m; well&mdash;are there any
+fortunes left the other two?" he asked, after a
+moment's silence. He had gone back to his pencil
+point.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, sir," laughed Cordelia, a little ruefully.
+"I'm afraid they won't think so. <i>They're</i> wanted
+to <i>help</i> folks."</p>
+
+<p>"To help folks!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. You see John Sanborn's father is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+very poor, and he lives all alone in a little bit
+of a house in the woods. He's called 'Hermit
+Joe.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;go on," bade the man, as Cordelia
+stopped for breath. The man's voice was husky&mdash;perhaps
+because he had stooped to pick up another
+dried leaf.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't much more about him, only he's
+terribly lonesome and wants his boy, he says. You
+see, the boy ran away years and years ago. I don't
+think that was very nice of him. Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. The man sat now with
+his hand over his eyes. Cordelia wondered if perhaps
+she had tired him.</p>
+
+<p>"And that's all," she said hurriedly; "only Sally
+Hunt's brother, James. If he isn't found she'll
+have to go to the Poor Farm, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia started nervously. The man had turned
+upon her so sharply that his crutches fell to the
+floor with a crash.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sir, I beg your pardon," she apologized,
+springing to her feet. "I'm so afraid you were
+asleep, and I startled you. I&mdash;I will go now. And&mdash;and
+thank you ever so much for writing down
+those names!"</p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head decidedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't go," he begged. "You have not tired
+me, and I like to hear you talk. Now sit down,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+please, and tell me all about these people&mdash;this
+James Hunt's sister, and all the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you really want to know about them?"
+cried Cordelia, joyfully. "Then I will tell you;
+for maybe it would help you find them, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, maybe it would," agreed the man, in a
+curiously vibrant voice, as Cordelia seated herself
+again at his side. "Now talk."</p>
+
+<p>And Cordelia talked. She talked not only then,
+but several times after that, and she talked always
+of Sunbridge. Mr. Edwards seemed so interested
+in everything and everybody there, though specially,
+of course, in the relatives of the four lost people
+she was trying to find&mdash;which was natural, certainly,
+thought Cordelia, inasmuch as he, too, was
+going to search for them in the weeks to come.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Edwards improved in health very rapidly
+these days. He discarded his crutches, and seemed
+feverishly anxious to test his strength on every occasion.
+Upon Mr. Hartley's return from the
+round-up, the injured man insisted that he was
+quite well enough to go away; and, in spite of the
+kind ranchman's protests, he did go the next day
+after Mr. Hartley's return. Carlos drove him to
+Bolo, and the Happy Hexagons stood on the ranch-house
+steps and gave him their Texas yell as a
+send-off, substituting a lusty "MR. EDWARDS"
+for Genevieve's name at the end.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the most convenient yell," chuckled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+Tilly, as the ranch wagon with Carlos and Mr. Edwards
+drove away. "It'll do for anything and
+anybody. And didn't Mr. Edwards like it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he did! He couldn't help it," cried
+Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"I think Mr. Edwards is a very nice man," observed
+Cordelia, with emphasis, "and I wish he
+could have stayed for the party."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course he's a nice man," chimed in
+the other girls, eyeing her earnest face a little curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Who said he wasn't?" laughed Tilly. "My!
+but it is hot, isn't it?" she added, dropping into one
+of the big wicker chairs near her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course we have to have some warm
+weather," bridled Genevieve, "else you'd be homesick
+for New Hampshire!"</p>
+
+<p>"The mean annual temperature of the country
+near&mdash;" began Tilly, mischievously; but Genevieve
+put her hands to her ears and fled.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The fourteenth of August was to be a gala occasion
+at the Six Star Ranch, for there was to be a
+supper and dance to entertain the friends from the
+East.</p>
+
+<p>"But where'll you get your guests?" demanded
+Tilly, when she first heard of the plan. "Whom
+can you have, 'way off here like this?&mdash;all will
+please take notice that I said '<i>whom</i>'!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed and tossed her head a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll have the boys here on the ranch, of
+course, and Susie Billings, and some of the other
+Bolo girls. We can't have Quentina, of course&mdash;Poor
+thing! Isn't it a shame about that whooping
+cough?&mdash;and Ned's got it, too, now, you know!&mdash;but
+I think the Boyntons will come. Their ranch
+is only thirty-five miles away, and they could stay
+all night, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Only thirty-five miles away," repeated Tilly,
+airily. "Of course nobody'd mind a little thing
+like that, for a party!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, they wouldn't&mdash;in Texas," retorted Genevieve.
+"There's the Wetherbys, too. They live
+five miles out from Bolo on the other side. Maybe
+they'll come. We'll ask them, anyhow. Oh, we'll
+have a party&mdash;never you fear!"</p>
+
+<p>When the night of the fourteenth arrived, things
+looked, indeed, very like "a party." Everywhere
+were confusion and excitement, even to the saddle
+room and blacksmith's shop, and to the two big
+tents that were being put up for extra sleeping
+quarters. Everywhere, too (Mrs. Kennedy declared),
+were dishes heaped with chocolate candies.
+Mr. Edwards, who had left the ranch only the day
+before, had sent back by Carlos twenty-five pounds
+of the best candy Bolo could supply; and the girls
+had been lavish in its disposal.</p>
+
+<p>Five Wetherbys and six Boyntons had arrived<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+together with a dozen cowboys on horseback. Susie
+Billings, minus her khaki and cartridges, looked the
+picture of demureness in white muslin and baby-blue
+ribbons. There were other pretty girls, too,
+from Bolo, in white, and in pale pink and yellow.
+And everywhere were the Happy Hexagons, wildly
+excited, and delighted with it all.</p>
+
+<p>The big hall and the living-room had been cleared
+for dancing. The galleries and the long covered
+way leading to the dining room had been decorated
+with flowers and lanterns. The long table in the
+dining-room was decorated, too, and would later be
+loaded with all sorts of good things: sandwiches,
+hot biscuits, tamales, cakes, and black coffee without
+sugar. In the center of the table already there was
+a huge round white something that called forth delighted
+clappings from the Happy Hexagons as they
+flocked in at seven o'clock to look at the table decorations.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a lovely cake," gurgled Tilly, "and
+such a big one!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give you the whole cake&mdash;if you'll cut it,"
+she proposed.</p>
+
+<p>With manifest alacrity Tilly reached for a knife.</p>
+
+<p>"Done!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Before the knife descended, Genevieve caught her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait! Look here," she parleyed. Taking the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+knife, she thrust its point through the elaborate
+white frosting, with two or three gentle taps.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's hard!&mdash;hard as stone," ejaculated
+Tilly, trying for herself.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> stone," laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Stone!" cried a chorus of unbelieving voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, stone&mdash;frosted with sugar and the whites
+of eggs. Oh, if you'd lived in Texas as long as I
+have you'd have seen them before," nodded Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've got my opinion of Texas cakes,
+then," pouted Tilly, with saucy impertinence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you'll change it later, I reckon&mdash;when
+you see the real ones," rejoined Genevieve, comfortably,
+as they left the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>There never had been, surely, such a party. All
+the Happy Hexagons agreed to that. So, too, did
+all the guests. Perhaps on no one's face was there
+a look of anxious care except on Cordelia's. Possibly
+Mr. Hartley noticed this look. At all events
+he watched Cordelia rather closely, as the evening
+advanced, particularly after he chanced to overhear
+some of her remarks to his guests. Then he sought
+his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearie," he began in a low voice, leading her a
+little to one side, "what in the world ails that little
+Miss Cordelia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ails her! What do you mean? Is she sick?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think so; but she looks as if she'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+got the weight of the whole outfit on her shoulders,
+and she seems to be going 'round asking everybody
+if they knew John somebody, or Lizzie somebody
+else."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed merrily; but almost at once
+she frowned and shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't know, Father, what is the matter.
+But Cordelia is capable of&mdash;anything, if once her
+conscience is stirred. Why don't you ask her yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe I will, dearie," he asserted at last.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later he chanced to find Cordelia
+without a partner.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Cordelia, will you accept an old man for
+this dance?" he asked genially. "And shall we
+sit it out, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you! I'd love to," cried Cordelia in
+a relieved voice. "And I shall be so glad to
+rest!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tired&mdash;dancing?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, not dancing; that is&mdash;well&mdash;" She
+stopped, and colored painfully.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley waited a moment, then observed with
+a smile:</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be looking for some one to-night,
+Miss Cordelia. Didn't I hear you asking Mr. Boynton
+and Joe Wetherby if they knew John somebody
+or other?"</p>
+
+<p>Again a pink flush spread over Cordelia's face,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+"Yes, sir; I am looking for somebody&mdash;four
+somebodies."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say! Found them yet?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. To the man's surprise and
+distress, her eyes filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mr. Hartley, and that's what's the trouble.
+That's why I'm trying so hard to-night to ask all
+these people&mdash;there's such a little time left!"</p>
+
+<p>"Time&mdash;left?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I'd like to tell you about it, please. I
+think I may tell you. Of course I haven't said a
+word to the girls, because the people&mdash;back in Sunbridge&mdash;didn't
+want me to talk about it. I'm looking
+for John Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt,
+and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins. They're all Sunbridge
+people who came to Texas years ago, and are
+lost."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley gave a sudden exclamation.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you say&mdash;Lester Goodwin was one?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Who wants him, and what for?"</p>
+
+<p>Patiently Cordelia told him. She wore a hopeless
+air. She had ceased, evidently, to expect anything
+that was good.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley gave a low whistle. For a moment
+he was silent, then he chuckled unexpectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Cordelia, if you hadn't looked so
+far away for your pony you might have seen his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+tracks nearer home, perhaps. As it happens, Lester
+Goodwin is right here on the ranch."</p>
+
+<p>"Here? Lester Goodwin?" gasped Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Oh, he isn't known by that name&mdash;he
+preferred not to be. He came to me fourteen years
+ago, and he's been here ever since. He said he
+wanted to be a cowboy; that he'd always wanted
+to be one ever since when, as a little boy, he used
+to rope his rocking-horse with his mother's clothes-line.
+His uncle had wanted him to be a teacher,
+but he hated the sight of books; so when his uncle
+died, he ran away and came here. He said there
+wasn't anybody to care where he was, or what he
+did; so I let him stay."</p>
+
+<p>"And to think he's here now!"</p>
+
+<p>"He certainly is. You see he came here because
+he knew me once a little when I was in Sunbridge
+visiting relatives, years ago, and he knew I had become
+a ranchman in Texas. He begged so hard
+that I should keep his secret that I've always kept
+it. Besides, there was nothing to keep. Nobody
+ever asked me, or suspected he was here."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how strange!" breathed Cordelia, with
+shining eyes. "And only think how I've asked
+everybody but you&mdash;and now I've found one of
+them right here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;though we mustn't be too sure, of
+course. We'll tell him; but maybe he won't want
+to go back, even now. I reckon, however, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+when he hears of the money, Reddy won't mind
+his real name being known."</p>
+
+<p>"Reddy!" cried Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!&mdash;I didn't tell you, did I?" smiled Mr.
+Hartley. "Yes, Reddy is Lester Goodwin."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mr. Hartley! And I never thought of
+such a thing as asking <i>him!</i> I only looked for the
+cowboys who were called 'John' or 'James' or
+'Lester'&mdash;and there weren't many of those. And
+so it's Reddy&mdash;why, I just can't believe it's true!"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon Reddy can't, either," laughed Mr.
+Hartley. "And now we'll let you go back to your
+dancing, my dear. I've already encountered at least
+four pairs of glowering eyes unpleasantly pointed
+in my direction. I'll go and find Reddy&mdash;or
+rather, Mr. Lester Goodwin," he finished impressively,
+as he rose to his feet.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ALAMO</h3>
+
+
+<p>Two days after the party at the ranch house,
+Mr. Hartley made a wonderful announcement at
+the dinner table.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say, young ladies, to a visit to
+San Antonio?" he began.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, could we? Do you mean we can?"
+cried Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, that's just what I mean. It so happens
+I've got business there, so I'm going to take
+you home 'round by that way. We'll have maybe
+a couple of days there, and we'll see something of
+the surrounding country, besides. You know
+Texas is quite a state&mdash;and you've seen mighty
+little of it, as yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, girls, we'll see the Alamo!" cried Genevieve.
+"Did you realize that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will we, truly?" chorused several rapturous
+voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you know about the Alamo,
+young ladies?" smiled Mr. Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>"We know everything," answered Tilly, cheerfully.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+"Mr. Jones's daughter, you know, was our
+Latin teacher, and she had the History class, too.
+Well, we couldn't even <i>think</i> Bunker Hill but what
+she'd pipe up about the Alamo. Now I think Bunker
+Hill is pretty good!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we want to see the Alamo, just the
+same," interposed Bertha, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" cried five emphatic girlish voices.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," laughed Mr. Hartley. "You shall
+see it, all of you&mdash;if the train will take us there;
+and you'll see&mdash;well, you'll see a lot of other
+things, too."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia stirred uneasily. The old anxious look
+came back to her eyes. When dinner was over she
+stole to Mr. Hartley's side.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hartley, please, shall we see an oil well?"
+she asked, in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you, little lady, what do you know about
+oil wells?" smiled the man, good-naturedly.
+"You haven't got any of those to look up, have
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>To his dumbfounded amazement, she answered
+simply:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir&mdash;one."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be&mdash;well, just what is this proposition?"
+he broke off whimsically.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll wait&mdash;just a minute&mdash;I'll get the
+paper," panted Cordelia. "Mr. Hodges wrote
+down the name."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Very soon she had returned with the paper, and
+Mr. Hartley saw the name. His face hardened, yet
+his eyes were curiously tender.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid, little girl, that this won't come out
+quite so well as the Reddy affair&mdash;by the way,
+Reddy left an extra good-by for you this morning.
+He went away before you were up, you
+know. He feels pretty grateful to you, Miss
+Cordelia."</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't do anything, Mr. Hartley. I do
+wish I could see Mrs. Granger when he gets there,
+though. I&mdash;I'm afraid she doesn't like cowboys
+much better than Mrs. Miller does."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence. Mr. Hartley was
+scowling at the bit of paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you say you <i>didn't</i> know where that oil
+well was, Mr. Hartley?" asked Cordelia, timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I don't know where it is&mdash;and I reckon
+there doesn't anybody else know, either," he answered
+slowly. "I know where it <i>claims</i> to be,
+and I know it is just one big swindle from beginning
+to end."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so sorry," sighed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"So am I, my dear. I'm sorry for Mr. Hodges,
+and lots of others that I know lost money in the
+same thing. But it can't be helped now."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there aren't any oil wells here at all in
+Texas?" asked Cordelia, tearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless you, yes, child&mdash;heaps of them! You'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+see them, too, probably, before you leave the state.
+But&mdash;you won't see this one."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so sorry," mourned Cordelia, again,
+as sadly she took the bit of paper back to her room.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was not many days before the Happy Hexagons
+said good-by to the ranch&mdash;a most reluctant
+good-by. It was a question, however, which felt
+the worst: Mammy Lindy, weeping on the gallery
+steps, Mr. Tim and the boys, waving a noisy
+good-by from their saddles, or Mrs. Kennedy and
+the Happy Hexagons&mdash;the latter tearfully giving
+their Texas yell with "THE RANCH" for the
+final word to-day.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I never had such a good time in all my
+life," breathed Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"I know I never did," choked Tilly. "Genevieve,
+we can't ever begin to thank you for it
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't want you to," wailed Genevieve,
+dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. "I
+reckon you haven't had any better time than I
+have!"</p>
+
+<p>Quentina was at the Bolo station; so, too, was
+Susie Billings.</p>
+
+<p>"O Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons, I just
+had to come," chanted Quentina, standing some
+distance away, and extending two restraining
+hands, palms outward. "Don't kiss me&mdash;don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+come near me! I don't think I've got any whooping
+germs about me, but we want to be on the safe
+side."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Quentina, how are you? How are all of
+you?" cried Genevieve, plainly distressed. "I
+think it's just horrid&mdash;staying off at arm's length
+like this!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you must, dear," almost sobbed Quentina.
+"I wouldn't have you go through what we are going
+through with at home for anything. Such a whoop&mdash;whoop&mdash;whooping
+time!"</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you make a poem on it?" bantered
+Tilly. "I should think 'twould make a splendid
+subject&mdash;you could use such sonorous, resounding
+words."</p>
+
+<p>Quentina shook her head dismally.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't. I tried it once or twice; but all I
+could think of was 'Hark, from the tombs a doleful
+sound'; then somebody would cough, and I just
+couldn't get any further." Her voice was tragic
+in spite of its drawl.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor thing," sympathized Genevieve.
+"But we&mdash;we're glad to <i>see</i> you, even for this
+little, and even if we can't <i>feel</i> you! But, Quentina,
+you'll write&mdash;sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'll write," nodded Quentina, backing sorrowfully
+away. "Good-by, Happy Hexagons,
+good-by!"</p>
+
+<p>"So that is your Quentina?" said Mr. Hartley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+in a low voice, as the girls were waving their hands
+and handkerchiefs. "Well, she <i>is</i> pretty."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but she wasn't half so pretty to-day," regretted
+Genevieve. "She looked so thin and tired.
+I wanted to introduce you, Father, but I didn't
+know how to&mdash;so far away."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say not," laughed Mr. Hartley.
+"'Twould have been worse than your high handshake
+back East," he added, as he turned to speak
+to Susie Billings, who had come up at that moment.</p>
+
+<p>Susie Billings was in her khaki suit and cowboy
+hat to-day, with the cartridge belt and holster; so,
+as it happened, the last glimpse the girls had of
+Bolo station was made picturesque by a vision of
+"Cordelia's cowboy" (as Tilly always called
+Susie) waving her broad-brimmed hat.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The trip to San Antonio was practically uneventful,
+though it was certainly one long delight to the
+Happy Hexagons, who never wearied of talking
+about the sights and sounds of the wonderful country
+through which they were passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this isn't much like Bolo; is it?" cried
+Tilly, when at last they found themselves in the
+handsome railroad station of the city itself. "I
+shouldn't think Texas would know its own self
+half the time&mdash;it's so different from itself all the
+time!"</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 277px;">
+<img src="images/gs04.jpg" width="277" height="400" alt="&quot;&#39;THERE, NOW&mdash;LOOK!&#39; SHE ADDED&quot;" title="&quot;&#39;THERE, NOW&mdash;LOOK!&#39; SHE ADDED&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;THERE, NOW&mdash;LOOK!&#39; SHE ADDED&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Tilly, and I think I know what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+you mean," laughed Genevieve; "but I wouldn't
+advise you to give that sentence to Miss Hart as
+your best example of logic."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I was talking about Texas," retorted
+Tilly, saucily, "and there isn't anything logical
+about Texas, that I can see. There, now&mdash;look!"
+she added, as they reached the street. "Just tell
+me if there's anything logical in that scene!" she
+finished, with a wave of her hand toward the passing
+throng.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed, but her eyes, too, widened a
+little as she stepped one side with the others, for a
+moment, to watch the curious conglomeration of
+humanity and vehicles before them.</p>
+
+<p>In the street a luxurious limousine was tooting
+for a ramshackle prairie schooner to turn to one
+side. Behind the automobile plodded a forlorn
+mule dragging a wagon-load of empty boxes. Behind
+that came an army ambulance followed by an
+electric truck. A handsome soldier on a restive bay
+mare came next, and behind him a huge touring car
+with a pompous black chauffeur. On either side of
+the touring car rode a grinning boy on a mustang,
+plainly to the discomfort of the pompous negro
+and the delight of two pretty girls in white who
+were in the low phaeton that followed. A bicycle
+bell jangled sharply for a swarthy Mexican in a tall
+peaked hat to get out of the way, and farther down
+the street two solid-looking men in business suits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+were waiting for a pretty Mexican woman with a
+rebosa-draped head to precede them into a car.
+Behind them a huge negro woman wearing a red
+bandana about her head, waited her turn. And
+still behind her a severe-faced young woman in a
+tailored suit was drawing her skirts away from two
+almost naked pickaninnies.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no; perhaps it isn't really logical,"
+laughed Genevieve. "But it's awfully interesting!"</p>
+
+<p>"I chose one of the older hotels," said Mr. Hartley,
+a little later, as he piloted his party through
+the doorway of a fine old building.</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't have chosen a lovelier one, I'm
+sure, Father," declared Genevieve, as she looked
+about her with shining eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was even more convinced of this when,
+just before dinner, in response to a summons from
+Tilly's voice she stepped out on to the little balcony
+leading from her room. The balcony overlooked an
+inner court, and was hung with riotous moon-vines.
+Down in the court a silvery fountain played among
+palms and banana trees. Here and there a cactus
+plant thrust spiny arms into the air. Somewhere
+else queen's wreath and devil's ivy made a tiny
+bower of loveliness. While everywhere were electric
+lights and roses, matching one against the other
+their brilliant hues.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, I&mdash;I think I'm going to c-cry,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+wailed Tilly's sobbing voice from the adjoining
+balcony.</p>
+
+<p>"Cry!&mdash;when it's all so lovely!" exclaimed
+Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That's why I want to," she quavered.
+"Honestly, Genevieve, if I stay here long I shall be
+writing poetry like Quentina&mdash;I know I shall!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you do, just let me read it, that's all," retorted
+Genevieve, saucily. "Where's Cordelia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Off somewhere with Elsie and Bertha. She
+got dressed early&mdash;but I sha'n't get dressed at all
+if I don't go about it."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was the sound of a scream,
+then the patter of running feet in the court below.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there they are now," cried Genevieve,
+leaning over the railing. "Girls, girls!" she called,
+regardless of others in the court. "Look up here!
+What's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>The girls stopped, and looked up. Cordelia, only,
+cast an apprehensive glance over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an alligator in the fountain in the other
+court," explained Elsie. "Bertha said she heard
+there was one there, and so we went to see&mdash;and
+we found out."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say we did," shuddered Cordelia, still
+with her head turned backward. "I sha'n't sleep
+a wink to-night&mdash;I know I sha'n't!"</p>
+
+<p>"An alligator&mdash;really?" cried Tilly. "Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+I'm going to hurry and get ready so I can see him
+before dinner," she finished, as she whisked into
+her room.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner that night, in the brilliantly lighted,
+flower-decked dining-room was an experience never
+to be forgotten by the girls.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't suppose there were such bea-<i>u</i>-tiful
+dresses in the world," sighed Elsie, looking about
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon you'd think so, Miss Elsie," he said,
+"if you could see the place when it's in full swing.
+It's too early yet for the real tourist season, I imagine.
+Anyhow, there aren't so many people here as
+I've always seen before."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I shouldn't ask it to be any nicer, anyway,"
+declared Bertha; and the rest certainly
+agreed with her.</p>
+
+<p>Bright and early the next morning the Happy
+Hexagons and Mr. Hartley started out sight-seeing.
+Mrs. Kennedy was too tired to go, she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let business slip for an hour or two," Mr.
+Hartley remarked as they left the hotel; "at all
+events, until I get you young people started."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m; you mean, to&mdash;the Alamo?" hinted
+Genevieve, with merry eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, dearie! The Alamo it shall be," smiled
+her father. "Then to-morrow I'll take you to Fort
+Sam Houston where there are <i>live</i> soldiers."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is there an army post here, truly?" cried
+Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Only the largest in the country," answered the
+Texan, proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Really? Oh, how splendid! I just love soldiers!"</p>
+
+<p>"Really?" mimicked Mr. Hartley, mischievously.
+"They'll be pleased to know it, I'm sure, Miss
+Tilly."</p>
+
+<p>The others laughed. Tilly blushed and shrugged
+her shoulders; but she asked no more questions
+about Fort Sam Houston for at least five minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"Now where's the place&mdash;the really, truly
+place?" demanded Cordelia, in an awed voice,
+when the party had reached the Alamo Plaza.</p>
+
+<p>"The place&mdash;the real place, Miss Cordelia," replied
+Mr. Hartley, "where the fight occurred, was
+in a court over there; and the walls were pulled
+down years ago. But this little chapel was part of
+it, and this is what everybody always looks at and
+talks about. The relics are inside. We'll go in
+and see them, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"If we like!" cried Genevieve, fervently. "Just
+as if we didn't want to see everything&mdash;every
+single thing there is to see!" she finished, as her
+father led the way into the dim interior under the
+watchful eyes of the caretaker.</p>
+
+<p>Even Tilly, for a moment, was silenced in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+hush and somberness of the place. Genevieve stole
+to her father's side. Mr. Hartley, with bared head,
+was wearing a look of grave reverence.</p>
+
+<p>"You appreciate it, don't you, Father?" she
+said softly. "You have always talked such a lot
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how any one can help appreciating
+it," he rejoined, after a moment, looking up at the
+narrow, iron-barred windows. "Why, Genevieve,
+this is our Bunker Hill, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she said soberly. "How many was
+it? I've forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"About one hundred and eighty on the inside&mdash;here;
+and all the way from two to six thousand on
+the outside&mdash;accounts differ. But it was thousands,
+anyway, against one hundred and eighty&mdash;and
+it lasted ten days or more."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"And they all&mdash;died?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every one&mdash;of the soldiers. There was a
+woman and a young child and a negro servant left
+to tell the tale."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what it means on the monument, isn't
+it?" murmured Genevieve. "'Thermopyl&aelig; had
+its messenger of defeat: the Alamo had none.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said her father. "I've always wondered
+what Davy Crockett would have said to that. You
+know he was here."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Wasn't he the one who said, 'Be sure you are
+right, then go ahead'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And he went ahead&mdash;straight to his
+death, here."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve's eyes brimmed with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it does make one want to be good and
+brave and true, doesn't it, Father?"</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon it ought to, little girl," he smiled
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>"It does," breathed Genevieve. A moment later
+she crossed to Tilly's side.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly welcomed her with subdued joyousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, please, <i>please</i> mayn't we get out
+of this?" she begged. "Honestly, I feel as if I
+were besieged myself in this horrid tomb-like
+place. And&mdash;and I like live soldiers so much
+better!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve gave her a reproachful glance, but in a
+moment she suggested that perhaps they had better
+go.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but that was lovely," she sighed, as they
+came out into the bright sunshine. "The caretaker
+told me they call it the 'Cradle of Liberty,'
+here; and I don't wonder."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly uptilted her chin&mdash;already the sunshine
+had brought back her usual gayety of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! what a lot of cradles Liberty must
+have had! You know Faneuil Hall in Boston is
+<i>one</i>. Only think how far the poor thing must have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+traveled between naps if she tried to sleep in all her
+cradles!"</p>
+
+<p>Even Genevieve laughed&mdash;but she sighed reproachfully,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tilly, how you can turn poetry into prose&mdash;sometimes!"
+Then she added wistfully: "How
+I wish I could see this Plaza on San Jacinto Day!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is that?" demanded Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"The twenty-third of April. They have the
+Battle of the Flowers in the Plaza here, in front
+of the Alamo. I've always wanted to see that."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m; well, I might not mind that kind of
+a battle myself," laughed Tilly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>TILLY CROSSES BRIDGES</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the afternoon the young people again started
+out to explore the town. This time Mr. Hartley
+was not with them.</p>
+
+<p>"But are you quite sure you won't get lost?"
+Mrs. Kennedy demurred anxiously, as Genevieve
+was putting on her hat.</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am," returned Genevieve, with calm
+truthfulness and a merry smile. "But, dearie, it's
+daylight and there are six of us. What if we do
+get lost? We've got tongues in our heads, and we
+know the name of our hotel and of the street it's
+on."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," sighed Mrs. Kennedy. Then, with
+sudden spirit she added: "Dear me, Genevieve! I
+shall be glad if ever we get back to Sunbridge and
+I have you to myself all quiet again. I'm afraid
+you'll never, never settle down to just plain living
+after these irresponsible weeks of one long playday."</p>
+
+<p>It was Genevieve's turn now to sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, Aunt Julia. It will be hard, won't it?"
+she admitted. Then, with a quick change of manner,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+she observed airily: "As if anything could be
+nicer than learning to cook, and keeping my stockings
+mended! Why, Aunt Julia!" The next moment,
+with a breezy kiss, she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a delightful afternoon that the girls spent
+rambling about the curiously interesting old town,
+which&mdash;Cordelia impressively informed them&mdash;was
+the third oldest in the United States. They
+tried to see it all, but they did not succeed in this,
+of course. They did stand in delighted wonder before
+the San Fernando Cathedral with its square,
+cross-tipped towers; and they did wander for an
+entrancing hour in the old Mexican Quarter, with its
+picturesque houses and people, its fascinating chili
+and tamale stands, and its narrow, twisting streets,
+which Genevieve declared were almost as bad as
+Boston.</p>
+
+<p>"Boston!" bridled Tilly, instantly. "Why,
+Boston's tiniest, crookedest streets are great wide
+boulevards compared to these! Besides, when we
+are in Boston we don't have to cross a river every
+time we turn around."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that," retorted Genevieve,
+warmly. "Just try to go over to Cambridge or
+Charlestown and see. I'm sure I think Boston's
+got lots of bridges."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly sniffed her disdain.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! You're <i>leaving</i> Boston when you cross
+those bridges, Genevieve Hartley, and you know it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+But just look at them here! We haven't stirred
+once out of San Antonio, and I think I've crossed
+five bridges in the last seven minutes. I can imagine
+those old fellows who built this town getting tired
+of building houses, and saying: 'And now let's stop
+and build a bridge for the fun of it!'"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"You've won, Tilly. I'll give up," she chuckled.
+"I hadn't meant to tell you; but there <i>are</i> thirteen
+miles of river twisting in and out through the city,
+and&mdash;there <i>are</i> seventeen bridges."</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you find out all that?" demanded
+Tilly, suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"In a guidebook that I saw last night at the
+hotel. It's the same one, I reckon, that Cordelia's
+been giving all her information from," said Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m;" commented Tilly. "Now I <i>know</i>
+I've crossed five bridges in the last seven minutes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I wouldn't care if there were forty miles
+of river and fifty bridges," retorted Genevieve, "if
+they'd all have such lovely green banks and dear
+little boats!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I," agreed two or three emphatic voices.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere and at every turn the girls found
+something of interest, something to marvel at.
+When tired of walking they boarded a car; and
+when tired of riding, they got off and walked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyhow, folks seem to have a choice of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+houses to live in," observed Tilly, her eyes on a
+quaint little white bungalow surrounded by heuisach
+and mesquite trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, they do," laughed Genevieve&mdash;Genevieve
+was looking at the next one to it: an old-fashioned
+colonial mansion set far back from the street,
+with a huge pecan tree standing guard on each
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, seems to me just now a hotel would look
+the nicest of anything," moaned Cordelia, wearily.
+"Girls, I just can't go another step&mdash;unless it's
+toward home," she finished despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Me, too," declared Tilly. "I'm just plum
+locoed, I'm that tired! Say we hit the trail for the
+hotel right now. Come on; I'm ready!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed, but she eyed Tilly a little
+curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose Sunbridge will say to
+your new expressions &agrave; la the wild and woolly
+West?" she queried.</p>
+
+<p>"Just exactly what they said to you, Miss Genevieve,"
+bantered Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Genevieve's were <i>natural</i>," cut in
+Bertha, with meaning emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"All the more reason why mine should be more
+interesting, then," retorted Tilly, imperturbably.
+And with a laugh Bertha and Genevieve gave it up,
+as with tired but happy faces, they set out for the
+hotel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At breakfast the next morning, Mr. Hartley announced
+cheerily:</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do the parks, to-day, and the Hot Sulphur
+Well and Hotel; and finish with dress parade at
+Fort Sam Houston."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;what about your business?" asked Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hartley laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all&mdash;done," he answered; then, as
+the puzzled questioning still remained in her eyes,
+he added, a little shamefacedly: "You see, there
+wasn't much business, to tell the truth, dearie. I
+reckon my real business was to show off the state
+of Texas to our young Easterners here."</p>
+
+<p>"You darling!" cried Genevieve, rapturously,
+while all the rest of the Happy Hexagons stumbled
+and stuttered over their vain attempts at thanking
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare! I wish we could give him our Texas
+yell, right here," chuckled Tilly, turning longing
+eyes about the dining-room. "We would end with
+'Mr. Hartley,' of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, in open horror.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the Hot Sulphur Well, Mr. Hartley,
+please?" asked Elsie, who had not heard Tilly's
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to ask some one who's been cured
+by it," laughed the man. "They say there are
+plenty that have been."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you suppose it looks any like an oil well?"
+ventured Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds a bit hot, seems to me, for to-day,"
+giggled Tilly. "I think I shall like the parks better."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; we'll let you do the parks&mdash;<i>all</i> of
+them," cooed Genevieve, wickedly. "There are
+only twenty-one, you know, my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve Hartley, if you remember your lessons
+next year one half as well as you have that
+abominable guidebook, you'll be at the head of your
+class!" remarked Tilly, severely, as the others rose
+from the table, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>It was another long, happy day. The parks, as
+Tilly had predicted, proved to be cooler than the
+Hot Sulphur Well, and they certainly were more
+enjoyable, even though only two of Genevieve's announced
+twenty-one were visited&mdash;Brackenridge
+Park, and San Pedro Park. It was the former that
+Cordelia enjoyed the most, perhaps, for it was there
+that she saw her much-longed-for buffalo. Tired,
+but still enthusiastic, they reached the hotel in
+time to dress for the visit to Fort Sam Houston,
+upon which Mrs. Kennedy was to accompany
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Getting dressed was, however, a grand flurry of
+excitement, for time and space were limited; and
+there was not one of the Happy Hexagons who did
+not feel that on this occasion, at least, every curl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+and ribbon and shoe-tie must display a neatness that
+was military in its precision.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps only Elsie of all the girls wept over the
+matter. Her eyes were red when she knocked at
+Genevieve's door.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Elsie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, I've come to say&mdash;I can't go,"
+choked Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Elsie, are you sick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; it's&mdash;clothes. Genevieve, I simply
+haven't anything to wear."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, dear, of course you have! We don't
+have to dress much for this thing. Where's your
+white linen or your tan or your blue?"</p>
+
+<p>"The white is too soiled, and the other two have
+worn places that show."</p>
+
+<p>"But there's your chambray&mdash;that isn't worn."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't&mdash;that, truly, Genevieve. It's got
+worse and worse every day, until now <i>anybody</i> can
+tell Cora and Clara apart!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve choked back a laugh. She was frowning
+prodigiously when Elsie looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you, Elsie, I've got just the thing," she
+cried. "Wear my white linen&mdash;it's perfectly fresh,
+and 'twill fit you, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>Elsie's face turned scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Genevieve! I wouldn't&mdash;I couldn't! I'd
+never, never do such an awful thing," she gasped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+"Why, what <i>would</i> Aunt Kate say?&mdash;my wearing
+your clothes like that! Oh, I never thought of your
+taking it that way! Never mind&mdash;I'll fix something,"
+she choked, as she turned and fled down
+the hall, leaving a distressed and almost an angry
+Genevieve behind her.</p>
+
+<p>For some minutes Genevieve busied herself with
+her own toilet, jerking hooks and ribbons into place
+with unnecessary force; then she turned despairingly
+to Mrs. Kennedy, whose room she was sharing.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Julia, what's the use of having anything
+to give, if folks won't take it when you give it?"
+she demanded, irritably.</p>
+
+<p>"Not having followed your thoughts for the last
+five minutes, my dear, I fear I'm unable to give
+you a very helpful answer," smiled Mrs. Kennedy,
+serenely. And Genevieve, remembering Elsie's
+shamed, red face, decided suddenly that Elsie's
+secret was not hers to tell.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later Mr. Hartley marshaled his
+party for the start.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a brave sight," he declared, smiling
+into the bright faces about him. "You're a mighty
+brave sight; and I'll leave it to anybody if even
+the boys in line to-day will make a finer show!"</p>
+
+<p>The Happy Hexagons laughed and blushed and
+courtesied prettily; and only Genevieve knew that
+the smile on Elsie's face was a little forced&mdash;Elsie
+was wearing the green chambray.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was an awed "Oh-h!" of wonder and
+admiration when Mr. Hartley's party came in
+sight of the great parade grounds at Fort Sam
+Houston. There was a still deeper, longer, louder
+"Oh-h-h!" when, sitting at one end of the grounds,
+the girls heard the first stirring notes of the band.</p>
+
+<p>To the Hexagon Club it was a most wonderful
+sight&mdash;those long lines of men moving with such
+perfect precision. Fresh from the Alamo as the
+girls were, with the story of that dreadful slaughter
+in their ears&mdash;to them it almost seemed that there
+before them marched the brave men who years ago
+had given up their lives so heroically in the little
+chapel.</p>
+
+<p>It was Tilly who broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I do just love soldiers," she cried, with a
+hurried glance sideways to make sure that Mr.
+Hartley in the next carriage could not hear her.
+"Don't you, Genevieve?" But Genevieve was too
+absorbed to answer.</p>
+
+<p>A little later the band played "The Star-spangled
+Banner," and there sounded the signal gun
+for the lowering of the colors. In the glorious
+excitement of all this, even Tilly herself forgot to
+talk.</p>
+
+<p>After dress parade a certain Major Drew, who
+knew Mr. Hartley, came up and was duly presented
+to the ladies. He in turn presented the officer of
+the day, who looked, to the Happy Hexagons, very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+handsome and imposing in sword and spurs. After
+this, at Major Drew's invitation, there was a visit
+to the officers' quarters, and on the Major's broad
+gallery there was a cooling refreshment of lemonade
+and root beer before the drive back to the hotel.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>"BERTHA'S ACCIDENT"</h3>
+
+
+<p>It had been decided that the party would go to
+New Orleans from San Antonio, and then from
+there by boat to New York.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll make a change from car-riding, and a
+very pleasant one, I'm thinking," Mr. Hartley had
+said; and the others had enthusiastically agreed
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the five-hundred-and-seventy-two mile
+journey from San Antonio to New Orleans that
+something happened. In the Chronicles of the
+Hexagon Club it fell to Genevieve to tell the story;
+and this is what she wrote:</p>
+
+<p>"It seems so strange to me that we should have
+traveled so many thousands of miles on the railroad
+without anything happening; and then, just
+on the last five hundred (we are going to take the
+boat at New Orleans)&mdash;to have it happen.</p>
+
+<p>"We have had all sorts of amusing experiences,
+of course, losing trains, and missing connections;
+but nothing like this. Even when we had to take
+that little bumpy accommodation for a few hours,
+and it was so accommodating it stopped every few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+minutes 'to water the horses,' as dear Tilly said,
+nothing happened&mdash;though, to be sure, we almost
+did get left that time we all (except Aunt Julia)
+got off and went to pick flowers while our train
+waited for a freight to go by. But we didn't get
+quite left, and we did catch it. (Dear Tilly says
+we could have caught it, anyway, even if it had
+started, and that we shouldn't have had to walk
+very fast, at that! Tilly does make heaps of fun
+of all our trains except the fast ones on the main
+lines. And I don't know as I wonder, only I'd
+never tell her that, of course&mdash;that is, I <i>wouldn't</i>
+have told her before, perhaps.)</p>
+
+<p>"Well, where was I? Oh, I know&mdash;on the
+sidetrack. (I had to laugh here, for it occurred to
+me that that was just where I was in the story&mdash;on
+a sidetrack! I'm not telling what I started out
+to tell at all. It's lucky we can each take all the
+room we want, though, in these Chronicles.)</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll tell it now, really, though I'm still so
+shaky and excited my hand trembles awfully. It
+was in the night, a little past twelve o'clock that it
+happened. I was lying in my berth above Elsie's,
+and was wide-awake. I had been thinking about
+Father. He has been such a dear all the way. I
+was thinking what a big, big dear he was, when IT
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I put IT in capitals on purpose, and I
+reckon you would, if suddenly the car you were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+riding in began to sway horribly and bump up and
+down, and then stop right off short with a bang
+that flung you into the middle of the aisle! And
+that's what ours did.</p>
+
+<p>"For a minute, of course, I was too dazed to
+know what had happened. But the next moment I
+heard a scared voice wail right in my ear:</p>
+
+<p>"'Girls, it's an accident&mdash;I know it's an accident!
+I told you we should have an accident&mdash;and
+to think I took off my shoes to-night for the
+very first time!'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew then. It was Bertha, and it was an
+accident. And, do you know? I'm ashamed to
+tell it, but the first thing I did right there and then
+was to laugh&mdash;it seemed so funny about Bertha's
+shoes, and to hear her say her usual 'I told you
+so!' But the next minute I began to realize what
+it all really meant, and I didn't laugh any more.</p>
+
+<p>"All around me, by that time, were frightened
+cries and shouts, and I was so worried for Father
+and all the rest. I struggled, and tried to get up;
+and then I heard Father's voice call: 'Genevieve,
+Genevieve, where are you? Are you all right?'
+Oh, nobody will ever know how good that dear
+voice sounded to me!</p>
+
+<p>"We called for Aunt Julia, then, and for the
+girls; but it was ever so long before we could find
+them. We weren't all together, anyway, and the
+crash had separated us more than ever. Besides,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+everybody everywhere all over the car was crying
+out by that time, and trying to find folks, all in the
+dark.</p>
+
+<p>"We found Aunt Julia. She was almost under
+the berth near me; but she was so faint and dazed
+she could not answer when we first called. I was
+all right, and so were Cordelia and Bertha, only
+Bertha bumped her head pretty hard afterwards,
+looking for her shoes. Elsie Martin and Alma
+Lane were a little bruised and bumped, too; but
+they declared they could move all their legs and
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"We hadn't any of us found Tilly up to that
+time; but when Elsie said that (about being able
+to move all her legs and arms), I heard a little faint
+voice say 'You talk as if you were a centipede,
+Elsie Martin!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tilly!' I cried then. 'Where are you?' The
+others called, too, until we were all shouting frantically
+for Tilly. We knew it must be Tilly for
+nobody but Tilly Mack could have made that
+speech!</p>
+
+<p>"At last we found her. She was wedged in under
+a broken seat almost at our feet. It was at the forward
+end of the car&mdash;the only part that seemed
+to be really smashed. She could not crawl out, and
+we could not pull her out. She gave a moaning
+little cry when Father tried to.</p>
+
+<p>"'I guess&mdash;some of my legs and arms don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+go,' she called out to us with a little sob in her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"We were crazy then, of course&mdash;all of us;
+and we all talked at once, and tried to find out just
+where she was hurt. The trainmen had come by
+this time with lanterns, and were helping every one
+out of the car. Then they came to us and Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"And we were so proud of Tilly&mdash;she was so
+brave and cheery! I never found out before what
+her nonsense was for, but I did find it out then. It
+was the only thing that kept us all from going just
+wild. She said such queer little things when they
+were trying to get her out, and she told them if
+there was any one hurt worse than she to get them
+out first. She told Father that she knew now just
+how Reddy felt when his broncho went see-saw up
+in the air, because that was what her berth did.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they got the poor dear out at last, and a
+doctor from the rear car examined her at once.
+Her left arm was broken, and she had two or three
+painful bruises. Of course that was bad&mdash;but not
+anywhere near so bad as it might have been, and we
+were all so relieved. The doctor did what he could
+for her, then we all made ourselves as comfortable
+as possible while we waited for the relief train.</p>
+
+<p>"We found out then about the wreck, and the
+chief thing we could find out anywhere was what a
+'fortunate' wreck it was! The engine and six cars
+went off the track on a curve. Just ahead was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+steep bank with a river below it, and of course it
+<i>was</i> fortunate that we did not go down that. No
+one was killed, and only a few much injured. The
+car ahead and ours were the only ones that were
+smashed any. Yes, I suppose it was a 'fortunate
+wreck'&mdash;but I never want to see an unfortunate
+one. Certainly we all felt pretty thankful that we
+had come out of it as well as we did.</p>
+
+<p>"The relief train came at last, and took us to the
+next city, and to-day we are started on our journey
+once again. We expect to reach New Orleans to-night,
+and take the boat for New York Saturday.
+We all feel a little stiff and sore, but of course dear
+Tilly feels the worst. But she tries to be just as
+bright and smiling as ever. She looks pretty white,
+though, and what the storybooks call 'wan,' I
+reckon. She says, anyhow, she wishes she <i>were</i> a
+centipede&mdash;in <i>arms</i>&mdash;because perhaps then she
+wouldn't miss her left one so much, if she had
+plenty more of them. There seems to be such a
+lot of things she wants her left arm to do. The
+doctor says it wasn't a <i>bad</i> break&mdash;as if any break
+could be <i>good!</i></p>
+
+<p>"And here endeth my record of 'Bertha's accident'&mdash;as
+Tilly insists upon calling it, until she's
+made Bertha almost ready to cry over it."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Owing to the delay of the accident, Mr. Hartley
+and his party had only one day in New Orleans before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+the boat sailed; but they made the most of
+that, for they wanted to see what they could of the
+quaint, picturesque city.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take carriages, dearie. We won't walk
+anywhere," said Mr. Hartley to Genevieve that
+morning. "In the first place, Mrs. Kennedy and
+Miss Tilly couldn't, and the rest of us don't want
+to. We can see more, too, in the short space of
+time we have."</p>
+
+<p>So in carriages, bright and early Friday morning,
+the party started out to "do" New Orleans, as
+Genevieve termed it. Leaving the "American portion,"
+where were situated their hotel and most of
+the other big hotels and business houses of American
+type, they trailed happily along through Prytania
+Street and St. Charles Avenue to the beautiful
+"Garden District" which they had been warned
+not to miss. They found, indeed, much to delight
+them in the stately, palatial homes set in the midst
+of exquisitely kept lawns and wonderful groves of
+magnolia and oak. Quite as interesting to them
+all, however, was the old French or Latin Quarter
+below Canal Street, where were the Creole homes
+and business houses. Here they ate their luncheon,
+too, in one of the curious French restaurants,
+famous the world over for its delicious dishes.</p>
+
+<p>With the disappearance of the last mouthful on
+her plate, Tilly drew a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always heard Creoles were awfully interesting,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+she sighed. "Do you know&mdash;I don't think
+I'd mind much being a Creole myself!"</p>
+
+<p>"You look so much like one, too," laughed Genevieve,
+affectionately, patting the soft, fluffy red hair
+above the piquant, freckled little face.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock that afternoon a tired but happy
+party reached the hotel in time to rest and dress
+for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," sighed Genevieve, "I'd have liked a
+week here, but a day has been pretty good. We've
+seen enough 'Quarters' to make a 'whole,' and the
+Cathedral, and dozens of other churches, and we've
+driven along those lovely lakes with the unpronounceable
+names; and now I'm ready for dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"And we saw a statue&mdash;the Margaret Statue,"
+cut in Cordelia, anxiously. "You know it's the
+<i>first</i> statue ever erected to a woman's memory in
+the United States. We wouldn't want to forget
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I should like to," retorted Genevieve,
+perversely. "It's only so much the worse for the
+United States&mdash;that it wasn't done before!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think Genevieve is going to be a suffragette,"
+observed Tilly, cheerfully, as they trooped into the
+hotel together.</p>
+
+<p>It was from New Orleans that Cordelia Wilson
+wrote a letter to Mr. William Hodges. She had
+decided that it would be easier to write her bad
+news than to tell it. Then, too, she disliked to keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+the old man any longer in suspense. She made her
+letter as comforting as she could.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Mr. William Hodges, Sir</span>:&mdash;" she wrote.
+"I am very sorry to have to tell you that I have
+looked, but cannot find your oil well anywhere. I
+did find a man who had heard about it, but he said
+there wasn't any well at all like what the Boston
+man told you there was. He said it was a bad
+swindle and he knew many others who had lost
+their money, too, which I thought would please you.
+O dear, no, I don't mean that, of course. I only
+mean that you might like to know that others besides
+you hadn't known any more than to put money
+in it, too. (That doesn't sound quite right yet,
+but perhaps you know what I mean.)</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you won't feel too bad about it, Mr.
+Hodges. I saw some oil wells when we came
+through Beaumont, and I am quite sure you would
+not like them at all. They are not one bit like
+Bertha's aunt's well on her farm, with the bucket.
+In fact, they don't look like wells at all, and I never
+should have known what they were if Mr. Hartley
+had not told me. They are tall towers <i>standing up</i>
+out of the ground instead of stone holes sunk down
+in the ground. (It is just as if you should call the
+cupola on your house your cellar&mdash;and you know
+how queer that would be!) I saw a lot of them&mdash;oil
+wells, not cupolas, I mean&mdash;and they looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+more like a whole lot of little Eiffel Towers than
+anything else I can think of. (If you will get your
+grandson, Tony, to show you the Eiffel Tower in
+his geography, you will see what I mean.) Mr.
+Hartley says they <i>do</i> bore for them&mdash;wells, I
+mean, not Eiffel Towers&mdash;and so I suppose they
+do go down before they go up.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw the wells on the way between San Antonio
+and New Orleans. One was on fire. (Just
+think of a well being on fire!) Of course we were
+riding through a most wonderful country, anyway.
+We saw a great many things growing besides oil
+wells, too, as you must know&mdash;rice, and cotton,
+and tobacco, and sugar cane, and onions, and quantities
+of other things. I picked some cotton bolls.
+(I spelt that right. This kind isn't b-a-ll.) I am
+sending you a few in a little box. It takes 75,000
+of them to make one bale of cotton, so I'm afraid
+you couldn't make even a handkerchief out of these.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so sorry about the oil well, but I did the
+best that I could to find it.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">"Respectfully yours,</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Cordelia Wilson.</span>"<br />
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GOLDEN HOURS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Long before ten o'clock Saturday morning&mdash;the
+hour for sailing&mdash;Mr. Hartley and his party
+were on board the big steamship which was to take
+them to New York. Here, again, new sensations
+and new experiences awaited the Happy Hexagons,
+not one of whom had ever been on so large a boat.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, I do just feel as if I was going
+abroad," breathed Cordelia, in an awestruck voice,
+as she crossed the gangplank.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm sure we <i>are</i>, almost," exulted Genevieve.
+"We're going to have a hundred hours of
+it. You know that little pamphlet that told about it
+called it 'a hundred golden hours at sea.' Oh, Cordelia,
+only think&mdash;one hundred golden hours!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll think it's a thousand, if you happen to
+be seasick," groaned Tilly. (Tilly was looking
+rather white to-day.) "And they won't be golden
+ones, either&mdash;they'll be <i>lead</i> ones. I know because
+I've been to Portland when it's rough."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we aren't going to be seasick," retorted
+Genevieve, with conviction. "We're just going to
+have the best time ever. See if we don't!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Now, dearie," said Mr. Hartley, hurrying up at
+that moment, "I engaged one of the suites for Mrs.
+Kennedy, and I think Miss Tilly had better be with
+her. The bed will be much more comfortable for
+her poor arm than a berth would be, and Mrs. Kennedy
+can look after her better, too, in that way.
+The little parlor of the suite will give us all a cozy
+place to meet together. There are two berths there
+which they turn into a lounge in the daytime. I
+thought perhaps you and Miss Cordelia could sleep
+there. Then I have staterooms for the rest of us&mdash;I
+engaged them all a week ago, of course. Now
+if you'll come with me I reckon we can set up
+housekeeping right away," he finished with a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Setting up housekeeping" proved to be an absorbing
+task, indeed. It included not only bestowing
+their belongings in the chosen places, but interviewing
+purser and stewards in regard to rugs,
+steamer chairs, and other delightfully exciting matters.
+Then there was the joy of exploring the great
+ship that was to be their home for so many days.
+The luxurious Ladies' Parlor, the Library with its
+alluring books and magazines, the Dining Saloon
+with its prettily-laid tables and its revolving chairs
+(like piano stools, Tilly said), the decks with their
+long, airy promenades, all came in for delighted exclamations
+of satisfaction which increased to a
+chorus of oh's and ah's when the trip really began,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+and the stately ship was wending its way down the
+Great River to the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>First there was to be seen the city itself, nestled
+beyond its barricade of levees.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me!" shuddered Cordelia. "I don't believe
+I'd have slept a wink last night if I'd realized
+how <i>much</i> below the river we were. Only fancy if
+one of those levees had sprung a leak!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, they'd have sent for the plumber, of
+course," observed Tilly, gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! Still&mdash;they don't look very leaky,
+to me," laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it here, or somewhere else, that a man (or
+was it a child?) put his arm (or was it a finger?)
+in a little hole in the wall and stopped the leak, and
+so saved the town?" mused Bertha aloud dreamily.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it was," answered Tilly with grave
+emphasis; and not until the others laughed did
+Bertha wake up enough to turn her back with a
+shrug.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was somewhere, anyhow," she pouted.</p>
+
+<p>"As if we could doubt that&mdash;after what you
+said," murmured Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"But they have had floods here, haven't they?"
+questioned Alma Lane.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve gave a sudden laugh. At the others'
+surprised look she explained:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not laughing at the real floods, the
+<i>water</i> floods they've had, of course. It's just that I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+happened to think of something I read some time
+ago. They had one flood here of&mdash;molasses."</p>
+
+<p>"Mo&mdash;lass&mdash;es!" chorused several voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. A big tank that the city used to have for
+a reservoir had been bought by a sugar company and
+turned into a storage for molasses. Well, it burst
+one day, and a little matter of a million gallons of
+molasses went exploring through the streets. They
+say some poor mortals had actually to wade to dry
+land."</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve! what a story," cried Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's true," declared Genevieve. "A whole
+half-mile square of the city was flooded, honestly.
+At least, the newspapers said it was."</p>
+
+<p>"How the pickaninnies must have gloried in it,"
+giggled Tilly, "&mdash;if they liked 'bread and perlashes'
+as well as I used to. Only think of having
+such a <i>big</i> saucerful to dip your bread into!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" groaned Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>They were at Port Chalmette, now. The Crescent
+City lay behind them, and beyond lay the
+shining river-roadway, with its fertile, highly-cultivated
+plantations bordering each side, green and
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!" cried Elsie.
+"And I'm not sick one bit."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally not&mdash;yet," laughed Tilly. "But you
+just wait. We don't sail the Mississippi all the way
+to New York, you know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish we did," said Genevieve, her eyes dreamily
+following the shore line. "But we're only on it
+for a hundred miles."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," disagreed Elsie. "I want to see the
+Gulf Stream. They say it's a deep indigo blue,
+and that you can see it plainly. I think a blue
+river in a green sea must be lovely&mdash;like a
+blue ribbon trailing down a light green gown, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I want to see the real ocean, 'way out&mdash;out.
+I want to see nothing but water, water everywhere,"
+declared Alma Lane.</p>
+
+<p>"'And not a drop to drink,'" quoted Tilly.
+"Well, young lady, you may see the time when
+you'd give your eyes for a bit of land&mdash;and just
+any old land would do, too, so long as it <i>stayed
+put!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"What does it feel like to be seasick?" asked
+Cordelia, interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>"It feels as if the bottom had dropped out of
+everything, and you didn't much care, only you
+wished you'd gone with it," laughed Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was it?&mdash;wasn't it Mark Twain who said
+that the first half-hour you were awfully afraid you
+would die, and the next you were awfully afraid
+you wouldn't?" questioned Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; but whoever said it knew what
+he was talking about," declared Tilly. "You just
+wait!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We're waiting," murmured Genevieve, demurely.</p>
+
+<p>"You young ladies don't want to forget your
+exercise," said Mr. Hartley smilingly, coming up at
+that moment with Mrs. Kennedy. "We've just
+been five times around the deck."</p>
+
+<p>"It's eleven laps to the mile," supplemented Mrs.
+Kennedy with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"What's a lap?" asked Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds like a kitten on a wager with a saucer
+of milk," laughed Tilly, frowning a little as she tried
+to adjust her sling more comfortably.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, young ladies, we'll show you just what
+a lap is, if you'll come with us," promised Mr. Hartley;
+and with alacrity the girls expressed themselves
+as being quite ready to be shown.</p>
+
+<p>On and on, mile after mile, down the great river
+swept the great ship until Forts Jackson and St.
+Philip were reached and left behind; then on and
+on for other miles to the narrow South Pass where
+on either side the Eads Jetties called forth exclamations
+of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you'd better 'ah' and 'um,'" laughed
+Genevieve. "They happen to be one of the greatest
+engineering feats in the world; that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?" demanded Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry her," cut in Tilly, with mock sympathy.
+"Poor thing! it's only a case of another
+guidebook, of course."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, all is, just keep your weather eye open,"
+laughed Genevieve, "for when we make the South
+Pass Lightship, then ho! for the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Broad Atlantic," interposed Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not until you've passed through the little
+matter of the Gulf of Mexico," rejoined Genevieve;
+while a chorus of laughing voices jeered:</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Tilly Mack, where's your geography?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know, I'm sure," returned Tilly, imperturbably.
+"Haven't seen it since I studied up
+Texas," she finished as she turned away.</p>
+
+<p>The first night aboard ship was another experience
+never to be forgotten by the Happy Hexagons.
+In the parlor of the suite Genevieve and Cordelia
+kept up such an incessant buzz of husky whispering
+and tittering that Mrs. Kennedy came out from the
+bedroom to remonstrate.</p>
+
+<p>"My dears, you mean to be quiet, I know; but
+I'm sure you don't realize how it sounds from our
+room. Tilly is nervous and feverish to-night&mdash;the
+day has been very exciting for her."</p>
+
+<p>"And she has tried so hard to keep up, and seem
+as usual, too," cried Genevieve, contritely. "Of
+course we'll keep still! Cordelia, I'm ashamed of
+you," she finished severely. Then, at Cordelia's
+amazed look of shocked distress, she hugged her
+spasmodically. "As if it wasn't all my fault," she
+chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>In other parts of the boat the rest of the party<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+explored their strange quarters to the last corner;
+then made themselves ready to be "laid on the
+shelf," as Elsie termed going to bed in the narrow
+berth.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall take off my shoes to-night," announced
+Bertha with dignity, after a long moment of silence.
+"If anything happens here we'll get into the water,
+of course, and I think shoes would only be a nuisance."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Elsie did not answer; then, almost
+hopefully she asked,</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose if anything did happen we'd lose our
+clothes&mdash;even if we ourselves were saved, wouldn't
+we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I&mdash;I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's what I thought," nodded Elsie, happily.
+Elsie, at the moment, was engaged in taking
+off a somewhat unevenly faded green chambray
+frock.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was on the second day of the trip that Cordelia
+took from her suit-case a sheet of paper, worn with
+much folding and refolding, and marked plainly,
+"Things to do in Texas."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I might as well finish this up now,"
+she sighed. "I'm out of Texas, and what is done
+is done; and what is undone can't ever be done,
+now." And carefully she spread the paper out and
+reached into her bag for her pencil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When she had finished her work, the paper read
+as follows:</p>
+
+<p>See the blue bonnet&mdash;the Texas state flower.
+Find out if it really is shaped like a bonnet. Didn't.</p>
+
+<p>Bring home a piece of prairie grass. Did.</p>
+
+<p>See a real buffalo. Did. (But it was in a park.)</p>
+
+<p>Find Hermit Joe Sanborn's son, John, who ran
+away to Texas twenty years ago. Didn't.</p>
+
+<p>See an Osage orange hedge. Did.</p>
+
+<p>See a broncho bursted (obviously changed over
+from "busted"). Did.</p>
+
+<p>Find out for Mrs. Miller if cowboys do shoot at
+sight, and yell always without just and due provocation.
+Did. They do not. Cowboys are good, kind
+gentlemen; but they are noisy, and some rough-looking.</p>
+
+<p>See a mesquite tree. Did.</p>
+
+<p>Inquire if any one has seen Mrs. Snow's daughter,
+Lizzie, who ran away with a Texas man named
+Higgins. Did. (But could not find any one who
+had.)</p>
+
+<p>Pick a fig. Didn't.</p>
+
+<p>See a rice canal. Did.</p>
+
+<p>Find out what has become of Mrs. Granger's
+cousin, Lester Goodwin, who went to Texas fourteen
+years ago. Did.</p>
+
+<p>See cotton growing, and pick a cotton boll, called
+"Texas Roses." Did.</p>
+
+<p>See peanuts growing. Did.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Inquire for James Hunt, brother of Miss Sally
+Hunt. Did. (But could not find him.)</p>
+
+<p>See a real Indian. Did.</p>
+
+<p>Look at oil well for Mr. Hodges, and see if there
+is any there. Did. (But there wasn't any there like
+the one he wanted.)</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The paper completed, Cordelia looked at it with
+troubled eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't sound quite right," she thought.
+"Somehow, the things <i>I</i> wanted to do are 'most all
+done, but I didn't find but just one of those people,
+and seems as if I ought to have done better than
+that. Besides, I'm not at all sure Mrs. Granger will
+be satisfied with what I did find for her&mdash;a cowboy,
+so!" And she sighed as she put the paper
+away.</p>
+
+<p>The trip across the Gulf of Mexico to Dry Tortugas
+Light was nothing but a rest and a joy to everybody.
+It was still delightful and wonderfully interesting
+all the way around the City of Key West and
+up by the southeastern coast of Florida with its
+many lights and coral reefs.</p>
+
+<p>Here Genevieve's guidebook came again into
+prominence.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sand Key Light 'way back there is our
+most southern possession, and only fifty-seven miles
+from the line of the Tropics," she announced glibly
+one day. "We're coming to the American Shoals<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+Light, the Sombrero Light, Alligator Light, Carysfort
+Light and Fowey Rock Light."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! Didn't you sleep <i>any</i> last night?" inquired
+Tilly, sympathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you mean you think it must have
+taken all night to learn all that," laughed Genevieve.
+"But it didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you know some more, now," hazarded
+Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. After we strike Jupiter Light, we
+veer off into the Atlantic out of sight of land."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought lighthouses were put up so you
+wouldn't 'strike' them," observed Tilly, with
+smooth politeness; "but then, of course if you do
+strike them, it is quite to be expected that you veer
+off into the Atlantic, and never see land again. Besides,
+I found all those lighthouses and things on a
+paper last night, but it was the southern trip that
+did all that. Maybe we, going north, don't do the
+same things at all. I sha'n't swallow all you say,
+anyhow, till I know for sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Children, stop your quarreling," commanded
+Bertha Brown, sternly. "Now I've been learning
+something worth while. <i>I</i> know the saloon deck
+from the promenade deck, and I can rattle off
+'fore' and 'aft' and 'port' and 'starboard' as
+if I'd been born on shipboard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! You wait," teased Tilly. "There'll
+come a time when you won't think you're born on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+shipboard, and you won't know or care which is
+fore or aft&mdash;any of you. And it will come soon,
+too. Those were porpoises playing this morning&mdash;when
+Cordelia thought she saw the sea serpent,
+you know. I heard a man say he thought it meant
+a storm was coming. And if it does&mdash;you just
+wait," she finished laughingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm waiting," retorted Bertha. "I like
+waiting. Besides, I don't think it's coming, anyhow!"</p>
+
+<p>But it did come. Off the coast of South Carolina
+they ran into a heavy storm, and the great ship
+creaked and groaned as it buffeted wind and
+wave.</p>
+
+<p>In the little parlor of the suite the entire party,
+banished from wet, slippery decks, made merry together,
+and declared it was all fun, anyway. But
+gradually the ranks thinned. First Mrs. Kennedy
+asked to be excused, and went into the bedroom.
+Alma Lane went away next. She said she wanted
+a drink of water&mdash;but she did not return, and very
+soon Elsie Martin, looking suspiciously white about
+the lips, said she guessed she would go and find
+Alma. She, too, did not return.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly went next. Tilly, naturally, had not been
+her usual self since the accident, in spite of her
+brave attempts to hide her suffering. She slipped
+away now without a word; though just before she
+had made them all laugh by saying a little shakily:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I declare, I wish Reddy were here! He'd think
+he was riding his broncho, sure."</p>
+
+<p>Just when Mr. Hartley disappeared, no one
+seemed to know. One moment he had been singing
+lustily "Pull for the Shore"; the next moment he
+was gone. There was left then only Bertha with
+Genevieve and Cordelia in the little parlor; and
+certainly the last two were anything but sorry when
+Bertha rose a little precipitately to go, too, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I think, Genevieve, if you don't mind, I'll
+go and take off my shoes. They sort of&mdash;hurt
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Honestly, Cordelia," moaned Genevieve, when
+they had the room to themselves, "I reckon we're
+not caring just now, whether we're fore or aft!"</p>
+
+<p>It was not really a serious storm, after all, and
+not any of the party was seriously ill. They were all
+on deck again, indeed, smiling and happy, even if a
+little white-faced, long before the journey was
+ended.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the very last of the "golden
+hours" that Tilly, her eyes on Bartholdi's wonderful
+Statue of Liberty just ahead of them, in the
+New York Bay, choked:</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, I'd just like to give that lady our
+Texas yell. Only think, girls, our Texas trip is
+almost over!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>HERMIT JOE</h3>
+
+
+<p>There was not quite so large a crowd at the
+Sunbridge station to welcome the Texas travelers
+as there had been to see them off; but it was fully
+large enough to give a merry cheer of greeting, as
+the train pulled into the little station.</p>
+
+<p>"They're all here, with their 'sisters and their
+cousins and their aunts,'" laughed Tilly, stooping
+to look through the window as she passed down the
+narrow aisle behind Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"I should say they were," answered Genevieve
+a little wistfully. "We haven't got any one, I'm
+afraid, though. Miss Jane's been 'down in Maine,'
+as you call it, visiting, and she doesn't come till next
+week."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, you have," chuckled Tilly, as she
+caught sight of an eager face in the crowd.
+"There's Harold Day."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! He didn't come to welcome me any more
+than he did the rest of you," retorted Genevieve
+severely, as she neared the door.</p>
+
+<p>And what a confusion and chatter it all was, when
+"their sisters and their cousins and their aunts"&mdash;to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+say nothing of their fathers and mothers and
+brothers&mdash;all talked and laughed at once, each trying
+to be first to kiss and hug the <i>one</i> returning
+traveler, before bestowing almost as cordial a welcome
+on all the others. At last, however, in little
+family groups, afoot or in carriages, the crowd
+began to leave the station, and Genevieve found
+herself with Mrs. Kennedy in the family carriage
+with the old coachman sitting sedately up in front.
+Mr. Hartley had left the party in New York, after
+seeing them safely aboard their Boston train.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's all over," sighed Genevieve, happily,
+"and hasn't it been just lovely&mdash;with nothing but
+poor Tilly's arm to regret!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it certainly has been a beautiful trip, my
+dear, and I know every one has enjoyed it very
+much. And now comes&mdash;school."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve made a wry face; then, meeting Mrs.
+Kennedy's reproving eye, she colored.</p>
+
+<p>"There, forgive me, Aunt Julia, please. That
+wasn't nice of me, of course, when you're so good
+as to let me come another year. But school is so
+tiresome!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tiresome! Oh, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is, Aunt Julia," sighed the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"But I thought you liked it now, dear. You took
+hold of it so bravely at the last." Mrs. Kennedy's
+eyes were wistful.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course I wanted to pass and go on with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+the rest of the girls, Aunt Julia. I couldn't help
+wanting that. But as for really <i>liking</i> it&mdash;I
+couldn't like it, you know; just study, study, study
+all day in hot, poky rooms, when it's so much nicer
+out of doors!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy shook her head. Her eyes were
+troubled.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid, my dear, that this trip <i>hasn't</i> helped
+any. I was fearful that it wouldn't be easy for you
+to settle down after such a prolonged playday."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I shall settle, Aunt Julia, I shall settle,"
+promised Genevieve with a merry smile. "I know
+I've got to settle&mdash;but I can't say yet I shall like
+it," she finished, as the carriage turned in at the
+broad driveway, and Nancy and Bridget were seen
+to be waiting in respectful excitement to welcome
+them.</p>
+
+<p>There would be five days to "get used to it"&mdash;as
+Genevieve expressed it&mdash;before school began;
+but long before noon of the first of those five days,
+Genevieve had planned in her mind enough delightful
+things to occupy twice that number of days. Immediately
+after dinner, too, came something quite
+unexpected in the shape of a call from Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia looked worried.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, I've come to ask a favor, please.
+I'm sure I don't know as you'll want to do it, but&mdash;but
+I want you to go with me to see Hermit Joe."</p>
+
+<p>"To see&mdash;<i>Hermit Joe!</i>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"O dear, I knew you'd exclaim out," sighed Cordelia;
+"but it's just got to be done. I suppose I
+ought not to have told you, anyway, but I couldn't
+bear to go up to that dismal place alone," she finished,
+tearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course not, dear; and I'm sure you
+did just right to tell me," soothed Genevieve, in
+quick response to the tears in Cordelia's eyes.
+"Now wait while I get my hat and ask Aunt Julia.
+She'll let me go, I know;&mdash;she'd let me go to&mdash;to
+London, with <i>you</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Just please say it's an errand&mdash;an important
+one," begged Cordelia, nervously, as Genevieve
+darted into the house.</p>
+
+<p>In two minutes the girl had returned, hat in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Now tell me all about it," she commanded,
+"and don't look so frightened. Hermit Joe isn't
+cross. He's only solemn and queer. He won't hurt
+us."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, he won't hurt us," sighed the other.
+"He'll only look more solemn and queer."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because of what I've got to tell him. I&mdash;I
+suppose I ought to have written it, but I just
+couldn't. Besides, I hadn't found out anything, and
+so I didn't want to write until I was sure I couldn't
+find anything. Now it's done, and I haven't found
+out anything. So I've got to tell him."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him what, Cordelia?" demanded Genevieve,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+a little impatiently. "How do you suppose
+I can make anything out of that kind of talk?"</p>
+
+<p>"O dear! you can't, of course," sighed Cordelia;
+"and, of course, if I've told you so much I
+must tell the rest. It's Hermit Joe's son. I can't
+find him."</p>
+
+<p>"His son! I didn't know he had a son."</p>
+
+<p>"He has. His name is John. He ran away to
+Texas twenty years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"And you've been hunting for <i>him</i>, too&mdash;besides
+that Lester Goodwin who turned out to be Reddy?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia nodded. She did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed unexpectedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all the funny things I ever heard of! Pray,
+how many more lost people have you been looking
+for in the little state of Texas?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia moved her shoulders uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I'd rather not tell that, please, Genevieve,"
+she stammered, with a painful blush.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve stared dumbly. She had not supposed
+for a moment that Cordelia had been looking for
+any more lost people. She had asked the question
+merely as an absurdity. To have it taken now in
+this literal fashion, and evidently with good reason&mdash;Genevieve
+could scarcely believe the evidence of
+her senses. Another laugh was almost on her lips,
+but the real distress in Cordelia's face stopped it in
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor dear little thing," she cried sympathetically.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+"What a shame to bother you so! I
+wonder you had any fun at all on the trip."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I did, Genevieve! You don't know how
+beautiful it all was to me&mdash;only of course I felt
+sorry to be such a failure in what folks wanted me
+to do. You see, Reddy was the only one I found,
+and I'm very much worried for fear he won't be
+satisfactory."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve did laugh this time.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if he isn't, I don't see how that can be
+your fault," she retorted. "Come, now let's forget
+all this, and just talk Texas instead."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Mary says I do do that&mdash;all the time,"
+rejoined Cordelia, with a wistful smile. "Aunt
+Sophronia is there, too, and <i>she</i> says I do. Still,
+she likes to hear it, I verily believe, else she wouldn't
+ask me so many questions," concluded Cordelia, lifting
+her chin a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to take Miss Jane there sometime,"
+observed Genevieve, with a gravity that was a little
+unnatural.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Cordelia&mdash;then she
+stopped short with a hot blush. "I&mdash;I beg your
+pardon, I'm sure, Genevieve," she went on stammeringly.
+"I ought not to have spoken that way,
+of course. I was only thinking of Miss Jane and&mdash;and
+the cowboys that day they welcomed us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," rejoined Genevieve, her lips
+puckered into a curious little smile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe I'm doing any more talking,
+anyway, than Tilly is," remarked Cordelia, after a
+moment's silence. "Of course, Tilly, with her poor
+arm, would make a lot of questions, anyway; but
+she <i>is</i> talking a great deal."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose she is," chuckled Genevieve, "and we
+all know what <i>she'll</i> say."</p>
+
+<p>"But she says such absurd things, Genevieve.
+Why, Charlie Brown&mdash;you know he calls us the
+'Happy <i>Tex</i>agons' now&mdash;well, he told me that
+Tilly'd been bragging so terribly about Texas,
+and all the fine things there were there, that he asked
+her this morning real soberly&mdash;you know how
+Charlie Brown <i>can</i> ask questions, sometimes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," nodded Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he asked her, solemn as a judge, 'Do
+these wondrous tamales of yours grow on trees
+down there?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes,' Tilly assured him serenely. And
+when Charlie, of course, declared that couldn't be,
+she just shrugged her shoulders and answered:
+'Well, of course, Charlie, I'll own I didn't <i>see</i>
+tamales growing on trees, but Texas is a very large
+state, and while I didn't, of course, see anywhere
+near all of it, yet I saw so much, and it was all so
+different from each other, that I'm sure I shouldn't
+want to say that I <i>knew</i> they didn't have tamale
+trees somewhere in Texas!' And then she
+marched off in that stately way of hers, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+Charlie declared he began to feel as if tamale trees
+did grow in Texas, and that he ought to go around
+telling folks so."</p>
+
+<p>"What a girl she is!" laughed Genevieve.
+"But, Cordelia, she isn't all nonsense. We found
+that out that dreadful night of the accident."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed we did," agreed Cordelia, loyally;
+then, with a profound sigh she added: "O dear!
+for a minute I'd actually forgotten&mdash;Hermit Joe."</p>
+
+<p>Hermit Joe lived far up the hillside in a little hut
+surrounded by thick woods. A tiny path led to his
+door, but it was seldom trodden by the foot of anybody
+but of Hermit Joe himself&mdash;Hermit Joe did
+not encourage visitors, and visitors certainly were
+not attracted by Hermit Joe's stern reticence on all
+matters concerning himself and every one else.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, as the girls entered the path at the edge
+of the woods, the sun went behind a passing cloud,
+and the gloom was even more noticeable than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! I'm glad Hermit Joe <i>isn't</i> dangerous
+and <i>doesn't</i> bite," whispered Genevieve, peering into
+the woods on either side. "Aunt Julia says he is
+really a very estimable man&mdash;Cordelia, if I was a
+man I just wouldn't be an 'estimable' one."</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve!" gasped the shocked Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'd <i>be</i> it, of course, my dear, only I wouldn't
+want to be <i>called</i> it. It's the word&mdash;it always
+makes me think of side whiskers and stupidity."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Genevieve!" cried Cordelia, again.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as I was saying, Aunt Julia told me that
+Hermit Joe was really a very nice man. She used
+to know him well before a great sorrow drove him
+into the woods to live all by himself."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia nodded sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"That was his son that ran away. Aunt Mary
+told me that long ago. She told us children never
+to tease him, or worry him, but that we needn't be
+afraid of him, either. He wouldn't hurt us. I
+heard once that he was always stern and sober, and
+that that was why his son ran away. But that it
+'most killed him&mdash;the father&mdash;when he did go.
+And now I couldn't find him! Isn't it terrible,
+Genevieve?" Cordelia's eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," sighed Genevieve. "But you aren't to
+blame, dear."</p>
+
+<p>It was very beautiful in the hushed green light
+of the woods, with now and then a bird-call, or the
+swift scampering of a squirrel's feet to break the
+silence. But the girls were not noticing birds or
+squirrels to-day, and they became more and more
+silent as they neared the end of their journey.
+The little cabin was almost in sight when Genevieve
+caught Cordelia's arm convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"Cordelia, sh-h-h! Isn't that some one&mdash;talking?"
+she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia held her right foot suspended in the air
+for a brief half minute.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. That's Hermit Joe's voice. He <i>is</i> talking
+to some one."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there must be somebody there with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Genevieve, I&mdash;I <i>guess</i> I won't tell him
+to-day," faltered Cordelia. "Let's go back. I'll
+come again to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! Go back, and have you worrying
+about this thing another twenty-four hours? No,
+indeed! Come, Cordelia, we must tell him now.
+I think we ought to do it, really."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," sighed the other despairingly.
+"Come, then." The next minute she gave a sharp
+cry. "Why, Mr. <i>Edwards!</i>" she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>They had come to the turn which brought the
+cabin into plain sight; and on the stone step with
+Hermit Joe sat the man Cordelia had last seen
+driving away from the Six Star Ranch in Texas.</p>
+
+<p>Both men rose abruptly. The younger stepped
+forward. There was a whimsical smile on his lips,
+but his eyes were wonderfully tender.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, 'Mr. Edwards,' Miss Cordelia&mdash;but Mr.
+'Jonathan Edwards <i>Sanborn</i>.' You see, you didn't
+know all my name, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>To every one's surprise and consternation Cordelia
+sat down exactly where she was, and began
+to cry softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cordelia!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was at her friend's side at once. Hermit
+Joe looked plainly distressed. Mr. Jonathan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+Edwards Sanborn hurried forward in frightened
+dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Miss Cordelia, don't, please don't&mdash;I
+beg of you! Don't you understand? I am John
+Sanborn, Hermit Joe's son; and 'twas all through
+you that I came home again."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia only sobbed the harder.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve dropped on her knees at the girl's side,
+and put her arms about her.</p>
+
+<p>"Cordelia, Cordelia, dear&mdash;don't you see?&mdash;it's
+all come out right. You did find him, after
+all! Why are you crying so?"</p>
+
+<p>"T-that's why," stuttered Cordelia, smiling
+through tear-wet eyes. "It's because I d-did find
+him, and I'm so glad, and everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, if you're glad, why cry?" began Hermit
+Joe's son, in puzzled wonder, but Genevieve patted
+Cordelia's back, and smiled cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Cordelia," she declared. "I
+know just how you feel. <i>Now</i> you know what was
+the matter with me when you girls gave me the
+Texas yell at the station. Just cry all you like!"</p>
+
+<p>As if permission, only, were all she wanted, Cordelia
+wiped her eyes and smiled shyly into Mr.
+Jonathan Edwards Sanborn's face.</p>
+
+<p>"It is really you, isn't it?" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly is, Miss Cordelia."</p>
+
+<p>"And you wouldn't have come if it hadn't been
+for what I said?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No. You set me to thinking, and when I got
+to thinking I couldn't stop. And, of course, when
+I couldn't stop thinking I had to come; that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad," sighed Cordelia; then, interestedly:
+"How long have you been here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only since day before yesterday. No one in
+the village knows I'm here, I suspect. We've been
+talking over our plans&mdash;father and I. I want him
+to come West with me."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia got up from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad," she said again, simply. "Genevieve,
+I think we ought to be going."</p>
+
+<p>As she turned toward the path, Hermit Joe advanced
+so that he intercepted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Cordelia, I would like to tell how&mdash;but
+I can't. Still&mdash;I wish you could know how happy
+you've made me."</p>
+
+<p>Hermit Joe spoke with evident difficulty. His
+lips, so long unused to speaking, stumbled over the
+words; but his eyes glowed as with hidden fires,
+and his whole face was alight with joy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE NEW BOY</h3>
+
+
+<p>The first day of school, for Genevieve, was not
+a success. Before two hours of it had passed, indeed,
+she declared to herself that Miss Hart, her
+new teacher, was not at all promising, and that
+she did not like her nearly so well as she had liked
+Miss Palmer the year before. Making the final
+arrangements as to her studies and recitations, too,
+Genevieve privately voted a bore; and more than
+once her eyes turned longingly to the beautiful September
+sunshine out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>At recess time the Happy Hexagons met in the
+corridor and held what proved to be an indignation
+meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I for one don't like her a bit," declared
+Tilly, perking up the bow ends of the black sling
+that hung about her neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I," echoed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much like Miss Palmer last year, nor Miss
+Jones," said Bertha. "I told you we wouldn't get
+such a good one this term."</p>
+
+<p>"But, girls, I think we ought to try to like her,"
+ventured Cordelia, in a voice that told very plainly
+how she expected her remark to be received.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Of course," sniffed Tilly, disdainfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I'm sure she won't be half bad when
+we come to know her," cried Alma Lane. "She
+was so nervous this morning, and I think acted
+troubled over something."</p>
+
+<p>Tilly tossed her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Troubled! I should think we were the ones
+that were troubled. Did you ever see such a lot of
+rules and regulations about what not to do? She's
+scarcely left a thing we <i>can</i> do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, she has," groaned Genevieve. "We
+can sit still and look pleasant, and study, study,
+study! I reckon I shall have to, all right, too, this
+term, at the rate my studies and recitation hours
+are piling up," she finished, as the bell rang for
+them to go to their seats.</p>
+
+<p>All days&mdash;even the worst of them&mdash;come to
+an end sometime; and at last Genevieve was free
+to go home. Half-way to the Kennedy house a
+soft whistle of the Happy Hexagons' Club song
+sounded behind her; and a moment later Harold
+Day caught up with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he queried.</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't 'well' at all," wailed Genevieve,
+with a shake of her head.</p>
+
+<p>"So I judged from your face."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;have <i>you</i> ever had Miss Hart for a
+teacher?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; she's new this year. We had Miss Holbrook<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+in her place last year, and she was fine; but
+she got married, you know. She herself recommended
+Miss Hart for the position, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she?" sighed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"What a lugubrious face!" laughed Harold.
+"Suppose you tell me what is the matter with Miss
+Hart, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. It's just an intangible, indefinable
+'don't-like-her' feeling. She doesn't sit still a
+minute, and she's awful on rules. Tilly calls her
+'Miss Hartless.'"</p>
+
+<p>Harold laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Trust Tilly to call her something!" he rejoined.
+"But I don't believe the lady will be half
+bad when you get used to her."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what your cousin Alma says."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I believe she's right," declared Harold.
+"It sounds to me as if Miss Hart were nervous
+and afraid."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve opened her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid! A <i>teacher afraid!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you be afraid if you had to follow
+where you know there had been such favorites as
+Miss Holbrook and Miss Palmer were?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I never thought of it that way," frowned
+Genevieve. "I didn't suppose teachers ever had&mdash;er&mdash;feelings
+like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose teachers are&mdash;folks, like the
+rest of us," hazarded the youth, as he stopped a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+minute at the foot of the Kennedys' front
+walk.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve shook her head mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," she protested. "They always seem
+to me like things you buy for school, just like you
+do the books and chalk, and that they come in boxes
+all graded and sorted&mdash;primary, grammar, high
+school, French, German, and all that," she flashed
+over her shoulder, as she skipped up the walk
+toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" sighed Genevieve, bounding up on to
+the veranda, and dropping her books into a chair.
+"I'm going for a ride with Tilly, Aunt Julia, please,
+if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, dear; but don't stay too long.
+There's your practicing, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve scowled, and made an impatient gesture&mdash;neither
+of which Mrs. Kennedy seemed to
+notice.</p>
+
+<p>"You have your watch, I see," she went on
+serenely; "so I don't think you'll forget."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve bit her lip. She threw a hurried
+glance into Mrs. Kennedy's face; but that, too,
+Mrs. Kennedy did not appear to notice.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Aunt Julia," said Genevieve, a little constrainedly,
+as she went to saddle her horse, "I
+sha'n't&mdash;forget."</p>
+
+<p>When quite by herself around the corner of the
+house, she drew a long breath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," she muttered fiercely behind her
+teeth, "sometimes I&mdash;I just wish folks <i>weren't</i>
+so good to me! Seems to me I just <i>can't</i> waste
+a whole hour of this tiny little bit of glorious day
+that is left, practising a stupid old 'one, two&mdash;one,
+two&mdash;one, two!'" Then, with apparent irrelevance,
+she patted her blue-and-gold chatelaine
+watch remorsefully&mdash;and it may be noted right
+here that she came back in ample time for her hour
+of practising before supper.</p>
+
+<p>There was a new boy at school the next morning.
+This fact in itself did not particularly interest the
+Happy Hexagons until they learned his name. It
+was "O. B. J. Holmes." When the initials did not
+seem quite to satisfy Miss Hart, he hesitated visibly,
+then said, with a very painful blush, that the "O"
+might be put down "Oliver." It was plainly on
+the teacher's tongue to ask about the other letters;
+but, after a moment's hesitation, she passed over
+the matter, and turned to something else.</p>
+
+<p>As usual the Happy Hexagons found themselves
+together at recess time, and as was natural, perhaps,
+the subject of the new boy came up for discussion.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe 'Oliver' is ever his name," declared
+Tilly, stoutly. "No sane youth in his right
+mind would blush so beautifully over just 'Oliver.'
+Besides, he didn't <i>say</i> it was Oliver."</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 292px;">
+<img src="images/gs05.jpg" width="292" height="400" alt="&quot;&#39;HOW DO YOU DO, MR. OLIVER HOLMES,&#39; SHE BEGAN&quot;" title="&quot;&#39;HOW DO YOU DO, MR. OLIVER HOLMES,&#39; SHE BEGAN&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;&#39;HOW DO YOU DO, MR. OLIVER HOLMES,&#39; SHE BEGAN&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I saw Miss Hart talking to him as I came out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+just now," announced Bertha, "and his face was
+even redder than ever. Hers was getting red, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there <i>is</i> something," cried Genevieve, excitedly,
+"and it's a mystery. I love mysteries!
+'O. B. J.'&mdash;what a really funny set of letters!"</p>
+
+<p>"Must be 'Oliver Ben Johnson,'" laughed
+Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Sounds to me like 'O Be Joyful,'" giggled
+Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-h!&mdash;Tilly!" warned Cordelia, in a horrified
+whisper. "He's coming. He'll hear you!"</p>
+
+<p>But Tilly was not to be silenced. Tilly, for some
+reason, felt recklessly mischievous that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course his, name is 'O Be Joyful,'"
+she cried in gay, shrill tones that carried the words
+straight to the ears of a rather awkward-appearing
+boy coming toward them. "How could it be anything else?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy blushed hotly. For a moment it seemed
+as if he would stop and speak; but the next minute
+he had turned away his face, and was passing them
+hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that the unexpected happened. With
+a quick little impulsive movement, Genevieve stepped
+to the new boy's side, and held out a frankly cordial
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Mr. Oliver Holmes," she began
+breathlessly, but with hurried determination.
+"I am Genevieve Hartley, and I'd like to welcome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+you to our school. These are my friends: Cordelia
+Wilson, Alma Lane, Bertha Brown, Elsie Martin,
+and Tilly Mack. We hope you'll soon get acquainted
+and feel at home here," she finished, her
+face almost as painful a red as was the boy's.</p>
+
+<p>O. B. J. Holmes clutched Genevieve's hand,
+stammered a confused something in response to the
+introductions, and flung a terrifiedly uncertain bow
+in the direction of the wide-eyed girls; then he
+turned and fled precipitately.</p>
+
+<p>Behind him he left, for one brief minute, a dazed
+silence before Tilly lifted her chin disagreeably and
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dear me! For so <i>marked</i> a bid for his
+favor, seems to me our young friend doesn't show
+proper appreciation&mdash;to run away like that!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve colored angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"That was no bid for his favor, and you know
+it, Tilly Mack!"</p>
+
+<p>"No?" teased Tilly, hatefully. "Well, I'm sure
+I should have thought it was if a perfect stranger
+flung herself in my way like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly, Tilly&mdash;don't!" begged Cordelia, almost
+tearfully.</p>
+
+<p>It was Genevieve's turn to lift a disdainful chin.
+She eyed Tilly scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, you wouldn't&mdash;not if some other perfect
+stranger had just called out a particularly hateful,
+horrid joke about something you were not in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+the least to blame for! If you hadn't said what you
+did, I shouldn't have said what I did, Tilly Mack.
+As it was, I&mdash;I just couldn't help it; I was so
+sorry for him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was just being sorry, then! Oh, excuse
+me; I didn't know," cooed Tilly, smoothly. "You
+see, it looked so&mdash;different!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia. "Genevieve, don't
+you mind one bit what she says!" But Genevieve,
+without a word, had turned and was walking swiftly
+away.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Tilly Mack," chorused several indignant
+voices; and Elsie Martin added severely: "I've
+got my opinion of <i>you</i>&mdash;after all Genevieve has
+just done for us! I'm sure, I think it was lovely of
+her to speak to that boy like that!"</p>
+
+<p>Tilly flushed uncomfortably. Her tongue had
+gone much farther than she had intended it to go.
+She did not like to think, either, of that Texas trip
+just then. But the very shame that she felt made
+her only the more determined not to show it&mdash;then.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! there wasn't a thing I said that anybody
+need to make such a fuss about," she declared
+loftily; then, as she spied Harold Day coming
+toward them, she called in a merry voice: "Seen
+the new boy, Harold? His name is 'O. B. J.
+Holmes.' <i>I</i> say his name is 'O Be Joyful,' and the
+girls are shocked at my disrespect."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" laughed Harold. "Well, I'm not
+sure I'd like that name myself very well&mdash;even if
+'tis a cheerful one! Where's Genevieve? One
+doesn't often see one of you without all of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she was here, but she's gone. She was the
+most shocked of all," answered Tilly, with mock
+humility. "Probably she's gone to tell him so.
+You see, she shook hands with him and introduced
+us all around, and said she'd like to welcome him
+and that she hoped he'd enjoy it here."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tilly!" remonstrated Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cordelia, didn't she?" asked Tilly, in a
+particularly innocent tone of voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Y-yes," admitted Cordelia, reluctantly,
+"only&mdash;" The bell rang and the group broke
+up, with Cordelia's sentence still unfinished.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the day for the Happy Hexagons
+was not an easy one. Tilly looked rebellious&mdash;and
+ashamed. Cordelia looked ready to cry. Genevieve
+kept her eyes on her books and seemed unaware
+that there was such a thing in the world
+as a girls' club, of which she was a prominent member.
+Bertha, Elsie, and Alma divided their time
+between scowling at Tilly and trying to attract
+Genevieve's attention.</p>
+
+<p>It was during the Latin recitation, which came
+just before closing time at noon, that Cordelia's
+perturbation culminated in a blunder that sent
+most of the class into convulsive giggles, and even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+brought a twitching smile to Genevieve's tense
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia, rising to translate in her turn, hurried
+blindly through a paragraph until she came to the
+words "sub jugum". Now Cordelia very well
+knew what "sub jugum" meant; but her eyes, at
+the moment, were divided between her book and
+Genevieve's flushed cheeks, and so saw, apparently,
+but half of the word "jugum". At all events, the
+next moment the class were amazed to learn from
+Cordelia's lips that C&aelig;sar sent the army&mdash;not
+"under the yoke" as was expected&mdash;but "under
+the jug."</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia knew, before the titters of the class told
+her, what she had said; and with hot blushes she
+made a hasty correction. But to Cordelia, usually
+so conscientiously accurate and circumspect, the
+thing was a tragedy, and, as such, would not soon
+be forgotten by her. She knew, too, that the class
+would not let her forget it even could she herself
+do so. If she had doubted this, she did not doubt
+it longer, after school was dismissed, for she was
+assailed on all sides by a merry bombardment of
+gibes and questions as to just what sort of jug it
+was, anyhow, under which C&aelig;sar sent his army.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve, only, had nothing to say. She did
+not, indeed, even glance toward Cordelia. With
+averted face she hurried through the corridor and
+out the street door alone. In the yard a quick step<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+behind her overtook her, and she found herself
+looking into the flushed, agitated face of the new
+boy.</p>
+
+<p>O. B. J. Holmes would not, at first sight, be called
+a good-looking youth. His face was freckled, and
+his nose was rather large. But his mouth was well-shaped,
+and his eyes were large and expressive.
+They looked into Genevieve's now with a gaze that
+was clear and honest and manly.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Genevieve, may I walk with you a little
+way, please?" he asked with disarming directness.
+"I want to speak to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of&mdash;of course," stammered Genevieve.
+Then she colored painfully: behind her she heard
+Tilly's laughing voice, followed by Alma's lower
+one, and Harold's.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to thank you for what you did this
+morning," began O. B. J. Holmes, falling into step
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that wasn't&mdash;wasn't anything," stammered
+Genevieve, nervously, still acutely conscious of the
+eyes that she knew were behind her.</p>
+
+<p>The boy smiled a little wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not, to you," he answered; "but if
+you'd been named 'O Be Joyful' and had had to
+suffer for it as I have, you'd think it was something."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say your name <i>is</i> 'O Be
+Joyful'!" gasped Genevieve.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He nodded, his face showing a deeper red.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's what I wanted to tell you. I didn't
+feel square not to have you know it, after you stood
+up so bravely for 'Oliver'. Of course, if you like,
+you may tell the rest. I suppose I was foolish to
+try to keep it to myself, anyway," he sighed moodily.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell it! Of course I sha'n't tell it," declared
+Genevieve, warmly. She had forgotten all about
+those watching eyes behind her, now.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," smiled the boy again, a little wistfully.
+"Miss Hart knows it, of course. I told her
+at recess; and the principal, Mr. Jackson, knows it.
+He agreed to letting me be called 'Oliver,' and so
+does Miss Hart. Still, I don't suppose I can keep
+it, and it will get out. I&mdash;I supposed it had got
+out when I heard your friend this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it isn't out, and nobody knows it&mdash;but
+me," declared Genevieve, with more warmth than
+grammar. "That was only some of Tilly Mack's
+nonsense; and when you know her better, you'll
+know that nobody pays any attention to what Tilly
+says." Genevieve stopped abruptly, and bit her lip.
+She was thinking that not so very long before, she
+herself <i>had</i> paid attention to something Tilly Mack
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think mother ever realized just what
+such a name would be for a fellow to carry through
+life," said the boy, after a moment's silence.
+"There were five of us children, and she gave us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+all queer names&mdash;names that expressed something
+that had just been happening in the family, you understand.
+For instance, my oldest brother was born
+in a year when the crops failed, and they called him
+'Tribulation.' Crops were good, you see, when I
+came," he added, with a rueful smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, how&mdash;how funny and&mdash;and terrible,"
+breathed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was terrible&mdash;but mother never thought
+of it that way, I'm sure. I'm glad she can't know&mdash;now&mdash;just
+how hard it's been for me. When
+I came here, I knew I was a perfect stranger and
+I determined folks shouldn't know. I'd be 'Oliver
+B. J. Holmes.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And you shall be 'Oliver B. J. Holmes,'"
+averred Genevieve, lifting her chin. "Oh, of course
+Tilly will call you the other, and maybe some of the
+rest will, sometimes; but don't let that fret you for
+a moment. Just remember that <i>no one knows</i>&mdash;for
+I sha'n't tell it. And now good-by. This is my
+street," she finished, with a cheery nod.</p>
+
+<p>It was not easy for Genevieve to go back to the
+short session of school that afternoon; but she went&mdash;and
+she tried to appear as if everything was as
+usual when she met Cordelia and Elsie at the corner.
+Cordelia and Elsie were only too glad to follow her
+lead. Not until they met Tilly in the school yard&mdash;and
+saw her turn hastily away without speaking&mdash;did
+they show how really constrained they felt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Genevieve, apparently, saw and felt nothing of
+this&mdash;but she never looked toward Tilly that afternoon;
+and when school was dismissed she hurried
+cheerfully away with only a smiling nod toward
+Cordelia and Alma, whom she passed in the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>At home Genevieve went immediately to her
+practising&mdash;somewhat to Mrs. Kennedy's surprise.
+She practised, too, quite fifteen minutes over her
+hour&mdash;still more to Mrs. Kennedy's surprise.
+There was, also, a certain unsympathetic hardness
+in the chords and runs that puzzled the lady not a
+little; but in the face of their obvious accuracy,
+and of Genevieve's apparent faithfulness, Mrs.
+Kennedy did not like to find fault.</p>
+
+<p>Just how long Genevieve would have practised is
+doubtful, perhaps, had there not sounded an insistently
+repeated whistle of the Hexagon Club song
+from the garden. The girl went to the open window
+then.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you whistle, Harold?" she asked, not too
+graciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I whistle?" retorted the boy, testily. "Oh,
+no, I never whistled <i>once</i>&mdash;but I did four times!
+See here, I thought your practice-hour was an
+<i>hour</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"It is."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you've been working fifteen minutes over-time
+already."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Have I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you have; and your constitution positively
+needs a walk. Come, it's your plain duty to your
+health. Will you go?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve dimpled into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," she cried more naturally. "Then
+I'll come. I'll be out in a jiffy."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go up through the pasture to the woods,"
+proposed Harold, when Genevieve appeared, swinging
+her hat.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," nodded Genevieve, somewhat listlessly.
+"Anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>In the woods, some time later, Genevieve and
+Harold dropped themselves down to rest. It was
+then that Harold cleared his throat a little nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"You have a new boy in school, I hear," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve turned quickly. For a moment she
+looked almost angry. Then, unexpectedly, she
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been talking with Tilly, I perceive,"
+she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; Tilly has only been talking with me,"
+retorted Harold, laughing in his turn&mdash;though a
+little constrainedly.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve grew suddenly sober.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care; I'm glad I did it," she declared.
+"You know <i>what</i> Tilly can be when she wants to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+be&mdash;and she evidently wanted to be, this morning.
+Just because a boy is new and has got freckles and
+a queer name, is no reason why he should be made
+fun of like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not!" Then, still a little constrainedly,
+Harold asked: "How do you like him? I
+saw you talking with him afterward."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve frowned thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I don't know&mdash;I hadn't thought," she
+answered. "But I reckon perhaps I like him. He
+talked quite a little, and he seemed rather nice, I
+think&mdash;just frank and folksy, you know. Yes, I
+think I like him. I think we'll all like him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course," agreed Harold without enthusiasm,
+getting suddenly to his feet. "Well, I suppose
+we must be going."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course," sighed Genevieve, glancing
+down at her little blue-enamel watch; "but it <i>is</i>
+nice here!"</p>
+
+<p>The homeward walk was somewhat of a silent
+one. Harold was unusually quiet, and Genevieve
+was wondering just how and when peace and happiness
+were to reign once more in the Hexagon Club.
+She was wondering, too, if ever she could be just
+the same to Tilly&mdash;unless Tilly had first something
+to say to her.</p>
+
+<p>As it happened, Genevieve's questions were answered,
+in a way, before she slept; for, after she
+had gone up to bed that night, there came a ring at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+the doorbell, followed, a moment later, by a tap at
+her door.</p>
+
+<p>"It do be a note for you, Miss Genevieve," explained
+Nancy.</p>
+
+<p>"A note&mdash;for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss; from Miss Tilly, I think. She's
+down at the door with her brother."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve did not answer. Her eyes were devouring
+the note.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Genevieve</span>:&mdash;" Tilly had written. "I'm
+so ashamed I just can't live till you tell me you forgive
+me. I have begged Howard to take me down
+there. I know I never, never can sleep till I've
+asked your pardon for being so perfectly horrid
+this morning. Will you ever, ever forgive and love
+me again?</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 3em;">"Your miserable, remorseful</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Tilly</span>.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"P. S. I think what you did was just the bravest,
+loveliest thing I ever saw a girl do.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">t. m.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"P. S. again. I'm so late I'm afraid you've
+gone to bed; but if you haven't, and if you do forgive
+me, come to your window and wave to me. I
+shall watch with what Quentina would call soulful,
+hungry eyes.</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+"<span class="smcap">t.</span>"<br />
+</div></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's all right; thank you, Nancy. There
+isn't any answer," smiled Genevieve as she closed
+the door. The next moment she darted across the
+room, plucked a great pink aster from the vase on
+the table, hurried to the window and threw up the
+screen.</p>
+
+<p>Below she saw the automobile and the two figures
+therein. Faintly visible, too, was the upturned face
+of the girl, containing, presumably, the "hungry,
+soulful eyes."</p>
+
+<p>The next moment, plump into Tilly's lap, fell a
+huge pink aster.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>GENEVIEVE LEARNS SOMETHING NOT IN BOOKS</h3>
+
+
+<p>School, in an amazingly short time, fell into its
+customary routine. Genevieve, it is true, did not
+cease to pine for long, free hours out of doors; but
+with as good grace as she could muster she submitted
+to the inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hart was still not a favorite in the school,
+and no one seemed to realize this more keenly than
+did Miss Hart herself. At all events, as the days
+passed, she grew thinner and paler looking, and
+more nervous and worried in her manner. While
+none of the Happy Hexagons deliberately set herself
+to making trouble, certainly none of them tried
+to cause matters to be any easier for her. The
+girls themselves had long since forgotten their brief
+day of unpleasantness regarding O. B. J. Holmes,
+and were more devoted than ever, after this, their
+first quarrel.</p>
+
+<p>In the Kennedy home, too, matters had settled
+into their usual routine. Miss Jane had returned,
+and the days, for Genevieve, were full of study,
+practice, and the usual number of lessons in cooking
+and sewing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As the crisp October days came, every pleasant
+Saturday afternoon found the Hexagon Club off
+for a long walk or ride, sometimes by themselves,
+sometimes with Harold, Charlie, O. B. J. Holmes,
+or some of the other boys and girls as invited guests.</p>
+
+<p>O. B. J. Holmes had long since ceased to be the
+"new boy." He was not, indeed, exactly a favorite
+with some of the young people, but he was included
+frequently in their merrymakings&mdash;chiefly because
+Genevieve declared openly that she thought he
+ought to be. He was not called "Oliver" except
+in the classroom. Outside he was known usually
+as "O. B. J." slurred into "Obejay." Sometimes,
+it is true, Tilly's old "O Be Joyful" was heard,
+but not often&mdash;perhaps because the lad appeared
+not to care if they did call him that, specially if
+Genevieve were near to join in the good-natured
+laugh with which he greeted it.</p>
+
+<p>Undeniably, this frank friendliness of the most
+popular girl in school had much to do with the way
+the others regarded him; though they were at a
+loss, sometimes, to account for a certain quality in
+that friendship, which they could not fathom.</p>
+
+<p>"It's for all the world as if you'd known each
+other before," Harold explained it a little aggrievedly
+one day to Genevieve, when O. B. J.
+Holmes had just thrown her one of his merry
+glances at a sudden revival of Tilly's "O Be Joyful"
+name. "Say, <i>have</i> you known him before?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed&mdash;but she shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but maybe I do know him now&mdash;a little
+better than you do," she answered demurely, thinking
+of the name that Harold did not even suspect.</p>
+
+<p>School this year, for Genevieve, was meaning
+two new experiences. One was that for the first
+time class officers were elected; the other, that a
+school magazine was started. In both of these she
+bore a prominent part. In the one she was unanimously
+elected president; in the other she was
+appointed correspondent for her class by the Editor-in-Chief.
+By each, however, she was quite overwhelmed.</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't think I can do them&mdash;not either
+of them," she declared to Mrs. Kennedy and Miss
+Jane Chick when she had brought home the news.
+"To be Class President you have to be awfully
+dignified and conduct meetings and know parliamentary
+law, and all that."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not afraid of anything <i>there</i> hurting you,"
+smiled Miss Jane. "In fact, it strikes me that it
+will do you a great deal of good."</p>
+
+<p>"Y-yes, I suppose you would think so," smiled
+Genevieve, a little dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'm sure it's an honor," Mrs. Kennedy reminded
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> glad they wanted me," she admitted
+frankly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And what is this magazine affair?" asked Miss
+Jane.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and that's another thing," sighed Genevieve.
+"I can't write things. If it were only Quentina,
+now&mdash;she could do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you have written for the Chronicles, my
+dear," observed Mrs. Kennedy. "Have you given
+those up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; we still keep them, only we have entries
+once a week now instead of every day. There isn't
+so much doing here as there was in Texas, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do write for that," said Miss Jane.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but <i>that's</i> just for us," argued Genevieve.
+"I don't mind that. But this has got to be printed,
+Miss Jane&mdash;printed right out for everybody to
+read! If it were only Quentina, now&mdash;she'd glory
+in it. And&mdash;oh, Miss Jane, how I wish you could
+see Quentina," broke off Genevieve, suddenly.
+"Dear me! wouldn't she just hit on your name,
+though! She'd be rhyming it in no time, and have
+'Miss Jane at the window-pane,' before you could
+turn around!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite an inducement for me to know her, I'm
+sure," observed Miss Jane, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed, but she sighed again, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyhow, she would do it lovely&mdash;this
+correspondence business; but I can't, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you supposed to do?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, just hand in things&mdash;anything that's of
+interest in my class; but I don't know <i>what</i> to
+say."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps the others can help you," suggested
+Aunt Julia.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve gave a sudden laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"They'd like to&mdash;some of them. Tilly's tried
+already. She gave me two items this noon, all
+written down. One was that O. B. J. had a new
+freckle on the left side of his nose, and the other
+that Bertha hadn't said 'I told you so' to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve!" protested the shocked Miss Jane.
+"You wouldn't&mdash;" She stopped helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Miss Jane, I wouldn't," laughed Genevieve,
+merrily, as she rose from the dinner-table.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was her duties as president, and her
+new task as correspondent, or perhaps it was just
+the allurement of the beautiful out-of-doors that
+made it so hard for Genevieve to spend time on her
+lessons that autumn. Perhaps, too, her lack of
+enthusiasm for Miss Hart had something to do
+with it. Whatever it was, to concentrate her attention
+on Latin verbs and French nouns grew harder
+and harder as the days passed, until at last&mdash;in
+the frenzied rush of a study-hour one day&mdash;she
+did what she had never done before: wrote the
+meaning of some of the words under the Latin
+version in her book.</p>
+
+<p>It was, apparently, a great success. Her work in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+class was so unusually good that Miss Hart's tired
+eyes brightened, and her lips spoke a word of high
+praise&mdash;praise that sent to Genevieve's cheek a
+flush that Genevieve herself tried to think was all
+gratification. But&mdash;the next day she did not write
+any words in the book. The out-of-doors, however,
+was just as alluring, and the outside duties were
+just as pressing; so there was just as little time as
+ever for the Latin verbs. They suffered, too, in
+consequence. So, also, did Genevieve; for this
+time, Miss Hart, stung into irritation by this apparently
+unnecessary falling back into carelessness,
+said a few particularly sharp words that sent Genevieve
+out of the class with very red cheeks and very
+angry eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I just hate Miss Hart and school, and&mdash;and
+everything," stormed Genevieve hotly, five minutes
+later, as she met Cordelia and Tilly in the corridor
+after school was dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Genevieve," remonstrated Cordelia, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do. I didn't have time to get that lesson&mdash;but
+a lot Miss Hart cared for that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you use a pony?" twittered Tilly,
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>"A&mdash;pony?" Genevieve's eyes were puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>Tilly laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it isn't one of your bronchos," she giggled,
+"and it's easier to ride than they are! It's just a
+nice little book that you buy&mdash;a Latin translation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+you know, all done by somebody else&mdash;and no
+bother to you."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;is that quite&mdash;fair?" frowned Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m; well, I presume Miss Hartless wouldn't
+call it&mdash;good form," she shrugged.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Tilly Mack! of course it isn't fair, and
+you know it," cried Cordelia. "It's worse than
+cribbing."</p>
+
+<p>"What's cribbing?" demanded Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only way out when you haven't got
+your lesson," answered Tilly, promptly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's writing the translation under the words in
+the book," explained Elsie Martin, who, coming
+up at the moment, had heard Genevieve's question.</p>
+
+<p>"It's just plain cheating&mdash;and it's horrid," declared
+Cordelia, with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve's face turned a sudden, painful red,
+for some unapparent reason.</p>
+
+<p>"Y-yes, it must be," she murmured faintly, as
+she turned to go.</p>
+
+<p>On the walk home that noon, Harold, as was frequently
+the case, overtook her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what part of the world would you like
+changed to-day?" he asked, with a smiling glance
+at her frowning face.</p>
+
+<p>"Chiefly, I reckon I'd like no school," sighed
+Genevieve; "but if I can't have that, I'd like another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+box of teachers opened so we could have a
+new one."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the trouble now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I reckon the trouble is with me," admitted
+Genevieve, ruefully. "Anyhow, Miss Jane would
+say it was. I flunked in C&aelig;sar&mdash;but that's no reason
+why Miss Hart should have been so disagreeable!
+But then, I suppose she has to be. She came
+out of that kind of a box, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Harold laughed, though a little gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"You still think they come all boxed, sorted, and
+labeled, do you?" he said. "And that they aren't
+'just folks' at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I still think so. They never seem a bit
+like 'folks' to me. It's their business to sit up
+there stiff and solemn and stern, and see that you
+behave and learn your lessons. I never saw one
+that I liked, except Miss Palmer and Miss Jones&mdash;but
+then, they came out of a jolly box, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky ladies!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed rebelliously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know I'm horrid," she admitted; "but&mdash;well,
+I went off for a ride with Tilly yesterday
+after school, instead of paying attention to his Imperial
+Highness, C&aelig;sar; and that's what was the
+trouble. But, Harold, it was so perfectly glorious
+out I had to&mdash;I just had to! I tell you, every bit
+of me was tingling to go! Now what do you suppose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+Miss Hart knows of a feeling like that? She
+simply couldn't understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;Miss Hart doesn't look very old&mdash;to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve stopped short, and turned half
+around.</p>
+
+<p>"Old! Why, she's a <i>teacher</i>, Harold!"</p>
+
+<p>Harold chuckled, as they started forward again.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to see some teachers' faces if they
+could hear you say 'teacher' in that tone of voice,
+young lady!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! I reckon it would take considerable to
+make me think of any teacher as <i>young</i>," retorted
+Genevieve, with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"All right; but&mdash;aren't you coming out, later,
+for a walk or&mdash;or something?" asked Harold, a
+little anxiously, as they reached the Kennedy driveway.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No, little boy," she answered, with mock cheerfulness.
+"I'm going to practise, then I'm going to
+study my algebra, then I'm going to study my Latin,
+then I'm going to study my French, then I'm going
+to study my English history, then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Good-by!</i>" laughed Harold, clapping his hands
+to his ears, and hurrying away.</p>
+
+<p>Unhesitating as was Genevieve's assertion of her
+intentions, those intentions were not carried out,
+even to the practising, first on the list; for, in putting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+down her books, Genevieve dropped some loose
+papers to the floor. The papers were some that had
+that day been returned by Miss Hart; and, as the
+girl gathered them up now, a sheet of note paper,
+covered with handwriting entirely different from
+her own, attracted her attention.</p>
+
+<p>She recognized the writing at once as that of
+Miss Hart, and she supposed at first that the paper
+must contain some special suggestions or criticisms
+in regard to her own work. With a quick frown,
+therefore, she began to read it.</p>
+
+<p>She had not read five lines before she knew that
+the paper did not contain criticism or suggestions.
+But so dazed, so surprised, and so absorbed was she,
+by that time, that she quite forgot that she was
+reading something most certainly never meant for
+her eyes to see.</p>
+
+<p>The paper was evidently the second sheet of a
+letter. The writing&mdash;fine, but plain&mdash;began close
+to the top of the first page, in what was apparently
+the middle of a sentence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"speak freely, I am sure.</p>
+
+<p>"Things are not getting any better, but rather
+worse. I cannot seem to win them. Of course I
+understood that my task would be difficult, following,
+as I did, two such popular teachers. I think,
+perhaps, that this very fact has made me nervous;
+and so&mdash;I have not appeared even at my best.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+But, oh, I have tried!&mdash;you cannot know how I
+have tried!</p>
+
+<p>"I am nearly sick with terror for fear I shall lose
+my position&mdash;and of course <i>that</i> doesn't help me
+to be the cool, calm, judicious person in the chair
+I ought to be. But it means so much to me&mdash;this
+place&mdash;and if I should lose it, there would be poor
+Annie deprived of her comforts again; for, of
+course, a failure here would mean that not for a
+long time (if ever!) could I get another like it.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me for burdening you with all this,
+but it had got to the point where I must speak to
+some one. Then, too, I did not know but you could
+perhaps tell me why I have failed&mdash;I have tried so
+hard myself to understand!</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think I'm too lenient. Sometimes
+I think I'm too strict. Sometimes I'm so worried
+for fear they'll think me too young and inexperienced,
+that I don't dare to act myself at all&mdash;then
+I'm stiffly dignified in a way that I know must be
+horrid.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, I think the whole secret of the matter
+is&mdash;that I'm afraid. If once I could have a confident
+assurance that I <i>am</i> doing well, and that I
+<i>am</i> winning out&mdash;I think I should win out. I do,
+truly!</p>
+
+<p>"And now I must stop and go to work. I'm in
+the grove, back of the schoolhouse. I often bring
+my papers here to correct. I have them with me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+to-night; but&mdash;I've been writing to you instead
+of working. I'll finish this later. But, really, already
+I feel a little better. It's done me good, just
+to say things to you. Of course, to no one else
+could I&mdash;"</p></div>
+
+<p>There was a little more, but Genevieve stopped
+here. Not until she read that last sentence did she
+realize in the least what she was doing. Then, hurriedly,
+with flushed cheeks and shamed eyes, she
+thrust the letter out of sight under the papers. But
+there was something besides shame in her eyes;
+there was a very real, and a very tender sympathy
+for&mdash;folks.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think that I&mdash;read it," she breathed.
+Then, suddenly, she snatched up the papers again.
+"But she mustn't know&mdash;she <i>mustn't</i> know,"
+choked the girl. "Maybe, if I run, I can get there
+in time and tuck it into her desk. I <i>must</i> get there
+in time," she declared aloud, darting out of the
+house and up the street without once looking back
+toward an amazed Miss Jane, watching her from
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>As Genevieve hoped would be the case, the janitor
+had not finished his nightly duties. The great front
+door stood wide open, and Genevieve made short
+work of reaching her own room. As she opened
+that door, however, she paused in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hart was in her chair. Her arms lay folded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+on the desk before her, and her face was hidden in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The knob under Genevieve's nerveless fingers
+clicked sharply, and Miss Hart raised her head with
+a start.</p>
+
+<p>During the one brief moment that Genevieve
+gazed into her teacher's startled eyes, wild plans
+raced through her mind: she would run; she would
+go to her own desk and leave the papers, then destroy
+the fateful letter to-morrow; she would walk
+up and hand the letter to Miss Hart now, and confess
+that she had read it; she would&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Genevieve!" cried Miss Hart, a little
+huskily. "Did you&mdash;forget something?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Miss Hart; yes&mdash;well, I mean&mdash;it isn't
+that I <i>forgot</i> exactly. I&mdash;I didn't know," she faltered,
+realizing more than ever the meaning of the
+letter she had just read, now that the wistful-eyed
+writer of it sat before her, bearing plain evidence of
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I do anything for you?" Miss Hart asked.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve went, then, straight to the desk. The
+papers&mdash;with the letter&mdash;were rolled tightly in
+one hand.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Miss Hart, thank you; but&mdash;isn't there
+something that&mdash;that I can do for&mdash;you?" she
+faltered.</p>
+
+<p>What happened next was, to Genevieve, certainly,
+most disconcerting. Miss Hart gave one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+look into Genevieve's eyes, then dropped her face
+into her hands and burst into tears. At Genevieve's
+aghast exclamation, however, she raised her head
+determinedly and began to wipe her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, my dear," she smiled brightly,
+winking off the tears. "That was very foolish and
+very silly of me, and you must forget all about it.
+I was a little homesick, I'm afraid, and perhaps a
+bit blue; and your eyes looked into mine so frankly
+and honestly, and with such a courageous 'I'll-try-to-help-you'
+look, that&mdash;that&mdash;well, you know
+what I did. But come&mdash;let us talk no more of this,
+my dear! Let us get out of this stifling room, and
+into the blessed out-of-doors. We'll go into the
+grove for a little walk. These four walls have been
+just smothering me all day!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve opened wide her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, do <i>you</i> feel that way&mdash;too?" she asked
+incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Hart colored a little.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I do, my dear&mdash;though probably I
+ought not to have said just that&mdash;to you," she
+sighed constrainedly. "But&mdash;to tell the truth,
+I've never been able quite to see what houses were
+made for, I suspect, since I used to ask that question
+as a little girl. I imagine 'twas in summer,
+however, not winter, when I asked it," she finished
+a little tremulously, as they passed through the hall
+to the outer door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Once again Genevieve opened wide her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ask that&mdash;really? Why, Father says
+that was one of <i>my</i> questions, too," she breathed
+rapturously. "Why, you are&mdash;you are just
+like&mdash;" with a little cough Genevieve choked off
+the "folks" before it was spoken. The word was
+"me" when it finally left her lips.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderful half-hour that Genevieve
+spent then in the grove. Over in the west the sun
+was low, and the shadows were long under the
+trees. The air was crisp, but not too crisp, if one
+were walking&mdash;and she and Miss Hart were walking.
+They were talking, too.</p>
+
+<p>They talked of birds and beasts and flowers.
+They talked of school and study, and Latin lessons
+that were so hard to learn when the out-of-doors
+called. They talked of the days and lessons to
+come; and they spoke&mdash;at least, Miss Hart did&mdash;of
+what fine work Genevieve was sure to do before
+the year was through. They did not talk, however,
+of Miss Hart's tears in the classroom, nor of Miss
+Hart's letter still tightly clutched in Genevieve's
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve, however, had not forgotten the letter;
+and when she walked alone toward home, a little
+later, she wondered what she should do with it. To
+give it openly back to Miss Hart, she felt was not
+to be thought of; at the same time she doubted if
+in any other way she could return it to her now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+The letter certainly had already accomplished two
+things: never again would she so misjudge Miss
+Hart; never again, too, would she let the others
+so misjudge her, if she could help it&mdash;and she
+believed she could help it. She should try, certainly.
+As for the letter&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss," broke in Harold's slightly aggrieved
+voice behind her, "is <i>this</i> the way you
+practise, and study your Latin and your French and
+your algebra and your English history?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was too absorbed even to notice the
+taunt, much less to reply to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Harold," she sighed, "I wish you'd tell me
+something."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly! You have only to command me,"
+bowed the lad, with mock pomposity, as he fell into
+step with her.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was frowning. She did not even
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Harold, if you had something that belonged to
+somebody else, and they didn't know you had it
+and would feel dreadfully if they found out you
+had it, do you think you ought to give it back to
+them, and so let them know you had it, when all
+the time if they <i>didn't</i> know you had it, they
+wouldn't care at all?"</p>
+
+<p>"W-w-well!" whistled Harold. "Do you mind&mdash;er&mdash;giving
+me that again, now&mdash;say, in pieces
+a foot long this time? If I were Cordelia I might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+give you my answer right off the handle, but&mdash;I'm
+not Cordelia, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed a little ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"There wouldn't anybody know, of course, unless
+I told the rest; and I can't tell the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe not," smiled Harold, oddly; "but I'll
+wager you'll have to be telling something to Miss
+Jane pretty quick now. I saw you when you flew
+out of the yard an hour ago, and I fancy Miss Jane
+must have seen you, too. At any rate, she's been
+to the door three times since, to my knowledge, to
+look for you."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve clapped her hand to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! I never thought to tell them a word.
+I just ran."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I noticed you&mdash;ran," observed Harold,
+dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"And they always want to know just where I
+am," sighed Genevieve. "O dear! if you do something
+bad in order to do something good, which is
+it&mdash;bad or good?"</p>
+
+<p>Harold shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not in mine, either," he retorted whimsically.
+"Really, Miss, your questions on ethics
+this afternoon do you credit&mdash;but they're too much
+for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I reckon this one is for me," sighed
+Genevieve again, as she came in sight of the house
+and saw Miss Jane Chick at the window. "But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+other one&mdash;I know the answer to that. I shall
+burn it up," she said decisively, clutching even more
+tightly the roll of papers in her hand, as she turned
+in at the Kennedys' front walk.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>A TEXAS "MISSIONARY"</h3>
+
+
+<p>October passed and November came. School
+was decidedly more bearable now, in the opinion of
+Genevieve, perhaps because it was a rainy month;
+but Genevieve preferred to think it was because of
+Miss Hart. It was strange, really, how much Miss
+Hart had improved as a teacher!&mdash;all the school
+agreed to that. Even Tilly ceased to call her "Hartless."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe she came in a jolly box, after all,"
+Harold said one day to Genevieve; but Genevieve
+tossed her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! She wasn't in any box at all, Harold.
+She's&mdash;<i>folks!</i>" And Harold saw that, in spite of
+the lightness of her words, there were almost tears
+in Genevieve's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Presidential duties, too, were easier for Genevieve
+now. They proved to be, in fact, very far from
+arduous; and, as Tilly declared, they were, indeed,
+"dreadfully honorable."</p>
+
+<p>As correspondent for the school magazine Genevieve
+did not feel herself to be a success. She wrote
+few items, and sent in even fewer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Those she did write represented hours of labor,
+however; for she felt that the weight of nations
+lay on every word, and she wrote and rewrote the
+poor little sentences until every vestige of naturalness
+and of spontaneity were taken out of them.
+Such information as she could gather seemed always,
+in her eyes, either too frivolous to be worth
+notice, or too serious to be of interest. And ever
+before her frightened eyes loomed the bugbear of
+PRINT.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was during the short vacation of three days at
+Thanksgiving time that Nancy, the second girl at
+the Kennedys', came to the parlor door one afternoon
+and interrupted Genevieve's practising.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Genevieve, I do be hatin' ter tell ye," she
+began indignantly, "but there's a man at the side
+door on horseback what is insistin' on seein' of ye;
+and Mis' Kennedy and Miss Jane ain't home from
+town yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Nancy, who is the man?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't sayin' that I know, Miss, but I do say
+that he is powerful rough-lookin' to come to the
+likes o' this house a-claimin' he's Mis' Granger's
+cousin, as he does."</p>
+
+<p>"Reddy! Why, of course I'll see Reddy," cried
+Genevieve, springing to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>A minute later, to Nancy's vast displeasure, Genevieve
+was ushering into the sitting room a sandy-haired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+man in full cowboy costume from broad-brimmed
+hat and flannel shirt to chaparejos and
+high-heeled boots.</p>
+
+<p>Reddy evidently saw the surprise in Genevieve's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," he smiled sheepishly, as Nancy
+left the room with slow reluctance, "I reckon you're
+surprised to see me in this rig, and I'll own I hain't
+wore 'em much since I came; but to-day, to come
+to see you, I just had to. You see, Miss Genevieve,
+it's what this 'ere rig stands for that I want to see
+you about, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"About&mdash;this&mdash;rig?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes&mdash;in a way. It's about the West."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's Martha&mdash;Mis' Granger, my cousin. I want
+her to go back with me. She's all alone, and so am
+I. And she'd come in a minute, but she's&mdash;afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"What of?"</p>
+
+<p>Reddy's lips twitched.</p>
+
+<p>"Indians and prairie fires and bucking bronchos
+and buffaloes. She thinks all of 'em run 'round
+loose all the time&mdash;in Texas."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed merrily.</p>
+
+<p>"The idea! Haven't you told her they don't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; and I've come to see if <i>you</i> won't tell
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"I!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She thinks I'm a man and rough anyhow,
+so I don't count. <i>Would</i> you be willing to
+come and talk Texas to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course I will," cried Genevieve. "I'll
+come right away to-day, after I've finished my
+hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," sighed Reddy, rising to his feet.
+"Now I'll hit the trail for Texas inside of a month&mdash;you
+see if I don't! What <i>you</i> say will go."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but don't be too sure of that, Reddy,"
+frowned Genevieve, anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't. I'm just <i>sure</i>&mdash;and that's all right,"
+retorted Reddy, cheerfully. "And mighty glad I
+shall be to get there, too! I'd be plum locoed here
+in another month. You see, I've got some money
+now, and I know a nice little place I can buy cheap,
+to start in for myself. Martha'll take Jim Small's
+girl, 'Mandy, for company and to help. You see
+we've got her already roped."</p>
+
+<p>"She wants to go, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dyin' to. It all depends on you now, Miss
+Genevieve."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; I'll be there," promised the girl,
+laughingly, as Reddy, watched by Nancy's disapproving
+eyes from the kitchen window, swung himself
+into the saddle and galloped down the driveway.</p>
+
+<p>A little later Genevieve met Mrs. Kennedy and
+Miss Chick at the foot of the front walk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've taken my music lesson and done my hour,
+and I'm off on missionary work now," she beamed
+brightly. "I knew you'd let me go, so I didn't
+wait till you came home."</p>
+
+<p>"Missionary work?" frowned Miss Chick.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what do you mean?" questioned Mrs.
+Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"It's to teach Mrs. Granger that Texas has something
+besides bucking bronchos and prairie fires.
+You see, Reddy wants to take her West, and she's
+afraid. She thinks those things, and Indians and
+buffaloes, are all that grow there. So I'm going to
+tell her a thing or two," she finished with a nod
+and a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Just how successful Genevieve was with her missionary
+work perhaps she herself did not realize
+until nearly a fortnight later, when Cordelia Wilson
+overtook her on the way to school one
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, Genevieve, please," panted Cordelia.
+"I want you to do some missionary work for me!
+Will you?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve turned in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"'Missionary work!' What <i>do</i> you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia laughed and colored.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's what you did for Mrs. Granger.
+Reddy told me. He said you called it missionary
+work&mdash;and that <i>'twas</i> missionary work, too. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+know they're to start next week, and they're all so
+happy over it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," nodded Genevieve; "and I'm so
+glad!"</p>
+
+<p>"So am I," sighed the other, fervently. "You
+see, Reddy being my find, so, I felt responsible;
+and of course I ought to feel that way, too. Just
+think&mdash;what if they weren't happy over it!"</p>
+
+<p>"But they are," smiled Genevieve. "What's the
+use of 'if-ing' a thing when it just <i>is</i> already?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" Cordelia's eyes were slightly puzzled.
+"Oh, I see," she laughed. "What a funny way
+you do have of putting things, Genevieve Hartley!
+Why don't you say such things as that in your notes
+for the magazine?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the magazine?&mdash;mercy! Why, Cordelia,
+they're <i>printed!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it?" maintained Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"What of what?" chirped a new voice; and
+Tilly Mack hurried up from behind them.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia looked plainly disappointed; but Genevieve
+turned with a light laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"My magazine notes, Tilly. Cordelia doesn't
+like them," she explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Genevieve, it's only that I want you to
+write as you talk," supplemented Cordelia, in distress.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know. I'm sure&mdash;aren't they
+true?" bridled Genevieve.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"True!" giggled Tilly, suddenly. "Oh, yes,
+they're true, just as 'c-a-t spells cat' is true&mdash;and
+they sound just about like that, too, Genevieve
+Hartley, and you know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! I like that," bridled Genevieve, again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tilly, she writes lovely notes&mdash;you know
+she does," championed Cordelia, almost tearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't write lovely notes," disputed Genevieve,
+with unexpected frankness. "They're just
+like Tilly says they are, and they're horrid. I <i>do</i>
+say 'c-a-t spells cat' every time&mdash;but I simply
+can't seem to say anything else!"</p>
+
+<p>"But why don't you write as you talk?" argued
+Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"Or as you do in the Chronicles?" added Cordelia.
+"You write just beautifully there."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Cordelia, that isn't <i>printed</i>," cried Genevieve,
+again, as they came in sight of the school
+building and saw Elsie Martin coming to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>At the doorway of the classroom Cordelia whispered
+to Genevieve:</p>
+
+<p>"Please wait after school for me. I'll tell you
+then&mdash;about the missionary work, you know."
+And Genevieve nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice during the day, Genevieve wondered
+what Cordelia's missionary work could be;
+but for the most part study and recitation filled her
+thoughts and time. Mid-year examinations were
+approaching, and, in spite of the fact that she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+been doing much better work for the last month,
+she felt by no means sure of herself for the dreaded
+ordeal. It was of this she was thinking when she
+met Cordelia according to agreement at the close
+of the short afternoon session.</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am, dear," she sighed; "but, really, I
+reckon <i>I'm</i> the one that needs the missionary work
+if any one does&mdash;with those horrid exams looming
+up before me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but you've been doing such splendid work&mdash;lately!"
+cried Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," retorted Genevieve, wrinkling up
+her nose saucily at the pause before the "lately."
+"I perceive you still know how to tell the truth,
+Miss!"</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve!" protested Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then you mean it wasn't the truth," bantered
+her friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve!" groaned Cordelia, hopelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, never mind," laughed the other.
+"Come, we must be running along; then you shall
+tell me all about this wonderful missionary work
+of yours. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it&mdash;it's about another of my&mdash;my
+finds."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, your lost people?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. It's John Sanborn, Hermit Joe's son,
+you know. He wants to go West and take his
+father."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, can't he? Or doesn't his father want
+to? Maybe you want me to go and tell Hermit Joe
+not to be afraid of bronchos and buffaloes,"
+laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>A swift color stole into Cordelia's face.</p>
+
+<p>"No; Hermit Joe wants to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia laughed shyly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it&mdash;it's a lady, Genevieve."</p>
+
+<p>"A lady! Why, Hermit Joe and his son haven't
+any&mdash;any women or cousins, have they?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but&mdash;but they want one," admitted Cordelia,
+a little breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve stopped short.</p>
+
+<p>"Cordelia, what <i>are</i> you talking about?" she
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia laughed softly, but she grew suddenly
+very pink indeed, and she clasped her hands rapturously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you, Genevieve. I've been just longing
+to tell you, every minute. It's the loveliest thing&mdash;just
+like a book! It seems Hermit Joe's son, years
+ago, before he ran away, had a sweetheart, Miss
+Sally Hunt."</p>
+
+<p>"That little old maid on Hunt's Hill? She's a
+dear, I think!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but she wasn't old then, you know. She
+was young, and so pretty! She showed me her
+picture, once&mdash;how she looked then."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes&mdash;go on!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they were sweethearts, but they had a
+quarrel or something, and&mdash;anyhow, Mr. John
+Sanborn ran away."</p>
+
+<p>"How long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty years; and now he's back, and they've
+made everything all up lovely, and he wants to
+marry her and take her West."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-h!" breathed Genevieve. "It <i>is</i> just like a
+story; isn't it? And didn't it turn out lovely!"</p>
+
+<p>"Y-yes, only it hasn't turned out yet."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? I thought you said they'd
+made it all up!"</p>
+
+<p>"They have. She'll marry him; but she&mdash;she's
+afraid of Texas, too, just as Mrs. Granger was, I
+guess."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see," cried Genevieve. "Pooh! We'll
+fix that in no time," finished the Texas "missionary,"
+with confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"There, I knew you would," sighed her friend,
+blissfully. "You see, I specially wanted Miss
+Sally to be happy, because I couldn't find&mdash;"
+Cordelia caught herself up in time. She must not,
+of course, tell Genevieve about Sally Hunt's lost
+brother whom she had failed to find. "Well, you
+know, anyway, Sally Hunt is very poor," she explained
+hastily; "and everybody said, when we
+went to Texas last summer, that she'd have to go
+to the Poor Farm soon, if something wasn't done.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+So I'm specially glad to have her happy, and&mdash;"
+Cordelia stopped, and turned to Genevieve with a
+new look in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, I've just remembered," she cried.
+"At the ranch last summer, when I was talking to
+Mr. Jonathan Edwards and didn't know his name
+was 'Sanborn'&mdash;I've just remembered that I told
+him about Miss Sally, and how she'd have to go to
+the Poor Farm. Genevieve, I'm sure&mdash;I just
+know that's one reason why he came home!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it was," agreed Genevieve, excitedly;
+"and we'll go straight up there now, if Aunt Julia'll
+let us; only&mdash;" her face fell&mdash;"Cordelia, when
+<i>shall</i> I get in my studying?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-night, Genevieve; you must study to-night,"
+answered Cordelia, firmly. "You mustn't
+sacrifice your studies, even for missionary work.
+Uncle always says it isn't right to send money to
+the heathen when your own child is hungry; and
+I'm sure this is the same thing. Maybe we can go
+Saturday morning, though," she finished hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure we can," declared Genevieve; "and
+I'm just as excited as I can be. I just love missionary
+work," she exulted, as she waved her hand in
+farewell, at her street corner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>GENEVIEVE GOES TO BOSTON</h3>
+
+
+<p>December was a busy month, indeed. To Genevieve
+it seemed actually to be one whirl of study,
+lessons, practice, and examinations, leaving oh, so
+little time for Christmas gifts and plans.</p>
+
+<p>A big box was to go to the Six Star Ranch, and
+a smaller one to Quentina. But, better than all,
+Mr. Jones was to have a letter from Mrs. Kennedy
+which would&mdash;Genevieve was sure&mdash;carry a
+wonderful happiness to Quentina. Mrs. Kennedy
+was to ask Mr. Jones to let Quentina come to Sunbridge
+to school the next winter, and share Genevieve's
+room, as Mrs. Kennedy's guest. All other
+expenses, railroad fare, school supplies, and any
+special instruction, were to be met by Mr. Hartley
+through Genevieve herself.</p>
+
+<p>All this, of course, Genevieve had not brought
+about without many letters to Mr. Hartley, and
+many talks with Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick,
+wherein all sorts of pleadings and promises had a
+part. But it had been done at last, and the letter
+was to go in the Christmas box&mdash;but of all this the
+Happy Hexagons were not to know until the answer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+from Mr. Jones came. Naturally, however,
+Genevieve could not keep all her attention on her
+studies that month, in spite of the coming examinations.</p>
+
+<p>There was, too, more than one visit to the gentle
+spinster on Hunt's Hill before Genevieve quite succeeded
+in convincing Miss Sally that there <i>were</i>
+places in Texas where wild Indians did not prowl,
+nor wild horses race neck and neck across vast
+deserts of loneliness. At last, however, she had
+the satisfaction of hearing from John Sanborn's
+own grateful lips that everything was all right,
+and that the wedding day was set for April the
+tenth.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of all this came the dreaded examinations,
+then the fearful waiting till the last day of
+school when the decision would be announced. The
+winter before, at these mid-year examinations,
+Genevieve had not passed. She had not forgotten
+the mortification of that tragedy, nor the weary
+weeks of study that had been necessary to enable
+her to go on with her class. So she, of all the girls
+now, was awaiting the verdict with special anxiety.
+Meanwhile, all the Happy Hexagons were spending
+every available minute on Christmas gifts.</p>
+
+<p>It was just a week before Christmas Day that
+Genevieve was surprised to receive a hurried after-school
+call from Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve&mdash;quick!" panted Cordelia, dropping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+herself into the first chair she came to. "Can't
+we do something? We <i>must</i> do something!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course we can," laughed Genevieve,
+promptly; "but&mdash;what about?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia gave a faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know; I wasn't very explicit," she
+sighed. "But, listen. You know&mdash;or maybe
+you didn't know&mdash;but the Missionary Society
+have been packing a barrel to go West. They're
+at the church this afternoon, packing it; but they
+didn't have half enough, and they sent down to the
+parsonage to know if Aunt Mary hadn't something
+more&mdash;some old clothes of the children's, or old
+magazines, or anything. Auntie's sick to-day with
+an awful cold, but she went up attic and hunted up
+all she could; then after I got home from school
+she asked me to take them down to the church."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, go on," prompted Genevieve, as Cordelia
+paused for breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I took them; and, Genevieve, what do
+you think?"&mdash;Cordelia's voice was tragic&mdash;"that
+missionary barrel was going to the Rev.
+Luke Jones, Bolo, Texas. <i>Our</i> Mr. Jones,&mdash;Quentina!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cordelia! Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You know they told us they got them
+from our church sometimes. And, Genevieve, it
+was awful&mdash;that barrel! It looked just like the
+other one, the one they got while we were there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+that day&mdash;old shoes and dolls, and <i>homely</i>
+things!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Cordelia! What did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia drew in her breath with a little gasp.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I talked. I said things&mdash;awful
+things. I know they were awful things from the
+looks of some of their faces. And at the last Mrs.
+Johnson&mdash;you <i>know</i> how she can be sometimes!&mdash;she&mdash;she
+just snapped out: 'Very well, Miss Cordelia,
+if you are not satisfied with what we have
+been able to procure after weeks of hard work, suppose
+you go out yourself and solicit gifts for your
+friends!' And, Genevieve, I said I would. And I
+turned 'round and marched out. And now&mdash;now&mdash;what
+<i>shall</i> we do?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve sprang to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Do? Why, we'll do it, of course," she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Genevieve, I'm so scared. What if folks
+won't give&mdash;anything? Those women worked
+weeks&mdash;they said they did&mdash;for what they've
+got!"</p>
+
+<p>"But folks <i>will</i> give," declared Genevieve, with
+prompt confidence. "Now wait. I'll have to tell
+Aunt Julia where I'm going, then I'll be back ready
+to start," she finished, as she whisked out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Genevieve, you're always so comfortingly
+<i>sure</i>," sighed Cordelia to the door through which
+her friend had just sped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During the next two hours Sunbridge, as represented
+by many of its most staid and stately homes,
+received the surprise of its life&mdash;a surprise that
+sent hitherto complacently contented women scurrying
+into attics and closets, and stirred reputedly
+miserly men into thrusting hands into inside
+pockets for spare bills.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was the sight of the eager young faces,
+alight with generous enthusiasm. Perhaps it was
+the pathos of the story of one missionary barrel as
+told by girlish lips trembling with feeling. Perhaps
+it was just the novelty of receiving so direct,
+and so confident an appeal for "something you'd
+like to have given to you, you know." Perhaps it
+was a little of all three that worked the miracle.
+At all events, in the church parlor some time later,
+a little band of excited, marveling women worked
+until far into the evening packing a missionary
+barrel for the Rev. Luke Jones. And when it left
+their hands, there was in it the pretty dress for the
+minister's wife, the unworn underclothing for the
+minister's boys, the fresh hair-ribbons for the minister's
+daughter, and the serviceable coat for the
+minister himself, to say nothing of uncounted
+books, games, and household articles of a worth
+and desirability likely to make a missionary minister's
+family exclaim with surprise and delight&mdash;until
+they found the generous roll of bills in the
+minister's coat pocket, when they would be dumb<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+with a great wave of reverent gratitude to a God
+who could make human hearts so kind.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" sighed Genevieve, when she and Cordelia
+had left their last parcels at the church door.
+"I reckon we've got something different for that
+barrel now&mdash;but we'll never let Quentina know,
+<i>never</i>&mdash;that we had a thing to do with packing it."</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I guess she'll suspect it, though," returned
+Cordelia, with a teary smile. "But, oh,
+Genevieve, didn't they give just splendidly!"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew they would," declared Genevieve, "if
+they just understood."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I wish they'd&mdash;understand
+oftener," sighed Cordelia, as she turned down her
+street.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later the Happy Hexagons were holding
+a hurried meeting at the parsonage after school.
+It was the night before the last day of the term,
+and they were all trying to work at once on the
+sofa pillow they had planned to give Miss Hart.
+Cordelia was making the tassel for one corner, and
+Alma Lane one for another. The other two tassels
+were being sewed on by Elsie and Bertha. Tilly
+was writing the card to go with it, and Genevieve
+was holding the paper and ribbon with which to do
+it up.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to do as Miss Jane does, next year,"
+sighed Genevieve, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"And what does Miss Jane do?" asked Tilly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Begins in January to get ready for Christmas.
+Now I've got exactly seventy-nine and one things
+to do before next Tuesday&mdash;and to-day is Thursday."</p>
+
+<p>"You must have spent part of your valuable time
+counting them," teased Tilly, "to have figured them
+down so fine as that."</p>
+
+<p>"Seventy-nine and one are eighty," observed
+Cordelia, with a little frown. "Why didn't you
+say eighty to begin with, Genevieve?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because she wanted to give your brain something
+to do, too," explained Tilly, wearing an exaggeratedly
+innocent air.</p>
+
+<p>"Tilly!" scolded Genevieve. But Tilly only
+laughed, and Cordelia forgot her question with the
+last stitch she put into her tassel.</p>
+
+<p>The pillow was given to Miss Hart the next day,
+and, apparently, made the lady very happy. Nor
+was Miss Hart the only one that was made happy
+that day. Genevieve, and in fact, all the Happy
+Hexagons, together with O. B. J. Holmes and
+nearly all the rest of the class, knew before night
+that they had "passed"&mdash;which is no small thing
+to know, when for days you have worried and for
+nights you have dreamed about the dreadful alternative
+of a contrary verdict.</p>
+
+<p>With Miss Jane Chick, Genevieve went to Boston
+shopping, Saturday, coming back tired, but
+happy, and all aglow with the holiday rush and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+color of the crowded streets and stores. On Sunday
+came the beautiful Christmas service, which
+Mr. Wilson made very impressive. Certainly it
+touched Genevieve's heart deeply, as she sat by
+Mrs. Kennedy's side and listened to it. It seemed
+so easy to Genevieve, at that moment, always to be
+good and brave and true&mdash;always to be thoughtful
+of others' wishes&mdash;never to be heedless, careless, or
+impulsively reckless of consequences!</p>
+
+<p>It was snowing when she left the church, and it
+snowed hard all the afternoon and until far into the
+night. Genevieve awoke to look out on a spotlessly
+white, crystal-pure world, with every ugly line and
+dreary prospect changed into fairylike beauty.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;oh&mdash;oh, isn't it lovely!" she exclaimed,
+as she came into the dining-room that morning.
+"Don't I wish Quentina were here to see it&mdash;and
+to talk about it!"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll hope she will be some day," smiled Mrs.
+Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, 'Here's Miss Jane at the window-pane'
+all ready for her," chanted Genevieve, merrily,
+her eyes on the tall figure in the bay window.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jane turned with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's very lovely, of course, Genevieve&mdash;but
+I must confess it isn't lovely to me this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Miss Jane!"</p>
+
+<p>"I had planned to go to Boston. In fact it seems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+as if I must go. But I have waked up with a sore
+throat and every evidence of a bad cold; and I'm
+afraid I don't dare to go&mdash;not with all this new
+snow on the ground and dampness in the air."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I go, Miss Jane? I was going to ask
+to go, anyway. I find there are three more things
+I want to get, and I know I can't find them here."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have never been to Boston alone, my
+dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose everybody has to have a first time,"
+laughed Genevieve; "and I'm not a mite afraid.
+Besides, I know the way perfectly, all through the
+shopping district; and all I have to do then is just
+to take the car for the North Station and the
+train home. I reckon I know how to do <i>that</i>
+all right!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jane frowned and shook her head slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know; but&mdash;I hate to let you do it, Genevieve,
+only I&mdash;it seems as if I <i>must</i> go myself!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy looked up reassuringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, Jane, I am inclined to think Genevieve
+can go all right," she smiled. "She has been to
+Boston now many times, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"There, Miss Jane!" crowed Genevieve, triumphantly.
+"You see! Please, now," she begged.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jane still frowned&mdash;but a look of almost
+reluctant relief came to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she conceded slowly. "Perhaps,
+my dear, I will let you go for me, then."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank you, Miss Jane&mdash;besides, there are
+several things I want for myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, dear. I have three things that must
+be changed, and there are two that I want you to
+buy. It seems so absurd&mdash;when I began last January&mdash;that
+there should be anything to be done
+to-day; but, unfortunately, some of my plans had
+to be changed at the last moment. You may get
+ready at once after breakfast, please, then come to
+my room. I'll have the list all made out for you.
+You'll have to bring everything home, of course,
+but they are not very heavy, and you can carry
+them all in the large hand bag, I think. You'd
+better take the nine-four train."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was not quite half-past ten when Genevieve
+arrived in the great Boston station that morning.
+She glanced importantly at her pretty little watch,
+took a firmer hold on the large leather bag she carried,
+and stepped briskly off toward her car.</p>
+
+<p>It was delightful&mdash;this independent feeling of
+freedom. Even to pay her fare and to signal the
+conductor to stop were Events. Shopping, all by
+herself, was even more delightful; so she dallied
+over every purchase and every exchange as long as
+she could&mdash;and it was not hard to dally, with the
+crowds, the long waits, and the delays for change.</p>
+
+<p>At one o'clock, when in state she ate her luncheon
+at a pretty white table in a large department-store<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+dining-room, she had not half finished her task.
+She was so glad there was still so much to do!
+But at four o'clock, when she did finish, she looked
+at her watch with faintly troubled eyes. She had
+not, indeed, realized that it was quite so late. She
+remembered, too, suddenly, for the first time, that
+Miss Chick had told her to come back early. She
+wondered&mdash;could she catch the four-twenty train?</p>
+
+<p>Stores and sidewalks were a mass of surging,
+thronging humanity now, and progress was slow
+and uncertain. When, at ten minutes past four,
+she had not succeeded even in reaching her car for
+the station, she gave up the four-twenty train.
+Well, there was one at five-fifteen, she comforted
+herself. She could surely get that.</p>
+
+<p>The streets were darkening fast, and lights were
+beginning to flash here and there, finding a brilliant
+response in tinsel stars and crystal pendants. With
+the Christmas red and green, and the thronging
+crowds, it made a pretty sight; and Genevieve
+stopped more than once just to look about her with
+a deep breath of delight. It was at such a time
+that she saw the small ragged boy, and the still
+smaller, still more ragged girl wistfully gazing
+into the fairyland of a toyshop window.</p>
+
+<p>"I choose the fire engine, the big red one," she
+heard a shrill voice pipe; and she looked down to
+see that it was the boy's blue lips that had uttered
+the words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I d-druther have that d-doll," chattered the
+mite of a girl; "an' that teeny little bedstead an'
+the chair what rocks, an' the baby trunk, an' the
+doll with curly hair, an'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Gee! look at the autymobile," cut in the boy,
+excitedly. "Say, if I had that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you shall have it, you poor little mite,&mdash;or
+one just like it," cried Genevieve impulsively,
+sweeping the astonished children into the circle of
+her arm, and hurrying them into the store.</p>
+
+<p>They did not get the "autymobile" nor yet the
+engine nor the big doll. Genevieve selected them,
+to be sure, with blithe promptness; but when she
+took out her purse, she found she had not half
+money enough to pay for them, which mortified
+and disappointed her greatly.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear!" she laughed, blushing painfully.
+"I'm afraid I can't manage it, after all, chickabiddies.
+That horrid money of mine has given out!
+I bought more things than I meant to, anyhow.
+Never mind, we'll get all we can," she cried, emptying
+her little purse on the counter, even shaking it
+to make sure no lurking penny stayed behind.
+"There, you'll have to make that do," she said to
+the amazed clerk behind the counter. "Just please
+give them whatever you can for that." And the
+clerk, counting out one dollar and eighty-three
+cents, obeyed her literally.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later, two dazed, but blissfully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+happy children clasping in their arms a motley array
+of toys, and a laughing, bright-faced girl with a
+tan leather bag, joined the hurrying throng on the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, chickabiddies, and good luck to you,"
+called Genevieve, waving her hand in farewell to
+the children, as she spied her car in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little midgets!" thought Genevieve, as she
+stepped on to the car; "I don't think now they
+really believe they've got those things. But I do
+wish I could have bought all those first things they
+selected!" A moment later she took out her purse
+to pay her fare.</p>
+
+<p>The conductor, coming toward her just then, saw
+her face turn red, then white. The next minute she
+was on her feet, hurrying toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Fare, please," he said mechanically, holding out
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't want this car," she stammered
+faintly. "If you'll&mdash;stop, please." A moment
+later she rushed blindly through the door and down
+the steps to the street.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was thoroughly angry, and very much
+ashamed.</p>
+<div class="figright" style="width: 313px;">
+<img src="images/gs06.jpg" width="313" height="356" alt="&quot;IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A WALK, THE WOMAN SAID, AS SHE GAVE DIRECTIONS&quot;" title="&quot;IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A WALK, THE WOMAN SAID, AS SHE GAVE DIRECTIONS&quot;" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A WALK, THE WOMAN SAID, AS SHE GAVE DIRECTIONS&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Now I reckon I've done it," she muttered half
+aloud. "No wonder they say I never stop to think!
+Seems to me I might have thought to save a nickel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+for my car-fare, though! Never mind, I'll walk it.
+Serves me right, anyhow, I reckon!" And determinedly
+she turned toward a woman near her and
+asked the way to the North Station.</p>
+
+<p>It would be something of a walk, the woman said,
+as she gave directions; but Genevieve declared she
+did not mind that. Very courageously, therefore,
+she turned a corner and began to thread her way
+among the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>She was laughing now. This thing was something
+of a joke, after all. Still, she was rather
+sorry it had happened&mdash;on Miss Jane's errand.
+She would be late home, too. (She pulled aside the
+lapel of her coat and glanced at her watch.) Five
+o'clock, already! It would be late, indeed, if she
+could not catch the five-fifteen! Still, there must
+be other trains, of course, and it took only an hour
+and twenty minutes to go&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve stopped with a little cry of dismay.
+She remembered now that she had used the last of
+the commutation tickets. Miss Jane had told her
+to get a single-fare ticket for the return trip. And
+now&mdash;pray, how was one to buy any sort of fare
+without any money?</p>
+
+<p>A hurrying man jostled <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads ' er'">her</ins>, and Genevieve
+stepped into a doorway to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'thin  '">think.</ins> Across the street
+a blue-bell-sign caught her <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'at ention'">attention</ins>, and sent a
+swift light to her eye.</p>
+
+
+<p>Why, of course! She would telephone for Aunt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
+Julia to send Nancy or somebody in with some
+money. Why had she not thought of it before?</p>
+
+<p>She had pushed her way half across the crowded
+street when it occurred to her that she needed money
+to pay the telephone toll.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw such a place! It takes money to
+do everything! I just hate cities," she stormed
+hotly&mdash;then jumped just in time to escape the
+wheels of a swiftly-moving automobile.</p>
+
+<p>Safely back in the doorway, she tried to think
+once more. Then, slowly, she began to retrace her
+steps toward the corner from which she had started.</p>
+
+<p>The crowds were just as gay, the Christmas reds
+and greens just as brilliant, and the tinsel stars and
+crystal pendants were just as sparkling; but Genevieve
+did not even look at them now. She was
+tired, ashamed, and thoroughly frightened. The
+bag, too, began to seem woefully full, and her
+stomach correspondingly empty.</p>
+
+<p>Curiously enough, after a time, the Christmas
+service of the day before rang in her ears. It
+seemed so far away now. And yet&mdash;it was only
+yesterday that she had been promising herself never
+again to be thoughtless, heedless, or impulsively
+reckless of consequences. And now&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she almost smiled. She was thinking
+of her question to Harold:</p>
+
+<p>"If you do something bad to do something good,
+which is it, good or bad?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One by one the minutes passed. It grew darker
+and colder. At times Genevieve walked on aimlessly.
+At others, she stood one side, watching the
+crowds, hoping to find some man or woman whom
+she could dare to ask for money. But her cheeks
+burned at the thought, and she never saw the man
+or woman whom she wanted to ask&mdash;for money.
+That the blue-coated man at the street-crossing
+might help her, never occurred to Genevieve.
+Genevieve knew policemen only as vaguely dreadful
+creatures connected with jails and arrests.</p>
+
+<p>In time it came to be quite dark. Genevieve wondered
+what would become of her&mdash;by midnight.
+People did not starve or die, she supposed, in Boston
+streets&mdash;not when the streets were as bright
+as these. But she <i>must</i> get to Sunbridge. <i>Sunbridge!</i>
+How worried they must be about her now
+in Sunbridge, and how she wished she were there!
+She would be glad to see even Miss Jane's severest
+frown&mdash;if she could see Miss Jane, too!</p>
+
+<p>It was six o'clock when Genevieve suddenly remembered
+Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield. She
+wondered then how it was possible that she had forgotten
+them so long.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield were two
+friends of Mrs. Kennedy's not very far from sixty
+years old. They lived in a quaint old house on Mt.
+Vernon Street, on top of Beacon Hill&mdash;Genevieve
+thought she remembered the number. She remembered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+the house very well, for she had called there
+twice with Mrs. Kennedy the winter before.</p>
+
+<p>It was with a glad little cry that Genevieve now
+turned to the first woman she met and asked the
+way to Mt. Vernon Street.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the somber Butterfield dining-room on Mt.
+Vernon Street, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield
+had almost finished dinner, when their pompous,
+plainly scandalized butler, standing beneath the
+severest of the severe Butterfield portraits, announced
+stiffly:</p>
+
+<p>"There's a young person at the door, ma'am,
+with a bag. She says she knows you, if you'll see
+her, please."</p>
+
+<p>One minute later, the astonished Mr. and Mrs.
+Thomas Butterfield caught in their arms a white-faced,
+almost fainting girl, who had sobbed out:</p>
+
+<p>"Please, won't you give me a little money and
+some supper, and telephone to Aunt Julia!"</p>
+
+<p>Seven minutes later Mr. Thomas Butterfield had
+Mrs. Kennedy at the other end of the wire.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>A BROWN DRESS FOR ELSIE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Christmas, for Genevieve, was not a happy time
+that year; and when the day was over she tried to
+forget it as soon as possible.</p>
+
+<p>She had stayed all night with the Butterfields&mdash;which
+had not been unalloyed joy; for, though they
+obviously tried to be kind to her, yet they could not
+help showing that they regarded her sudden appearance
+among them, dinnerless and moneyless, as
+most extraordinary, and certainly very upsetting
+to the equanimity of a well-ordered household.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning she went back to Sunbridge. At
+the house she found Miss Chick ill. Her cold, and
+her fright over Genevieve, had sent her into a high
+fever; and Mrs. Kennedy was scarcely less ill herself.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly it was not exactly a cheerful Christmas
+Day for the one whose heedlessness had brought it
+all about. But Genevieve mourned so bitterly, and
+blamed herself so strongly, that at last, out of sheer
+pity, Mrs. Kennedy, and even Miss Jane Chick,
+had to turn comforter; for&mdash;as Mrs. Kennedy reminded
+her sister&mdash;it was, after all, aside from her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+thoughtless lack of haste, only Genevieve's unselfish
+forgetfulness of her own possible wants that led to
+the whole thing. Then, and not until then, did
+Genevieve bestow some attention upon her Christmas
+presents, of which there were a generous number.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately no one outside the house had known
+of Genevieve's nonappearance that Christmas Eve,
+so she was spared any curious questions and interested
+comments from others of the Happy Hexagons.</p>
+
+<p>The short Christmas vacation sped rapidly. The
+young people spent much of it on the river, skating,
+when the ice was good. Genevieve, it is true, was
+not often seen there. Genevieve was playing nurse
+these days, and so devotedly attentive to Miss Jane
+Chick was she, that both the ladies had almost to
+scold her, in order to make her take needed exercise.
+Even Harold Day reproached her one morning,
+when he met her coming from the post-office.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't let any of us see anything of you&mdash;not
+anything," he complained. "And you look as
+if you were doing penance, or something&mdash;you've
+got such a superior expression!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve dimpled into a sudden laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I am," she retorted. "Maybe I did
+something bad so I could do something good; and
+now I'm trying to do enough good to take out all
+the taste of the bad."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you mean by that, Miss Mystery?"</p>
+
+<p>She would not tell him. She only shook her head
+saucily, and ran into the house.</p>
+
+<p>By New Year's Day Miss Jane seemed almost
+like her old self, and Genevieve was specially happy,
+for on that night Harold Day gave the first dance
+of the season; and, with Miss Jane better, and her
+own heart lighter once more, she could give herself
+up to full enjoyment of the music, fun,
+and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>All the Happy Hexagons were there, together
+with O. B. J. Holmes, Charlie Brown, and many
+other of the young people, including even Tilly
+Mack's big brother, Howard, who&mdash;though quite
+twenty-one&mdash;was a prime favorite with the Happy
+Hexagons.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve was wonderfully happy that evening.
+Never had the music sounded so entrancing; never
+had her own feet felt so light. With Harold she
+"opened the ball," as Tilly airily termed it; then
+Charlie and O. B. J. had their turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Genevieve, you do look just too sweet for
+anything in that pale pink," panted Elsie, stopping
+at her side between dances.</p>
+
+<p>"Not any sweeter than you do in that white,"
+tossed back Genevieve, affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>Elsie sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I love this white, too, but it's got kind of frazzled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+now. Aunt Kate says she is going to make
+over Fannie's brown silk for Miss Sally's wedding,"
+she went on, sighing again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure that will be nice," rejoined Genevieve,
+with hasty politeness.</p>
+
+<p>"Y-yes," admitted Elsie; "only brown sounds
+kind of hot for April. Still, I suppose I ought not
+to mind. Just one girl wore it, anyhow, so it'll be
+faded even, and I sha'n't look like two folks in it,"
+she finished wistfully, as Howard Mack came up to
+claim his dance with Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>It was three days after the party that there came
+a letter from Mr. Jones in reply to Mrs. Kennedy's
+Christmas note. It was a very grateful letter, but
+it was a disappointing one. It said that Mr. Jones
+did not see how he could let Quentina accept the
+kind invitation of Mrs. Kennedy and Genevieve.
+All the way through it, very plainly was shown the
+longing of a man who desires advantages for his
+daughter, and the pride of one who cannot bear
+that outsiders should give them to her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy saw this&mdash;and wrote another letter.
+In due time came the answer; and again Genevieve
+almost cried with disappointment. But Mrs.
+Kennedy smiled and comforted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he says 'no,' I'll admit, Genevieve; but
+I don't think it's quite so strong a 'no' as it was
+before. One of these days I think I'll write Mr.
+Jones another letter, my dear&mdash;but not just now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+We'll let him think a little&mdash;of how good it would
+have been for Quentina if he'd said 'yes.'"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve gave Mrs. Kennedy a big hug.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Julia, you're a dear, and a veritable Solomon
+for wisdom. I'm going to write at once to
+the President, too. Your place is in the diplomatic
+service, I'm sure," she finished, as she danced from
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>As January passed and February came, a new
+subject came uppermost in the thoughts of the
+Hexagon Club. For the first time in years there
+was to be a prize contest in the Sunbridge High
+School. The principal, Mr. Jackson, was to give a
+five-dollar gold piece to the writer of the best essay,
+subject to be chosen by the author.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I sha'n't try for it," announced Tilly on
+a Saturday afternoon late in February, as the Hexagon
+Club were holding their regular meeting at the
+parsonage.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" asked Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I don't like defeat well enough," retorted
+Tilly. "Imagine <i>me</i> winning a prize contest!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shall try," almost groaned Cordelia. "I
+shall always try for things, I suppose, till I die. I
+think I ought to; but of course I sha'n't win it.
+Dear me! How I would love to, though," she cried,
+almost under her breath.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve, looking at her momentarily illumined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+face, was conscious of a sudden fierce wish that Cordelia
+might win that prize.</p>
+
+<p>"Genevieve, of course, will try," she heard Tilly's
+teasing voice say, then. "Genevieve loves to
+write, so!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve turned with a laugh, and an uptilted
+chin.</p>
+
+<p>"I take it, Miss Mack, that your very complimentary
+remarks refer to my magazine notes; but
+just let me assure you that this prize essay is quite
+another matter. <i>That</i> isn't <i>printed!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Then you <i>are</i> going to try?&mdash;of course you
+are," interposed Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed lightly as she reached for a
+piece of fudge.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. I'm afraid everybody will expect
+me to. Aunt Julia has already expressed her
+opinion of the matter."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>February passed, and March came. A new topic
+of conversation now arose, specially of interest to
+the Hexagon Club. Miss Sally was to be married
+early in April, and the Happy Hexagons were to be
+bridesmaids. Naturally, even the new prize contest
+had to step one side for that month, in the
+minds of the six joyously excited girls.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a particularly windy Saturday toward
+the end of the month, that Cordelia literally blew
+up to the Kennedys' front door and rang the bell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Genevieve herself, passing through the hall,
+opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Br-r-r!" she laughed, as she banged the door
+shut after admitting the whirling draperies from
+which Cordelia's anxious little face finally emerged.
+"Why, Cordelia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know; I'm going to be at the club this
+afternoon, of course," panted Cordelia; "but this
+is for something I wanted to say to you&mdash;and I
+knew there wouldn't be a chance this afternoon.
+It&mdash;it's private, Genevieve."</p>
+
+<p>"Good! I love secrets. Come into the sitting
+room. There's no one there this morning. Now,
+what is it?" she demanded, as soon as Cordelia's
+coat was off, and they were comfortably seated.</p>
+
+<p>"It&mdash;I suppose you might call it missionary
+work, Genevieve," smiled Cordelia, wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>More</i> missionary work? Who in the world
+wants to go to Texas now?" laughed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody. It isn't Texas at all. It's&mdash;Elsie."</p>
+
+<p>"Elsie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Of course, dear, I don't know as you can
+do anything; but you've done so many things, and
+I'm sure if you could, it <i>would</i> be missionary work
+of the very nicest kind."</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>are</i> you talking about?"</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia drew a long sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you. You know the rest of us bridesmaids<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+are all going to wear white, but&mdash;but Elsie's
+got to wear Fannie's brown silk."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," nodded Genevieve. "Elsie told me."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Genevieve, just think&mdash;brown silk for a
+bridesmaid at a wedding, when all the rest of us
+wear white! Besides, Elsie says brown is so hot-looking
+for April. She feels awfully about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't she do something? I should think she'd
+tell her aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"She has. But her aunt doesn't seem to understand.
+She says that the brown silk is whole and
+good, and far too valuable to throw away; and
+that it's all just Elsie's notion that she'd rather
+wear white."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but if she'd only understand!"</p>
+
+<p>"But that's just it&mdash;she doesn't understand.
+And it isn't as if they were poor," argued Cordelia,
+earnestly. "Now auntie has to make over things,
+of course, for me and for Edith and Rachel, and we
+expect it, and don't mind. We're all glad to be
+economical and help out, for we know it's necessary.
+But it's different with Elsie. She <i>says</i> she
+wouldn't mind so, if they were poor and had to.
+But the Gales are real well off&mdash;Fannie and the
+twins have lots of new clothes. Poor Elsie says
+sometimes it seems as if her aunt actually bought
+things for them, so she <i>could</i> make them over for
+her. Elsie says she's never so happy as when she's
+doing it, and that she makes a regular game of it&mdash;cutting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+them out and putting them together&mdash;like
+picture puzzles, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed, though she frowned, too.</p>
+
+<p>"But what can I do?" she demanded. "I tried,
+once, to&mdash;to lend Elsie a dress; but she was horrified."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! Of course she was," shuddered Cordelia.
+"I don't know <i>what</i> Mrs. Gale would do if
+she knew that! They're fearfully&mdash;er&mdash;er&mdash;proud,
+I suppose you call it," hesitated the conscientious
+Cordelia.</p>
+
+<p>"But what <i>can</i> I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; but don't you suppose you could&mdash;could
+say something, somehow, to Mrs. Gale
+that&mdash;that would make her understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cordelia Wilson, of course I couldn't,"
+gasped Genevieve, indignantly. "A pretty picture
+I'd make going to Mrs. Gale and saying: 'Madam,
+why don't you give your niece a new dress when
+you know she wants one?'"</p>
+
+<p>"N-no, I suppose you couldn't do that, of course,"
+sighed the other. "Very likely you couldn't do
+anything, anyway. It's only that I thought&mdash;well,
+I knew you were going home with Elsie after school
+Monday night to study; and I didn't know but
+you'd get a chance to say something. But I suppose,
+after all, there won't be anything you could
+say."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I suppose there won't," echoed Genevieve,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+still plainly appalled at the task Cordelia had set
+for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's only that I was so sorry for Elsie,"
+sighed Cordelia, as she rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! I reckon we're all sorry for Elsie,"
+sighed Genevieve in her turn.</p>
+
+<p>And she was sorry. All the rest of the morning
+she kept thinking how very sorry she was; and
+when afternoon came, and when she saw Elsie's lips
+quiver and her eyes fill with tears, as the others
+happily discussed whether they would wear colored
+sashes or white belts with their white dresses, Genevieve's
+heart quite overflowed with sympathy for
+Elsie. And she wondered if, after all, it were possible
+to make Elsie's aunt&mdash;understand. Determinedly,
+then, she declared to herself that, regardless
+of consequences, she would try&mdash;if she had the
+opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve's opportunity came very soon after
+she arrived at Elsie's home Monday afternoon.
+Even Genevieve herself had to admit that she could
+not have had a better one. But so frightened was
+she that she wished&mdash;for a moment&mdash;that there
+were none. Then before her rose a vision of Elsie's
+tear-dimmed eyes and quivering lips&mdash;and with a
+quick-drawn breath Genevieve rose and followed
+Mrs. Gale to the sewing-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me," Mrs. Gale had said to Genevieve&mdash;Genevieve
+had picked up a scrap of brown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+silk from the floor. "That's a piece of the dress
+I'm making for Elsie to wear to the wedding. The
+silly child has got a notion she wants white, but
+you'll think this is pretty, I'm sure." And it was
+then that Genevieve knew her opportunity had
+come.</p>
+
+<p>In the sewing-room Mrs. Gale proudly spread
+the silk dress over a chair-back.</p>
+
+<p>"There! What do you think of that?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve's heart beat so loudly she thought Mrs.
+Gale must hear it.</p>
+
+<p>"It&mdash;it's very pretty, isn't it?" she stammered,
+wetting her dry lips and wondering what good it
+did to say that.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty? Of course it is. It's silk, and a fine
+piece&mdash;I thought when I got it how splendidly it
+would make over. I'm sure any girl ought to be
+proud to wear it!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve caught her breath sharply. "Proud"&mdash;Mrs.
+Gale had said "proud"; and Cordelia had
+said, that morning, that Mrs. Gale herself was very
+proud, and that she would be very angry if she
+knew that Genevieve had offered Elsie a dress to
+wear. In a flash of inspiration, then, came a wild
+plan to Genevieve's mind. If only she had the audacity
+to carry it out!</p>
+
+<p>She wet her lips again, and took desperate hold
+of her courage. Even as she did so, she almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+smiled&mdash;she was thinking: was this another case
+when she was doing something bad to do something
+good? Never mind; she must go through with it
+now. She <i>must!</i></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is a very pretty dress, indeed," she stammered;
+"and it was Fannie's, too, wasn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Gale beamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!&mdash;and didn't I get it out finely? You
+know sleeves are smaller, so that helped, and the
+breadths were so full last year! I think I never
+got a dress out better," she finished proudly.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve touched the folds lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"And this isn't faded at all, is it?" she murmured
+pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" Mrs. Gale's voice was a little sharp.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve wet her lips twice this time before she
+could speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, isn't it nice that this one isn't faded?
+You know Elsie had such a time with that chambray
+last summer!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, please?" There was no
+doubt now about the sharpness in Mrs. Gale's
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve managed a laugh&mdash;but it was not a
+very mirthful one.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 'twas so funny, you know; it was made
+from the twins' dresses, and they weren't faded
+alike. It was just as Elsie said&mdash;she didn't know
+whether to turn Cora or Clara toward folks. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+<i>was</i> funny; only, of course it did plague poor Elsie
+awfully, and I felt so sorry for her."</p>
+
+<p>"You felt sorry&mdash;<i>sorry</i> for <i>my niece?</i>" The
+voice was so very angry this time that Genevieve
+trembled. She was sure now that it was bad&mdash;this
+thing she was doing&mdash;that good might come. But
+she kept bravely on.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, of course; all of us girls were sorry
+for her. You know Elsie does so love new dresses,
+and of course she doesn't have them very often.
+Last summer, when she was feeling so bad over her
+chambray, I&mdash;I offered her one of mine, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you offered my niece one of <i>your</i>
+dresses?" gasped Mrs. Gale.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but she wouldn't take it; and, of course,
+<i>that</i> wasn't <i>new</i>, either," finished Genevieve, with
+what she hoped would pass for a light laugh as she
+turned away.</p>
+
+<p>Behind her, for a moment, there was an ominous
+silence. Then a very quiet voice said:</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you; but I hardly think my niece needs
+one of your dresses&mdash;yet, Miss Genevieve."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve fled then, ashamed, and very near to
+crying.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't have said it, of course," she whispered
+to herself as she stumbled back to the sitting-room;
+"I wouldn't have said it if the Gales had
+been poor and <i>couldn't</i> have given Elsie new things
+to wear once in a while!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the Chronicles of the Hexagon Club a fortnight
+later, it was Elsie Martin who wrote the account
+of Miss Sally's wedding. She wrote as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"I had a beautiful white dress for Miss Sally's
+wedding&mdash;a brand-new one. All of us girls wore
+white and looked so pretty&mdash;I mean, the rest
+looked pretty, of course. Miss Sally was married
+the tenth of April. It was quite a warm day, and I
+was so glad I did not have to wear my brown silk.
+Aunt Kate says I needn't wear it anywhere if I
+don't want to&mdash;and after all her work, too! I
+don't know what has got into Aunt Kate, anyway,
+lately. She doesn't seem half so interested in
+making over things, and I have three other brand-new
+dresses, a pink-sprigged muslin, and&mdash;but,
+dear me! This isn't telling about Miss Sally's wedding
+one bit.</p>
+
+<p>"She was married at four o'clock, and looked too
+sweet for anything in light gray silk with a pink
+carnation in her hair. Everybody went, and wore
+their best things and looked very nice. We had
+sandwiches and chicken salad and olives and three
+kinds of cake and ice cream for refreshments. The
+ice cream was the brick kind, different colors, like
+lovely striped ribbon.</p>
+
+<p>"At six o'clock they started for Boston to begin
+their journey West, and we all stood on the steps
+and gave them a lovely send-off with rice and old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+shoes. Just at the last minute Tilly says, 'Let's
+give her our Texas yell, and end with "Miss Sally,"'
+and we did. And everybody laughed and clapped.
+But not until the carriage drove off did we suddenly
+remember that she wasn't 'Miss Sally' at all any
+more, and we felt ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>"And that's all&mdash;except that Miss Sally's going-away
+gown was gray, too."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>"WHEN SUNBRIDGE WENT TO TEXAS"</h3>
+
+
+<p>By the first of May many of the papers for the
+new prize contest had been turned in. Genevieve's,
+however, had not. Genevieve was working very
+hard on her essay now. For some time she had not
+found a subject that suited her. Good subjects were
+not very plentiful, she decided. At last she had
+thought of the Texas trip, and had wondered if she
+could not compare Sunbridge with Texas. Aunt
+Julia and Miss Jane had thought decidedly that she
+could. So for some days now, she had been hard at
+work upon the paper, and was getting enthusiastically
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>All papers must be in by the sixteenth. It was
+on the tenth that Cordelia, during a recess meeting
+of the Hexagon Club, drew a long breath and
+turned upon her fellow members a beaming countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, I can't keep it a minute longer. I've got
+to tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us what?" asked Tilly. "It must be something
+pretty fine to bring that look to your face!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cordelia laughed and blushed; but she sighed,
+too.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it isn't 'fine,' Tilly, at all. I wish it were,
+though&mdash;but really, I do think it's the best thing
+I ever did, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you talking about, Cordelia Wilson?"
+demanded Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! It must be pretty good if it's the <i>best</i>
+thing Cordelia ever did," teased Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, stop," begged Cordelia, in real distress.
+"I&mdash;I hate to tell you now; it sounds so foolish.
+It's only&mdash;my prize paper. It's all done. I'm going
+to hand it in Monday, and&mdash;and I was so
+pleased with the subject!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Cordelia, what is it? You know what mine
+is," cried Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;'When Sunbridge went to Texas,'" announced
+Cordelia, breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"When&mdash;what?" cried Genevieve, almost
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia turned a happy face.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew <i>you'd</i> like it, Genevieve," she nodded.
+"It's our trip, you know. I've told all about it&mdash;comparing
+things here to things there, you see."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;but, Cordelia, that's&mdash;" Genevieve
+paused abruptly. The pause in her sentence was
+not noticed. The girls were all talking now, begging
+Cordelia to tell them if they were "in it."</p>
+
+<p>"When&mdash;when did you choose your subject,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+Cordelia?" asked Genevieve, very quietly, when she
+could be heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Not until the first of May. I just couldn't
+seem to get anything. Then this came all of a sudden,
+and&mdash;and it just seemed to write itself, it was
+done so quickly. You see I didn't have to look up
+this subject."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve's face cleared. It was all right, after
+all. <i>She</i> had selected the subject a whole week before
+Cordelia&mdash;and of course Cordelia would
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but Cordelia, that isn't quite fair," she
+began impulsively; but for once Cordelia forgot
+her politeness and interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you worry, Genevieve," she laughed
+gayly. "I've said lovely things of Texas. You'd
+know I'd do that, Genevieve, even if I do love
+Sunbridge. I did worry at first for fear somebody
+else had taken the same subject&mdash;some of you
+girls&mdash;you know we can't have two about the
+same thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;" The bell rang for the close of recess,
+and again one of Genevieve's sentences remained
+unfinished.</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve did not stop even to speak to any of
+the girls after school that day. She went home at
+once. Even Harold Day, who overtook her, found
+her so absorbed in her own thoughts that she was
+anything but her usual talkative self.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Once in the house, Genevieve went straight to
+Mrs. Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Julia, if you get a prize subject first, it's
+yours, isn't it?" she asked tremulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, y-yes, dear; I should think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Aunt Julia, something perfectly awful
+has happened. Cordelia has got my subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Genevieve, I'm so sorry!" Mrs. Kennedy's
+face showed more than ordinary distress&mdash;Mrs.
+Kennedy had had high hopes of this prize
+paper. "Why, how did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I suppose it was just in the air.
+But <i>I</i> got it first. She says she didn't think of it
+till May first. So of course it's&mdash;it's mine, Aunt
+Julia."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy looked very grave.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the rules of the contest would give it
+to you, Genevieve," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The girl stirred restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I'm awfully sorry. She&mdash;she was
+going to hand it in Monday."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is too bad!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I&mdash;I'll have to tell her," murmured
+Genevieve, at last. "The club have a ride to-morrow.
+There'll be time&mdash;then."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;if you decide to do it."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve turned quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aunt Julia, I'll have to," she cried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+"Just think of all my work! Mine's all done but
+copying, you know. And I <i>was</i> the first to get it.
+There's no time to get another now."</p>
+
+<p>"No, there's no time to get another&mdash;now."
+Aunt Julia looked even more sorrowful than Genevieve
+just then&mdash;Aunt Julia <i>had</i> wanted Genevieve
+to take that prize.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure that Cordelia&mdash;when she knows&mdash;"
+Genevieve did not finish her sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed! Of course, if Cordelia should
+know&mdash;" Aunt Julia did not finish <i>her</i> sentence.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aunt Julia, she'll have to know," almost
+sobbed Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. Genevieve's eyes were
+out the window. Mrs. Kennedy, watching her, suddenly
+spoke up with careless briskness:</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you'll tell Cordelia that 'twas <i>your</i>
+subject, that <i>you</i> got it first, and that <i>you</i> want it.
+Very likely she won't care much, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Aunt Julia, she will! If you could have
+seen her face when she talked of it&mdash;" Genevieve
+stopped abruptly. Genevieve <i>did</i> suddenly see Cordelia's
+face as it had been that afternoon, all aglow
+with happiness. She heard her eager voice say,
+too: "I think it's the best thing I ever did!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, but maybe she doesn't care for the
+prize," observed Mrs. Kennedy, still carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aunt Julia, she does; she&mdash;" Again
+Genevieve stopped abruptly. She was remembering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>
+now how Cordelia's face had looked that February
+afternoon at the parsonage when she had said:
+"Of course I sha'n't win it&mdash;dear me, how I would
+love to, though!"</p>
+
+<p>"But she'll understand, of course, when you tell
+her it's <i>your</i> subject and that <i>you</i> want it," went on
+Mrs. Kennedy, smoothly. Genevieve did not see
+the keen, almost fearful glances, that Mrs. Kennedy
+was giving her between the light words.</p>
+
+<p>"I know; but that sounds so&mdash;so&mdash;" There
+was a long pause; then Genevieve, with a quivering
+sigh, rose slowly and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy, for some unapparent reason,
+smiled&mdash;but there were tears in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The Hexagon Club took a long ride the next
+day. Five of them talked again of Cordelia's paper,
+and four begged Cordelia to tell what she had said
+about them. If Genevieve, alone, was unusually
+silent, nobody, apparently, noticed it. They were
+riding by themselves to-day. They had invited
+none of the boys or other girls to join them.</p>
+
+<p>It was when the ride was over, and when Genevieve
+had almost reached the Kennedy driveway,
+that she said wistfully, stroking the mare's
+neck:</p>
+
+<p>"Topsy, I just couldn't. I just couldn't! It
+sounded so&mdash;so&mdash;And, Topsy, <i>you</i> couldn't, if
+you'd seen how awfully happy she looked!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did Cordelia say?" asked Mrs. Kennedy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
+when Genevieve came into the house a little
+later. There was no hint in the lady's voice of the
+hope that was in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I didn't tell her, Aunt Julia," stammered
+Genevieve. Then, with a playful whimsicality that
+did not in the least deceive Aunt Julia's ears, she
+added: "Who wants that old prize, anyhow?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a beautiful smile, then, that illumined
+Aunt Julia's face, and it was a very tender kiss that
+fell on Genevieve's forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my brave Genevieve&mdash;and I'm sure
+you'll never regret it, my dear!" she said.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>May passed, and June came, bringing warm,
+sunny days that were very tempting to feet that
+were longing to be tramping through green woods
+and fields. Examinations, however, were coming
+soon, and Genevieve knew that, tempting as was
+the beautiful out-of-doors, studies must come first.
+Every possible minute, however, she spent in rides,
+walks, and tennis playing&mdash;even Miss Jane insisted
+that she must have exercise.</p>
+
+<p>June brought not only alluring days, however,
+but a letter from Quentina, which sent Genevieve
+flying into Mrs. Kennedy's room.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Julia, did you write again to Mr. Jones?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did," smiled Mrs. Kennedy, "and I have a
+letter from him to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"You darling! Then you know, of course! Oh,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>
+Aunt Julia, isn't it lovely! I just can't wait till to-morrow
+to tell the girls."</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve did wait, however&mdash;she waited even
+till the morning recess. She wanted all the Happy
+Hexagons together; and when she had them together
+she told them the astounding news in one
+breathless rush of words.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, Quentina's coming next year to school.
+She's going to room with me. Isn't it lovely!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a chorus of delighted questions
+and exclamations; but Genevieve lifted her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-h! Listen. I've got her letter here. You
+must hear it!" and she whipped open the letter
+and began to read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Oh&mdash;oh&mdash;It isn't true&mdash;it can't be true!
+But father says it is, and father doesn't lie. I'm
+to go to Sunbridge. Sunbridge! I think Sunbridge
+is the loveliest name in the world&mdash;for a
+town, I mean, of course.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Genevieve</span>:&mdash;There! this is actually
+the first minute I could bring myself to begin this
+letter properly. Really, a thing like this can't just
+begin, you know! And to think that I'm going to
+see Paul Revere's grave and Bunker Hill and you
+just next September! Oh, how can I ever thank
+you and dear Mrs. Kennedy? I love her, love her,
+love her&mdash;right now! And all the Happy Hexagons&mdash;I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span>
+love them, too. I love everybody and
+everything&mdash;I'm going to Sunbridge!</p>
+
+<p>"All day I've been saying over and over to myself
+that song in the 'Lady of the Lake,' only I've
+changed the words a little to fit my case; like this:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"'Quentina, rest! thy longing o'er,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:0.5em;">Dream of Texas schools no more,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Days of longing, nights of sighing</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:0.5em;">For Paul Revere's enchanted land.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Hands unseen thy days are planning,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:0.5em;">Fairy strains of music falling</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Every sense is up and calling,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left:0.5em;">Quentina, rest! thy longing o'er,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">East thy steps will turn once more.'</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"That 'more' is poetry, but a fib; for of course
+I haven't been East at all yet. But that's just poetic
+license, you know&mdash;fibs like that.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I just can't wait for September!</p>
+
+<div class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 3em;">"Your happy, happy</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Quentina</span>."<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"My, but won't she be a picnic when she gets
+here?" chuckled Tilly, as soon as she could stop
+laughing long enough to find her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"What in the world is the matter with you
+girls?" demanded Charlie Brown, sauntering up to
+them, arm in arm with O. B. J. Holmes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tilly turned merrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter! I guess you'll think something is the
+matter when Quentina Jones gets here," she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Quentina Jones?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is a new girl who is coming to school next
+year," explained Elsie.</p>
+
+<p>"She's from Texas, and she's never been East
+before," chimed in Bertha.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and as for you, Mr. Obejay Holmes,"
+teased Tilly, "just you wait! There's no telling
+what she will do with your name!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>O. B. J. spoke to Tilly, but he threw a merry
+glance into Genevieve's understanding eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, only she's a regular walking rhyming
+dictionary, and I can just fancy how those mysterious
+initials of yours will fire her up. My poor little
+'O Be Joyful' won't be in it, then. You'll see!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't worry any," laughed O. B. J. Holmes,
+with another merry glance at Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't have to," interposed Genevieve,
+promptly. "Quentina is everything that is sweet
+and lovely, and you'll all like her; I know you will,"
+she finished, as the bell rang and the boys turned
+laughingly away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>A GOOD-BY PARTY</h3>
+
+
+<p>The June days sped so rapidly that Genevieve
+wondered where they went, sometimes. School was
+to close the twenty-third. Mr. Hartley was to arrive
+on the twentieth. Meanwhile examinations and
+the prize contest were uppermost in every one's
+thoughts. Graduation exercises were to come in
+the evening. The winner of the prize was to be
+announced at that time, also.</p>
+
+<p>"And really, you know, the announcement of
+the prize-winner is all we care about specially,"
+Elsie said one day, in the presence of a group of
+her friends on the schoolhouse steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Just you wait till you graduate," laughed back
+Bertha's brother, Charlie, "and then I guess the
+<i>evening</i> exercises will be of some consequence."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;but that won't be till two years
+from now," cried Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you girls will be thinking more of frills
+and furbelows than you will of prizes," laughed
+Harold Day.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a new white dress for Graduation
+night," said Elsie in a low voice to Genevieve, "and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
+I don't believe I could have a prettier one, even
+then."</p>
+
+<p>"Another new white dress?" demanded Tilly,
+who had heard the aside. "Why, Elsie Martin, you
+had one for Miss Sally's wedding!"</p>
+
+<p>Elsie laughed happily.</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;but this is a muslin. Aunt Kate
+seemed to want me to have it&mdash;and of course I'd
+love to have it, myself!"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve, for some reason, looked suddenly
+very happy, so much so that Harold, watching her,
+said quietly a minute later:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, young lady, what's gone specially right
+with your world to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>Genevieve laughed and blushed. She shook her
+head roguishly. Then suddenly she rejoined:</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon one of my awfully bad things has
+turned out all good&mdash;that's all!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>True to his word, Mr. Hartley came on the
+twentieth. He was to be Mrs. Kennedy's guest
+until the start for Texas after school had closed.</p>
+
+<p>"My, dearie! how fine and tall we are growing,"
+he greeted his daughter affectionately. "Looks like
+Mr. Tim and the boys won't know you, I'm thinking!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! Of course they will&mdash;and I
+can't hardly wait to see them, either," cried Genevieve.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is doubtful if, on Graduation night, Cordelia
+Wilson herself listened to the announcement of the
+prize-winner any more anxiously than did Genevieve.
+It seemed as if she could not bear it&mdash;after
+what had happened&mdash;if Cordelia did not get the
+prize. And Cordelia got it.</p>
+
+<p>"'When Sunbridge went to Texas,'" read Mr.
+Jackson, "Cordelia Wilson." And it was Genevieve
+who clapped the loudest.</p>
+
+<p>Cordelia, certainly, was beatifically happy. And
+when Genevieve saw her amazed, but joyously happy
+face, she wondered why she should suddenly want
+to cry&mdash;for, surely, she had never felt happier in
+her life.</p>
+
+<p>Graduation day, for the Happy Hexagons, was
+not, after all, quite the last meeting together; for
+Mrs. Kennedy gave Genevieve a porch party the
+night before she was to start back to Texas with
+Mr. Hartley.</p>
+
+<p>A very merry crowd of boys and girls it was that
+sang college songs and told stories that night on
+the Kennedys' roomy, electric-lighted veranda.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems just as if I couldn't have you go away,"
+sighed Cordelia, at last, to Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm coming back next year."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! We couldn't stand it if you weren't,"
+cried Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"And just think&mdash;last year we all went back
+with you," murmured Elsie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wish you were going this year," declared
+Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you aren't the only one that wishes
+that," cut in several longing voices.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we'll take you all now&mdash;if you'll go,"
+retorted Genevieve, merrily.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>All</i>&mdash;did you say?" challenged Harold Day.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all," nodded Genevieve, emphatically.
+"We'd be glad to have you, every one of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I begin to think you would&mdash;now that
+I've seen Texas," sighed Tilly. "But I suppose we
+shall have to content ourselves till you come back
+this time."</p>
+
+<p>"And this wonderful little rhyming dictionary, as
+Miss Tilly calls her&mdash;does she come back with
+you?" asked O. B. J. Holmes.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe. She comes next fall, anyway, before
+school begins," smiled Genevieve.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what I want to know is, if you are going
+to do any more Texas missionary work," suggested
+Charlie Brown.</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh! She doesn't do that there&mdash;she does
+that here," cut in Tilly.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't any more to do, anyway," declared
+the exact Cordelia, happily. "She's got everything
+fixed even down to Elsie's&mdash;" She stopped just
+in time, but already Genevieve had interposed hurriedly:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but it wasn't I that did anything. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span>
+Cordelia. She found them to begin with, you know&mdash;Reddy,
+and Hermit Joe's son."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Jane, together with
+Nancy appeared just then with great plates of ice
+cream and delicious cake; and after that, all too
+soon, came the time for good-nights. The good-nights
+were not quite finished, however, until at the
+foot of the walk, five members of the Hexagon Club
+turned, and all together gave their Texas yell with
+a lusty "Genevieve" at the end that brought the
+tears to the real Genevieve's eyes.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'>
+"Texas, Texas, Tex&mdash;Tex&mdash;Texas!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">GENEVIEVE!"</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Mercy! What will the neighbors say&mdash;at this
+time of night!" protested Miss Jane Chick, feebly;
+but her eyes, too, were moist.</p>
+
+
+<h2>THE END.</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<h2>THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'><small>(Trade Mark)</small><br />
+<br />
+<i>By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON</i><br />
+
+<i>Each 1 vol., large 12mo, cloth, illustrated, per vol.</i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+
+<div class='books'>
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL STORIES</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Being three "Little Colonel" stories in the Cosy Corner
+Series, "The Little Colonel," "Two Little Knights of
+Kentucky," and "The Giant Scissors," in a single volume.</p></div>
+
+<div class='books'>
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOUSE PARTY</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOLIDAYS</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HERO</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL AT BOARDING-SCHOOL</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL IN ARIZONA</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS VACATION</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL, MAID OF HONOR</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES RIDING</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>MARY WARE: THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHUM</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><small>(Trade Mark)</small></span><br />
+<b>MARY WARE IN TEXAS</b><br />
+<b>MARY WARE'S PROMISED LAND</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p><i>These</i> 12 <i>volumes, boxed as a set</i>, $18.00.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='books'>
+<b>THE LITTLE COLONEL</b><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 5em;">(<small>Trade Mark</small>)</span><br />
+<b>TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF KENTUCKY</b><br />
+<b>THE GIANT SCISSORS</b><br />
+<b>BIG BROTHER</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='center'>Special Holiday Editions<br />
+
+Each one volume, cloth decorative, small quarto, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$1.25</div>
+
+<p>New plates, handsomely illustrated with eight full-page
+drawings in color, and many marginal sketches.</p>
+
+<div class='books'><b>IN THE DESERT OF WAITING</b>: <span class="smcap">The Legend
+of Camelback Mountain.</span><br />
+
+<b>THE THREE WEAVERS</b>: <span class="smcap">A Fairy Tale for
+Fathers and Mothers as Well as for Their
+Daughters.</span><br />
+
+<b>KEEPING TRYST</b><br />
+
+<b>THE LEGEND OF THE BLEEDING HEART</b><br />
+
+<b>THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME</b>:
+<span class="smcap">A Fairy Play for Old and Young.</span><br />
+
+<b>THE JESTER'S SWORD</b></div>
+
+<div class='center'>Each one volume, tall 16mo, cloth decorative&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $0.50</div>
+
+<p>There has been a constant demand for publication in
+separate form of these six stories which were originally
+included in six of the "Little Colonel" books.</p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE</b>: <span class="smcap">By Annie Fellows
+Johnston</span>. Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>New illustrated edition, uniform with the Little Colonel
+Books,<br />1 vol., large 12mo, cloth decorative&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $1.50</div>
+
+<p>A story of the time of Christ, which is one of the author's
+best-known books.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE LITTLE COLONEL GOOD TIMES BOOK</b></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Good times book prices">
+<tr><td align='left'>Uniform in size with the Little Colonel Series</td><td align='right'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Bound in white kid (morocco) and gold</td><td align='right'>3.00</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<div class='center'>Cover design and decorations by Peter Verberg.</div>
+
+<p>Published in response to many inquiries from readers
+of the Little Colonel books as to where they could obtain
+a "Good Times Book" such as Betty kept.</p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK</b></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Large quarto, boards   &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $1.50<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>A series of "Little Colonel" dolls. There are many of
+them and each has several changes of costume, so that
+the happy group can be appropriately clad for the rehearsal
+of any scene or incident in the series.</p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>ASA HOLMES</b>; <span class="smcap">Or, At the Cross-Roads</span>. By
+<span class="smcap">Annie Fellows Johnston</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>With a frontispiece by Ernest Fosbery.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Large 16mo, cloth, gilt top   &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; $1.00<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>"'Asa Holmes; Or, At the Cross-Roads' is the most
+delightful, most sympathetic and wholesome book that
+has been published in a long while."&mdash;<i>Boston Times.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>TRAVELERS FIVE: ALONG LIFE'S HIGHWAY.</b>
+By <span class="smcap">Annie Fellows Johnston</span>.</div>
+
+<p>With an introduction by Bliss Carman, and a frontispiece
+by E. H. Garrett.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Cloth decorative &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$1.25<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Johnston's .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. are of the character that cause
+the mind to grow gravely meditative, the eyes to shine
+with tender mist, and the heart strings to stir to strange,
+sweet music of human sympathy."&mdash;<i>Los Angeles Graphic.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE RIVAL CAMPERS;</b> <span class="smcap">Or, The Adventures
+of Henry Burns</span>. By <span class="smcap">Ruel Perley Smith</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$1.50<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>A story of a party of typical American lads, courageous,
+alert, and athletic, who spend a summer camping on an
+island off the Maine coast.</p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE RIVAL CAMPERS AFLOAT;</b> <span class="smcap">Or, The
+Prize Yacht Viking</span>. By <span class="smcap">Ruel Perley Smith</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;  $1.50<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This book is a continuation of the adventures of "The
+Rival Campers" on their prize yacht <i>Viking</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE RIVAL CAMPERS ASHORE</b></div>
+
+<div class='center'>By <span class="smcap">Ruel Perley Smith</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated    <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>"As interesting ashore as when afloat."&mdash;<i>The Interior.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE RIVAL CAMPERS AMONG THE
+OYSTER PIRATES;</b> <span class="smcap">Or, Jack Harvey's Adventures</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+By <span class="smcap">Ruel Perley Smith</span>. Illustrated&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>"Just the type of book which is most popular with lads
+who are in their early teens."&mdash;<i>The Philadelphia Item.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>A TEXAS BLUE BONNET</b></div>
+
+<div class='center'>By <span class="smcap">Caroline Emilia Jacobs</span> (<span class="smcap">Emilia Elliott</span>).</div>
+
+<div class='cener'>
+12mo, illustrated &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>"The book's heroine Blue Bonnet has the very finest
+kind of wholesome, honest lively girlishness and cannot
+but make friends with every one who meets her through
+the book as medium."&mdash;<i>Chicago Inter-Ocean.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>BLUE BONNET'S RANCH PARTY</b></div>
+
+<p>A Sequel to "A Texas Blue Bonnet." By <span class="smcap">Caroline
+Elliott Jacobs</span> and <span class="smcap">Edith Ellerbeck Read</span>.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+12mo, illustrated &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The new story begins where the first volume leaves off
+and takes Blue Bonnet and the "We Are Seven Club"
+to the ranch in Texas. The tables are completely turned:
+Blue Bonnet is here in her natural element, while her
+friends from Woodford have to learn the customs and
+traditions of another world.</p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE GIRLS OF FRIENDLY TERRACE</b>
+<span class="smcap">Or, Peggy Raymond's Success</span>. By <span class="smcap">Harriet Lummis
+Smith</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+12mo, illustrated&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This is a book that will gladden the hearts of many
+girl readers because of its charming air of comradeship
+and reality. It is a very interesting group of girls who
+live on Friendly Terrace and their good times and other
+times are graphically related by the author, who shows
+a sympathetic knowledge of girl character.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>PEGGY RAYMOND'S VACATION;</b> <span class="smcap">Or, Friendly
+Terrace Transplanted</span>.</div>
+
+<p>A Sequel to "The Girls of Friendly Terrace." By
+<span class="smcap">Harriet Lummis Smith</span>.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Readers who made the acquaintance of Peggy Raymond
+and her bevy of girl chums in "The Girls of Friendly
+Terrace" will be glad to continue the acquaintance of
+these attractive young folks.</p>
+
+<p>Several new characters are introduced, and one at least
+will prove a not unworthy rival of the favorites among
+the Terrace girls.</p>
+
+
+<h2>THE HADLEY HALL SERIES</h2>
+
+<div class='center'><i>By LOUISE M. BREITENBACH</i><br />
+
+<br />
+<i>Each, library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated</i> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>ALMA AT HADLEY HALL</b></div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>"Miss Breitenbach is to be congratulated on having
+written such an appealing book for girls, and the girls
+are to be congratulated on having the privilege of reading
+it."&mdash;<i>The Detroit Free Press.</i></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>ALMA'S SOPHOMORE YEAR</b></div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>"The characters are strongly drawn with a life-like
+realism, the incidents are well and progressively sequenced,
+and the action is so well timed that the interest
+never slackens."&mdash;<i>Boston Ideas.</i></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR
+RANCH.</b> By <span class="smcap">Eleanor Stuart</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Any girl of any age who is fond of outdoor life will
+appreciate this fascinating tale of Genevieve Hartley's
+summer vacation house-party on a Texas ranch. Genevieve
+and her friends are real girls, the kind that one
+would like to have in one's own home, and there are a
+couple of manly boys introduced.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>BEAUTIFUL JOE'S PARADISE;</b> <span class="smcap">Or, The Island
+of Brotherly Love</span>. A Sequel to "Beautiful Joe."
+By <span class="smcap">Marshall Saunders</span>, author of "Beautiful Joe."</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+One vol., library 12mo, cloth illustrated  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>"This book revives the spirit of 'Beautiful Joe' capitally.
+It is fairly riotous with fun, and is about as unusual
+as anything in the animal book line that has seen the
+light."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Item.</i></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>'TILDA JANE.</b> By <span class="smcap">Marshall Saunders</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>"It is one of those exquisitely simple and truthful books
+that win and charm the reader, and I did not put it down
+until I had finished it&mdash;honest! And I am sure that every
+one, young or old, who reads will be proud and happy to
+make the acquaintance of the delicious waif.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot think of any better book for children than
+this. I commend it unreservedly."&mdash;<i>Cyrus T. Brady.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>'TILDA JANE'S ORPHANS.</b> A Sequel to "'Tilda
+Jane." By <span class="smcap">Marshall Saunders</span>.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>'Tilda Jane is the same original, delightful girl, and as
+fond of her animal pets as ever.</p>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p>"There is so much to this story that it is almost a novel&mdash;in
+fact it is better than many novels, although written
+for only young people. Compared with much of to-day's
+juveniles it is quite a superior book."&mdash;<i>Chicago Tribune.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>THE STORY OF THE GRAVELYS.</b> By
+<span class="smcap">Marshall Saunders</span>, author of "Beautiful Joe's
+Paradise," "'Tilda Jane," etc.</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+Library 12mo, cloth decorative. Illustrated by E. B. Barry &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Here we have the haps and mishaps, the trials and
+triumphs, of a delightful New England family.</p>
+
+
+<div class='books'><b>PUSSY BLACK-FACE.</b> By <span class="smcap">Marshall Saunders</span>,
+author of "'Tilda Jane," "'Tilda Jane's Orphans," etc.</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>$1.50</b><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This is a delightful little story of animal life, written
+in this author's best vein, dealing especially with Pussy
+Black-Face, a little Beacon Street (Boston) kitten, who is
+the narrator.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors corrected.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR RANCH***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 25578-h.txt or 25578-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch, by
+Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter, Illustrated by Frank J. Murch
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch
+
+
+Author: Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 23, 2008  [eBook #25578]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR
+RANCH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25578-h.htm or 25578-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/7/25578/25578-h/25578-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/7/25578/25578-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR RANCH
+
+by
+
+ELEANOR STUART
+
+Illustrated by Frank J. Murch
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "REDDY WAS RIGHT THERE EVERY TIME"
+
+(_See page 113_)]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Boston      L. C. Page &
+Company     Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1913
+by L. C. Page & Company
+(Incorporated)
+All rights reserved
+
+First Impression, April, 1913
+Second Impression, January, 1914
+
+The Colonial Press
+C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+    I. AUNT SOPHRONIA                                         1
+
+   II. PLANS FOR TEXAS                                       12
+
+  III. THE COMING OF GENEVIEVE                               28
+
+   IV. ON THE WAY                                            44
+
+    V. THE BOYS PREPARE A WELCOME                            61
+
+   VI. CORDELIA SEES A COWBOY                                72
+
+  VII. THE RANCH HOUSE                                       86
+
+ VIII. THE MISTRESS OF THE SIX STAR RANCH                    99
+
+   IX. REDDY AND THE BRONCHO                                110
+
+    X. CORDELIA GOES TO CHURCH                              121
+
+   XI. QUENTINA                                             137
+
+  XII. THE OPENING OF A BARREL                              157
+
+ XIII. THE PRAIRIE--AND MOONLIGHT                           171
+
+  XIV. A MAN AND A MYSTERY                                  185
+
+   XV. THE ALAMO                                            201
+
+  XVI. TILLY CROSSES BRIDGES                                215
+
+ XVII. "BERTHA'S ACCIDENT"                                  225
+
+XVIII. THE GOLDEN HOURS                                     235
+
+  XIX. HERMIT JOE                                           248
+
+   XX. THE NEW BOY                                          260
+
+  XXI. GENEVIEVE LEARNS SOMETHING NOT IN BOOKS              278
+
+ XXII. A TEXAS "MISSIONARY"                                 296
+
+XXIII. GENEVIEVE GOES TO BOSTON                             307
+
+ XXIV. A BROWN DRESS FOR ELSIE                              324
+
+  XXV. "WHEN SUNBRIDGE WENT TO TEXAS"                       339
+
+ XXVI. A GOOD-BY PARTY                                      349
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+  "REDDY WAS RIGHT THERE EVERY TIME" (_See page 113_)  _Frontispiece_
+
+  "A TALL, SLENDER GIRL ... APPEARED AT A CAR DOOR"          30
+
+  "'FOLLOW ME--QUICK!' HE ORDERED"                          181
+
+  "'THERE, NOW--LOOK!' SHE ADDED"                           207
+
+  "'HOW DO YOU DO, MR. OLIVER HOLMES,' SHE BEGAN"           265
+
+  "IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A WALK, THE WOMAN SAID, AS
+      SHE GAVE DIRECTIONS"                                  320
+
+
+
+
+The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AUNT SOPHRONIA
+
+
+The Reverend Thomas Wilson's sister, Miss Sophronia, had come to
+Sunbridge on a Tuesday evening late in June to make her brother's family
+a long-promised visit. But it was not until the next morning that she
+heard something that sent her to her sister-in-law in a burst of
+astonishment almost too great for words.
+
+"For pity's sake, Mary, what is this I hear?" she demanded. "Edith
+insists that her cousin, Cordelia, is going to Texas next week--to
+Texas!--_Cordelia!_"
+
+"Yes, she is, Sophronia," replied the minister's wife, trying to make
+her answer sound as cheerful and commonplace as she could, and as if
+Texas were in the next room. (It was something of a trial to Mrs.
+Thomas Wilson that her husband's sister could not seem to understand
+that she, a minister's wife for eighteen years and the mother of five
+children, ought to know what was proper and right for her orphaned niece
+to do--at least fully as much as should a spinster, who had never
+brought up anything but four cats and a parrot!) "Edith is quite right.
+Cordelia is going to Texas next week."
+
+"But, Mary, are you crazy? To let a child like that go all the way from
+here to Texas--one would think New Hampshire and Texas were twenty miles
+apart!"
+
+Mrs. Wilson sighed a little wearily.
+
+"Cordelia isn't exactly a child, Sophronia, you must remember that. She
+was sixteen last November; and she's very self-reliant and capable for
+her age, too. Besides, she isn't going alone, you know."
+
+"Alone!" exclaimed Miss Sophronia. "Mary, surely, the rest that Edith
+said isn't true! Those other girls aren't going, too, are they?--Elsie
+Martin, and that flyaway Tilly Mack, and all?"
+
+"I think they are, Sophronia."
+
+"Well, of all the crazy things anybody ever heard of!" almost groaned
+the lady. "Mary, what _are_ you thinking of?"
+
+"I'm thinking of Cordelia," returned the minister's wife, with a spirit
+that was as sudden as it was unusual. "Sophronia, for twelve years, ever
+since she came to me, Cordelia has been just a Big Sister in the
+family; and she's had to fetch and carry and trot and run her little
+legs off for one after another of the children, as well as for her uncle
+and me. You _know_ how good she is, and how conscientious. You know how
+anxious she always is to do exactly right. She's never had a playday,
+and I'm sure she deserves one if ever a girl did! Vacations to her have
+never meant anything but more care and more time for housework."
+
+Mrs. Wilson paused for breath, then went on with renewed vigor.
+
+"When this chance came up, Tom and I thought at first, of course, just
+as you did, that it was quite out of the question; but--well, we decided
+to let her go. And I haven't been sorry a minute since. She's Tom's only
+brother's child, but we've never been able to do much for her, as you
+know. We can let her have this chance, though. And she's so happy--dear
+child!"
+
+"But what is it? How did it happen? Who's going? Edith's story sounded
+so absurd to me I could make precious little out of it. She insisted
+that the 'Happy X's' were going."
+
+The minister's wife smiled.
+
+"It's the girls' 'Hexagon Club,' Sophronia. They call themselves the
+'Happy Hexagons.' There are six of them."
+
+"Humph!" commented Miss Sophronia. "Who are they--besides Cordelia?"
+
+"Bertha Brown, Tilly Mack, Alma Lane, Elsie Martin, and Genevieve
+Hartley."
+
+"And _who_?" frowned Miss Sophronia at the last name.
+
+"Genevieve Hartley. She is the little Texas girl. It is to her ranch
+they are going."
+
+"_Her_ ranch!"
+
+"Well--her father's."
+
+"But who is she? What's she doing here?"
+
+"She's been going to school this winter. She's at the Kennedys'."
+
+"A Texas ranch-girl at the Kennedys'! Why, they're _nice_ people!"
+exclaimed Miss Sophronia, opening wide her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Wilson laughed now outright.
+
+"You'd better not let Miss Genevieve hear you say 'nice' in that tone of
+voice--and in just that connection, Sophronia," she warned her.
+"Genevieve might think you meant to insinuate that there weren't any
+_nice_ people in Texas--and she's very fond of Texas!"
+
+Miss Sophronia smiled grimly.
+
+"Well, I don't mean that, of course. Still, a ranch must be sort of wild
+and--and mustangy, seems to me; and I was thinking of the Kennedys,
+especially Miss Jane Chick. Imagine saying 'wild' and 'Miss Jane' in the
+same breath!"
+
+"Yes, I know," smiled Mrs. Wilson; "and I guess Genevieve has been
+something of a trial--in a way; though they love her dearly--both of
+them. She's a very lovable girl. But she _is_ heedless and thoughtless;
+and, of course, she wasn't at all used to our ways here in the East. Her
+mother died when she was eight years old; since then she has been
+brought up by her father on the ranch. She blew into Sunbridge last
+August like a veritable breeze from her own prairies--and the Kennedy
+home isn't used to breezes--especially Miss Jane. I imagine Genevieve
+did stir things up a little there all winter--though she has improved a
+great deal since she came."
+
+"But why did she come in the first place?"
+
+Mrs. Wilson smiled oddly.
+
+"That's the best part of it," she said. "It seems that last April, when
+Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick were on their way home from California, they
+stopped in Houston, Texas, a few days, and there they met John Hartley
+and his daughter, Genevieve. It appears they had known him years ago
+when they were 'the Chick girls,' and he came to Sunbridge to visit
+relatives. I've heard it whispered that he was actually a bit in love
+with one of them, though I never heard whether it was Miss Jane, or the
+one who is now the Widow Kennedy. However that may be, he was delighted
+to see them in Texas, report says, and to introduce to them his
+daughter, Genevieve."
+
+"But that doesn't explain how the girl came here," frowned Miss
+Sophronia.
+
+"No, but I will," smiled her sister-in-law. "Fond and proud as Mr.
+Hartley very plainly was of his daughter, it did not take Mrs. Kennedy
+long to see that he was very much disturbed at the sort of life she was
+living at the ranch. That is, he felt that the time had come now when
+she needed something that only school, young girl friends, and
+gently-bred women could give her; yet he could not bear the thought of
+sending her off alone to an ordinary boarding school. Then is when Mrs.
+Kennedy arose to the occasion; and very quickly it was settled that
+Genevieve should come here to her in Sunbridge for school this last
+winter--which she did, and Mrs. Kennedy has been a veritable mother to
+her ever since. She calls her 'Aunt Julia.'"
+
+"Hm-m; very fine, I'm sure," murmured Miss Sophronia, a little shortly.
+"And now she's asked these girls home with her--the whole lot of them!"
+
+"Yes; and they're crazy over it--as you'd know they would be."
+
+Miss Sophronia sniffed audibly.
+
+"Humph! It's the parents that are crazy, I'm thinking," she corrected.
+"Imagine it--six scatter-brained children, and all the way to Texas!
+Mary!"
+
+"Oh, but the father is in the East here, on business and he goes back
+with them," conciliated Mrs. Wilson, hastily. "Besides, Mrs. Kennedy is
+going, too."
+
+Miss Sophronia raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Well, I can't say I envy her the thing she's undertaken. Imagine _my_
+attempting to chaperon six crazy girls all the way from New Hampshire to
+Texas--and then on a ranch for nobody knows how long after that!"
+
+"I can't imagine--_your_ doing it, Sophronia," rejoined the minister's
+wife, demurely. And at the meaning emphasis and the twinkle in her eye,
+Miss Sophronia sniffed again audibly.
+
+"When do they go?" she asked in her stiffest manner.
+
+"The first day of July."
+
+"Indeed! Very fine, I'm sure. Still--I've been thinking of the expense.
+Of course, for a minister--"
+
+
+Mrs. Wilson bit her lip. After a moment she filled the pause that her
+sister-in-law had left.
+
+"I understand, of course, what you mean, Sophronia," she acknowledged.
+"And ministers' families don't have much money for Texas trips, I'll
+own. As it happens, however, the trip will cost the young people
+nothing. Mr. Hartley very kindly bears all the expenses."
+
+"He does?"
+
+"Yes. He declares he shall be in the girls' debt even then. You see,
+last winter Genevieve sprained her ankle, and was shut up for weeks in
+the house. It was a very bad sprain, and naturally it came pretty hard
+on such an active, outdoor girl as she is. Mrs. Kennedy says she thinks
+Genevieve and all the rest of them would have gone wild if it hadn't
+been for the girls. One or more of them was there every day. Then is
+when they formed their Hexagon Club. It was worth everything to
+Genevieve, as you can imagine; and Mr. Hartley declares that nothing he
+can ever do will half repay them. Besides, he wants Genevieve to be with
+nice girls all she can--she's had so little of girls' society. So he's
+asked them to go as his guests."
+
+"Dear me! Well, he must have some money!"
+
+"He has. Mrs. Kennedy says he is a man of independent means, and he has
+no one but Genevieve to spend his money on. So, as for this trip--in his
+whole-hearted, generous Western fashion, he pays all the bills himself."
+
+"Hm-m; very kind, I'm sure," admitted Miss Sophronia, grudgingly. "Well,
+I'm glad, at least, that it doesn't cost you anything."
+
+There was a moment's silence, then Mrs. Wilson said, apologetically:
+
+"I'm sorry, Sophronia, but I'm afraid you'll have to stand it till the
+children go--and there'll be something to stand, too; for it's 'Texas,
+Texas, Texas,' from morning till night, everywhere. Genevieve herself
+is in New Jersey visiting friends, but that doesn't seem to make any
+difference. The whole town is wildly excited over the trip. I found even
+little Mrs. Miller, the dressmaker, yesterday poring over an old atlas
+spread out on her cutting-table.
+
+"'I was just a-lookin' up where Texas was,' she explained when she saw
+me. 'My! only think of havin' folks go all that distance--folks I know,
+I mean. I'm sure I'd never dare to go--or let my girl.'"
+
+"Very sensible woman, I'm sure," remarked Miss Sophronia.
+
+Mrs. Wilson smiled; but she went on imperturbably.
+
+"Even the little tots haven't escaped infection. Imagine my sensations
+Sunday when Bettie Barker, the primmest Miss Propriety in my infant
+class, asked: 'Please, Mis' Wilson, what is a broncho, and how do you
+bust 'em?'"
+
+This, indeed, was too much for even Miss Sophronia's gravity. Her lips
+twitched and relaxed in a broad smile.
+
+"Well, upon my word!" she ejaculated, as she rose to her feet to go
+up-stairs to her room. "Upon my word!"
+
+An hour later, in that same room, Mrs. Wilson, going in to place some
+fresh towels upon the rack, found a huge book spread open on Miss
+Sophronia's bed. The book was number seven in the Reverend Thomas
+Wilson's most comprehensive encyclopedia; and it was open at the word
+"Texas."
+
+Mrs. Wilson smiled and went out, closing the door softly behind her.
+
+It was, indeed, as Mrs. Wilson had said, "Texas, Texas, Texas,"
+everywhere throughout the town. Old atlases were brought down from
+attics, and old geographies were dug out of trunks. Even the
+dictionaries showed smudges in the T's where not over-clean fingers had
+turned hurried pages for possible information. The library was besieged
+at all hours, particularly by the Happy Hexagons, for they, of course,
+were the storm-center of the whole thing.
+
+Ordinarily the club met but once a week; now they met daily--even in the
+absence of their beloved president, Genevieve. Heretofore they had met
+usually in the parsonage; now they met in the grove back of the
+schoolhouse.
+
+"It seems more appropriate, somehow," Elsie had declared; "more sort of
+airy and--Texasy!"
+
+"Yes; and we want to get used to space--wide, wide space! Genevieve says
+it's all space," Bertha Brown had answered, with a far-reaching fling of
+her arms.
+
+"Ouch! Bertha! Just be sure you've got the space, then, before you get
+used to it," retorted Tilly, aggrievedly, straightening her hat which
+had been knocked awry by one of the wide-flung arms.
+
+The Happy Hexagons met, of course, to study Texas, and to talk Texas;
+though, as Bertha Brown's brother, Charlie, somewhat impertinently
+declared, they did not need to meet to _talk_ Texas--they did that
+without any meeting! All of which merely meant, of course, retaliated
+the girls, that Charlie was jealous because he also could not go to
+Texas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PLANS FOR TEXAS
+
+
+It was a pretty little grove in which the Happy Hexagons met to study
+and to talk Texas. Nor were they the only ones that met there. Though
+Harold Day, Alma Lane's cousin, was not to be of the Texas party, the
+girls invited him to meet with them, as he was Texas-born, and was one
+of Genevieve's first friends in Sunbridge. On the outskirts of the magic
+circle, sundry smaller brothers and sisters and cousins of the members
+hung adoringly. Even grown men and women came sometimes, and stood
+apart, looking on with what the Happy Hexagons chose to think were
+admiring, awestruck eyes--which was not a little flattering, though
+quite natural and proper, decided the club. For, of course, not every
+one could go to Texas, to be sure!
+
+At the beginning, at least, of each meeting, affairs were conducted with
+the seriousness due to so important a subject. In impressive silence the
+club seated itself in a circle; and solemnly Cordelia Wilson, the
+treasurer, opened the meeting, being (according to Tilly) a "perfect
+image of her uncle in the pulpit."
+
+"Fellow members, once more we find ourselves gathered together for the
+purpose of the study of Texas," she would begin invariably. And then
+perhaps: "We will listen to Miss Bertha Brown, please. Miss Brown, what
+new thing--I mean, what new features have you discovered about Texas?"
+
+If Miss Brown had something to say--and of course she did have something
+(she would have been disgraced, otherwise)--she said it. Then each in
+turn was asked, after which the discussion was open to all.
+
+They were lively meetings. No wonder small brothers and sisters and
+cousins hung entranced on every word. No wonder, too, that at last, one
+day, quite carried away with the enthusiasm of the moment, they made so
+bold as to have something to say on their own account. It happened like
+this:
+
+"Texas is the largest state in the Union," announced Bertha Brown, who
+had been called on first. "It has an area about one twelfth as large as
+that of the whole United States. If all the population of the country
+were placed there, the state would not be as thickly settled as the
+eastern shore of Massachusetts is. Six different flags have waved over
+it since its discovery two hundred years ago: France, Spain, Mexico,
+Republic of Texas, Confederate States of America, and the Star Spangled
+Banner."
+
+"Pooh! I said most of that two days ago," muttered Tilly, not under
+breath.
+
+"Well, I can't help it," pouted Bertha; "there isn't very much new left
+to say, Tilly Mack, and you know it. Besides, I didn't have a minute's
+time this morning to look up a single thing."
+
+"Order--order in the court," rapped Cordelia, sharply.
+
+"Oh, but it doesn't matter a bit if we do say the same things,"
+protested Alma Lane, quickly. (Alma was always trying to make peace
+between combatants.) "I'm sure we shall remember it all the better if we
+do repeat it."
+
+"Of course we shall," agreed Cordelia, promptly. "Now, Alma--I mean Miss
+Lane--" (this title-giving was brand-new, having been introduced as a
+special mark of dignity fitting to the occasion; and it was not easy to
+remember!)--"perhaps you will tell us what you have found out."
+
+"Well, the climate is healthful," began Alma, hopefully. "Texas is less
+subject to malarial diseases than any of the other states on the Gulf of
+Mexico. September is the most rainy month; December the least. The mean
+annual temperature near the mouth of the Rio Grande is 72 deg.; while along
+the Red River the mean annual temperature is only 80 deg.. In the
+northwestern part of the state the mean annual--"
+
+"Alma, please," begged Tilly, in mock horror, raising both her hands,
+"_please_ don't give us any more of those mean annual temperatures. I'm
+sure if they can be any _meaner_ than the temperature right here to-day
+is," she sighed, as she fell to fanning herself vigorously, "I don't
+want to know what it is!"
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, in shocked disapproval. "What would Genevieve
+say!"
+
+Tilly shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Say? She wouldn't say anything--she couldn't," declared Tilly,
+unexpectedly, "because she'd be laughing at us so for digging into Texas
+like this and unearthing all its poor little secrets!"
+
+"But, Tilly, I think we ought to study it," reproved Cordelia,
+majestically, above the laugh that followed Tilly's speech. "Elsie--I
+mean, Miss Martin,--what did you find out to-day?"
+
+Elsie wrinkled her nose in a laughing grimace at Tilly, then began to
+speak in an exaggeratedly solemn tone of voice.
+
+"I find Texas is so large, and contains so great a variety of soil, and
+climate, that any product of the United States can be grown within its
+limits. It is a leader on cotton. Corn, wheat, rice, peanuts, sugar cane
+and potatoes are also grown, besides tobacco."
+
+"And watermelons, Elsie," cut in Bertha Brown. "I found in a paper that
+just last year Texas grew 140,000,000 watermelons."
+
+"I was coming to the watermelons," observed Elsie, with dignity.
+
+"Wish I were--I dote on watermelons!" pouted Tilly in an audible aside
+that brought a chuckle of appreciation from Harold Day.
+
+Cordelia gave her a reproachful look. Elsie went on, her chin a little
+higher.
+
+"Texas is the greatest producer of honey in the United States. As for
+the cattle--prior to 1775 there were vast ranches all over Southwestern
+Texas, and herds of hundreds of wild cattle were gathered and driven to
+New Orleans. I found some figures that told the number of animals in
+1892, or about then. I'll give them. They're old now, of course, but
+they'll do to show what a lot of animals there were there then."
+
+Elsie paused to take breath, but for only a moment.
+
+"There were 7,500,000 head of cattle, 5,000,000 sheep, and 1,210,000
+horses, besides more than 2,321,000 hogs."
+
+There was a sudden giggle from Tilly--an explosive giggle that brought
+every amazed eye upon her.
+
+"Well, really, Tilly," disapproved Elsie, aggrievedly, "I'm sure I don't
+see _what_ there was so very funny in that!"
+
+"There wasn't," choked Tilly; "only I was thinking, what an awful noise
+it would be if all those 2,321,000 hogs got under the gate at once."
+
+"Tilly!" scolded Cordelia; but she laughed.
+
+She could not help it. They all laughed. Even the little boys and girls
+on the outskirts giggled shrilly, and stole the opportunity to draw
+nearer to the magic circle. Almost at once, however, Cordelia regained
+her dignity.
+
+"Miss Mack, we'll hear from you, please--seriously, I mean. You haven't
+told us yet what you've found."
+
+Tilly flushed a little.
+
+"I didn't find anything."
+
+"Why, Tilly Mack!" cried a chorus of condemning voices.
+
+"Well, I didn't," defended Tilly. "In the first place I've told
+everything I can think of: trees, fruits, history, and everything; and
+this morning I just had to go to Mrs. Miller's for a fitting."
+
+"Oh, Tilly, _another_ new dress?" demanded Elsie Martin, her voice a
+pathetic wail of wistfulness.
+
+"But there are still so many things," argued Cordelia, her grave eyes
+fixed on Tilly, "so many things to learn that--" She was interrupted by
+an eager little voice from the outskirts.
+
+"I've got something, please, Cordelia. Mayn't I tell it? It's a
+brand-newest thing. Nobody's said it once!"
+
+Cordelia turned to confront her ten-year-old cousin, Edith.
+
+"Why, Edith!"
+
+"And I have, too," piped up Edith's brother, Fred, with shrill
+earnestness. (Fred was eight.) "And mine's new, too."
+
+Cordelia frowned thoughtfully.
+
+"But, children, you don't belong to the club. Only members can talk, you
+know."
+
+"Pooh! let's hear it, Cordelia," shrugged Tilly. "I'm sure if it's
+_new_, we need it--of all the old chestnuts we've heard to-day!"
+
+"Well," agreed Cordelia, "what is it, Edith? You spoke first."
+
+"It's gypsies," announced the small girl, triumphantly.
+
+"Gypsies!" chorused the Happy Hexagons in open unbelief.
+
+"Yes. There's lots of 'em there--more than 'most anywhere else in the
+world."
+
+The girls looked at each other with puzzled eyes.
+
+"Why, I never heard Genevieve say anything about gypsies," ventured
+Tilly.
+
+"Well, they're there, anyhow," maintained Edith; "I read it."
+
+"You read it! Where?" demanded Cordelia.
+
+"In father's big sac'l'pedia." Edith's voice sounded grieved, but
+triumphant. "I was up in auntie's room, and I saw it. It was open on her
+bed, and I read it. It said there was coal and iron and silver, and lots
+and lots of gypsies."
+
+There was a breathless hush, followed suddenly by a shrieking laugh from
+Tilly.
+
+"Oh, girls, girls!" she gasped. "That blessed child means 'gypsum.' I
+saw that in papa's encyclopedia just the other day."
+
+"But what is gypsum?" demanded Alma Lane.
+
+"Mercy! don't ask me," shuddered Tilly. "I looked it up in the
+dictionary, but it only said it was a whole lot of worse names. All I
+could make out was that it had crystals, and was used for dressing for
+soils, and for plaster of Paris. _Gypsies!_ Oh, Edith, Edith, what a
+circus you are!" she chuckled, going into another gale of laughter.
+
+It was Fred's injured tones that filled the first pause in the general
+hubbub that followed Tilly's explanation.
+
+"You haven't heard mine, yet," he challenged. "Mine's right!"
+
+"Well?" questioned Cordelia, wiping her eyes. (Even Cordelia had laughed
+till she cried.) "What is yours, Fred?"
+
+"It's boats. There hasn't one of you said a single thing about the boats
+you were going to ride in."
+
+"Boats!" cried the girls in a second chorus of unbelief.
+
+"Oh, you needn't try to talk me out of that," bristled the boy. "I
+_know_ what _I'm_ talking about. Old Mr. Hodges told me himself. He's
+been in 'em. He said that years and years ago, when he was a little boy
+like me, he and his father and mother went 'way across the state of
+Texas in a prairie schooner; and I asked father that night what a
+schooner was, and he said it was a boat. Well, he did!" maintained Fred,
+a little angrily, as a shout of laughter rose from the girls.
+
+"And so 'tis a boat--some kinds of schooners," Harold Day soothed the
+boy quickly, rising to his feet, and putting a friendly arm about the
+small heaving shoulders. "Come on, son, let's you and I go over to the
+house. I've got a dandy picture of a prairie schooner over there, and
+we'll hunt it up and see just what it looks like." And with a
+ceremonious "Good day, ladies!" and an elaborate flourish of his hat
+toward the Happy Hexagons, Harold drew the boy more closely into the
+circle of his arm and turned away.
+
+It was the signal for a general breaking up of the club meeting.
+Cordelia, only, looked a little anxiously after the two boys, as she
+complained:
+
+"Harold never tells a thing that he knows about Texas, and he must know
+a lot of things, even if he did leave there when he was a tiny little
+baby!"
+
+"Don't you fret, Cordy," retorted Tilly. (Cordelia did not like to be
+called "Cordy," and Tilly knew it.) "Harold Day will talk Texas all
+right after Genevieve gets back. Besides, you couldn't expect a boy to
+join in with a girls' club like us, just as if he were another
+girl--specially as he isn't going to Texas, anyway."
+
+"Well, all he ever does is just to sit and look bored--except when
+Tilly gets in some of her digs," chuckled Bertha.
+
+"Glad I'm good for something, if nothing but to stir up Harold, then,"
+laughed Tilly, as she turned away to answer Elsie Martin's anxious:
+"Tilly, what color is the new dress? Is it red?"
+
+It was the next day that the letter came from Genevieve. Cordelia
+brought it to the club meeting that afternoon; and so full of importance
+and excitement was she that for once she quite forgot to open the
+meeting with her usual ceremony.
+
+"Girls, girls, just listen to this!" she began breathlessly.
+
+The Happy Hexagons opened wide their eyes. Never before had they seen
+the usually placid Cordelia like this.
+
+"Why, Cordelia, you're almost girlish!" observed Tilly, cheerfully.
+
+Cordelia did not seem even to hear this gibe.
+
+"It's a letter from Genevieve," she panted, as she hurriedly spread open
+the sheet of note paper in her hand.
+
+          "Dear Cordelia, and the whole Club," read
+          Cordelia, excitedly. "I came up yesterday from New
+          Jersey with the Hardings for two days in New York.
+          I have been to see the animals at the Zoo all the
+          afternoon, and I'm going to see the Hippodrome
+          this evening. That sounds like another animal but
+          it isn't one, they say. It's a place all lights
+          and music and crowds, and with a stage 'most as
+          big as Texas itself, with scores of real horses
+          and cowboys riding all over it.
+
+          "I am having a perfectly beautiful time, but I
+          just can't wait to see my own beloved home on the
+          big prairie, and have you all there with me. I
+          sha'n't see it quite so soon though, for father
+          has been delayed about some of his business, and
+          he can't come for me quite so soon as he expected.
+          He says we sha'n't get away from Sunbridge until
+          the fifth; but he's engaged five sections in a
+          sleeper leaving Boston at eight P. M. So we'll go
+          then sure.
+
+          "Mrs. Harding is calling me. Good-by till I see
+          you. We're coming the third. With heaps of love to
+          everybody, Your own
+
+                                         "GENEVIEVE HARTLEY."
+
+"Well, I like that," bridled Tilly. "Just think--not go until the
+fifth!"
+
+"Oh, but just think of going at all," comforted Alma Lane, hurriedly;
+"and in sleepers, too! Sleepers are loads of fun. I rode in one fifty
+miles, once--it wasn't in the night, though."
+
+"I rode in one at night!" Tilly's voice rose dominant, triumphant.
+
+"My stars!"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"What was it like?"
+
+"Was it fun?"
+
+"Why didn't you tell us?"
+
+Tilly laughed in keen enjoyment of the commotion she had created.
+
+"Don't you wish you knew?" she teased. "Just you wait and see!"
+
+"Yes, but, Tilly, do they lay you down on a little narrow shelf,
+really?" worried Cordelia.
+
+"I sha'n't take off a single thing, anyhow," announced Bertha, with
+decision, "not even my shoes. I'm just sure there'll be an accident!"
+
+Tilly laughed merrily.
+
+"A fine traveler you'll make, Bertha," she scoffed. "Sleepers are made
+to sleep in, young lady--not to lie awake and worry in, for fear
+there'll be an accident and you'll lose your shoes. As for you, Cordy,
+and the shelf you're fretting over--there are shelves, in a way; but you
+lay yourself down on them, my child. Nobody else does it for you."
+
+"Thank you," returned Cordelia, a little stiffly. Cordelia did not like
+to be called "my child"--specially by Tilly, who was not quite sixteen,
+and who was the youngest member of the club.
+
+"But, Tilly, are--are sleepers nice, daytimes?" asked Edith Wilson, who,
+as usual, was hovering near. "I should think they'd be lovely for
+nights--but I wouldn't like to have to lie down all day!"
+
+Tilly laughed so hard at this that Edith grew red of face indeed before
+Alma patched matters up and made peace.
+
+It was the trip to Texas that was the all-absorbing topic of discussion
+that day; and it was the trip to Texas that Cordelia Wilson was thinking
+of as she walked slowly home that night after leaving the girls at the
+corner.
+
+"I wonder--" she began just under her breath; then stopped short. An old
+man, known as "Uncle Bill Hodges," stood directly in her path.
+
+"Miss Cordelia, I--I want to speak to ye, just a minute," he stammered.
+
+"Yes, sir." Cordelia smiled politely.
+
+The old man threw a suspicious glance over his shoulder, then came a
+step nearer.
+
+"I ain't tellin' this everywhere, Miss Cordelia, and I don't want you to
+say nothin'. You're goin' to Texas, they tell me."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hodges, I am." Cordelia tried to make her voice sound properly
+humble, but pride would vibrate through it.
+
+"Well, I--" The man hesitated, looked around again suspiciously, then
+blurted out a storm of words with the rush of desperation. "I--years
+ago, Miss Cordelia, I let a man in Boston have a lot of money. He said
+'twas goin' into an oil well out in Texas, and that when it came back
+there'd be a lot more with it a-comin' to me. So I let him have it. I
+liked Texas, anyhow--I'd been there as a boy."
+
+"Yes," nodded Cordelia, smiling as she remembered the prairie schooner
+that was Fred's "boat."
+
+"Well, for a while I did get money--dividends, he called 'em. Then it
+all stopped off short. They shut the man up in prison, and closed the
+office. And there's all my money! They do be sayin', too, that there
+ain't no such place as this oil well there--that is, not the way he said
+it was--so big and fine and promisin'. Well, now, of course I can't go
+to see, Miss Cordelia--an old man like me, all the way to Texas. But you
+are goin'. So I thought I'd just ask you to look around a little if you
+happened to hear anything about this well. Maybe you could go and see
+it, and then tell me. I've written down the name on this paper,"
+finished the man, thrusting his trembling fingers into his pocket, and
+bringing out a small piece of not over-clean paper.
+
+"Why, of--of course, Mr. Hodges," promised Cordelia, doubtfully, as she
+took the paper. "I'd love to do anything I could for you--anything! Only
+I'm afraid I don't know much about oil wells, you see. Do they look just
+like--water wells, with a pump or a bucket? Bertha's aunt has one of
+those on her farm."
+
+"I don't know, child, I don't know," murmured the old man, shaking his
+head sadly, as he turned away. "Sometimes I think there ain't any such
+things, anyhow. But you'll do your best, I know. I can trust _you_!"
+
+"Why, of course," returned Cordelia, earnestly, slipping the bit of
+paper into the envelope of Genevieve's letter in her hand.
+
+In her own room that night Cordelia Wilson got out her list marked
+"Things to do in Texas," and studied it with troubled eyes. She had now
+one more item to add to it--and it was already so long!
+
+She had started the list for her own benefit. Then had come the request
+from queer old Hermit Joe to be on the lookout for his son who had gone
+years ago to Texas. After that, commissions for others followed rapidly.
+So many people had so many things they wanted her to do in Texas!--and
+nobody wanted them talked about in Sunbridge.
+
+Slowly, with careful precision, she wrote down this last one. Then, a
+little dubiously, she read over the list.
+
+See the blue bonnet--the Texas state flower. Find out if it really is
+shaped like a bonnet.
+
+Bring home a piece of prairie grass.
+
+See a real buffalo.
+
+Find Hermit Joe's son, John, who ran away to Texas twenty years ago.
+
+See an Osage orange hedge.
+
+See a broncho bursted (obviously changed over from "busted").
+
+Find out for Mrs. Miller if cowboys do shoot at sight, and yell always
+without just and due provocation.
+
+See a mesquite tree.
+
+Inquire if any one has seen Mrs. Snow's daughter, Lizzie, who ran away
+with a Texas man named Higgins.
+
+Pick a fig.
+
+See a rice canal.
+
+Find out what has become of Mrs. Granger's cousin, Lester Goodwin, who
+went to Texas fourteen years ago.
+
+See cotton growing and pick a cotton boll, called "Texas Roses."
+
+See peanuts growing.
+
+Inquire for James Hunt, brother of Miss Sally Hunt.
+
+See a real Indian.
+
+Look at oil well for Mr. Hodges, and see if there is any there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now if I can just fix all those people's names in my mind," mused
+Cordelia, aloud; "and seems as if I might--there are only four. John
+Sanborn, Lizzie Higgins, Lester Goodwin, and James Hunt," she chanted
+over and over again. She was still droning the same refrain when she
+fell asleep that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE COMING OF GENEVIEVE
+
+
+Genevieve was to arrive in Sunbridge at three o'clock on the afternoon
+of the third of July. Her father was to remain in Boston until one of
+the evening trains. The Happy Hexagons, knowing Genevieve's plans,
+decided to give her a welcome befitting the club and the occasion. They
+invited Harold Day, of course, to join them.
+
+Harold laughed good-humoredly.
+
+"Oh, I'll be there all right, at the station," he assured them. "I've
+got Mrs. Kennedy's permission to bring her up to the house; but I don't
+think I'll join in on your show. I'll let you girls do that."
+
+The girls pouted a little, but they were too excited to remain long out
+of humor.
+
+"Don't our dresses look pretty! I know Genevieve'll be pleased," sighed
+Elsie Martin, as, long before the train was due that afternoon, the
+girls arrived at the station.
+
+"Of course she'll be pleased," cried Alma Lane. "She can't help it. I
+can hear her laugh and clap her hands now, when she sees us--and hears
+us!"
+
+"So can I," echoed Bertha. "And how her eyes will dance! I love to see
+Genevieve's eyes dance."
+
+"So do I," chorused the others, fervently.
+
+Sunbridge was a quiet little town in southern New Hampshire near the
+state line. It had wide, tree-shaded streets, and green-shuttered white
+houses set far back in spacious lawns. The station at this hour was even
+quieter than the town, and there were few curious eyes to question the
+meaning of the unusual appearance of five laughing, excited young girls,
+all dressed alike, and all showing flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.
+
+At one minute before three o'clock, a tall, good-looking youth drove up
+in a smart trap, and was hailed with shouts of mingled joy and relief.
+
+"Oh, Harold, we were just sure you were going to be late," cried
+Cordelia.
+
+"Late? Not I--to-day!" laughed the boy. Then, with genuine admiration:
+"Say, that is pretty slick, girls. I'll take off my hat to the Happy
+Hexagons to-day all right!" he finished, with an elaborate flourish.
+
+"Thank you," twittered Tilly, saucily. "Now don't you wish you had
+joined us? But then--_you_ couldn't have worn a white frock!"
+
+A prolonged bell-clanging and the rumble of an approaching train
+prevented Harold's reply, and sent the girls into a flutter of
+excitement. A moment later they stood in line, waiting, breathless with
+suspense.
+
+They made a wonderfully pretty picture. Each girl was in white, even to
+her shoes and stockings. Around each waist was a sash of a handsome
+shade of blue. The same color showed at the throat and on the hair.
+
+Quietly they watched the train roll into the station, and still quietly
+they stood until a tall, slender girl with merry brown eyes and soft
+fluffy brown hair appeared at a car door and tripped lightly down the
+steps to the platform. They waited only till she ran toward them; then
+in gleeful chorus they chanted:
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           GENEVIEVE!"
+
+What happened next was a surprise. Genevieve did not laugh, nor cry out,
+nor clap her hands. Her eyes did not dance. She stopped and fumbled with
+the fastening of her suit-case. The next minute the train drew out of
+the station, and the girls were left alone in their corner. Genevieve
+looked up, at that, and came swiftly toward them.
+
+They saw then: the brown eyes were full of tears.
+
+The girls had intended to repeat their Texas yell; but with one accord
+now they cried out in dismay:
+
+[Illustration: "A TALL, SLENDER GIRL ... APPEARED AT A CAR DOOR"]
+
+"Genevieve! Why, Genevieve, you're--crying!"
+
+"I know I am, and I could shake myself," choked Genevieve, hugging each
+girl in turn spasmodically.
+
+"But, Genevieve, what is the matter?" appealed Cordelia.
+
+"I don't know, I don't know--and that's what's the trouble," wailed
+Genevieve. "I don't know why I'm crying when I'm so g-glad to see you.
+But I reckon 'twas that--'Texas'!"
+
+"But we thought you'd like that," argued Elsie.
+
+"I did--I do," stammered Genevieve, incoherently; "and it made me cry to
+think I did--I mean, to think I do--so much!"
+
+"Well, we're glad you did, or do, anyhow," laughed Harold Day, holding
+out his hand. "And we're glad you're back again. I've got Jerry here and
+the cart. This your bag?"
+
+"Yes, right here; and thank you, Harold," she smiled a little mistily.
+"And girls, you're lovely--just lovely; and I don't know why I'm crying.
+But you're to come over--straight over to the house this very afternoon.
+I want to hear that 'T-Texas' again. I want to hear it six times
+running!" she finished, as she sprang lightly into the cart.
+
+On the way with Harold, she grew more calm.
+
+"You see, once, last fall, I said I hated Sunbridge, and that I wouldn't
+stay," she explained a little shame-facedly.
+
+"You said you hated it!" cried Harold. "You never told me that. Why, I
+thought you liked it here."
+
+"I do, now, and I did--very soon, specially after I'd met some one I
+could talk Texas to all I wanted to--_you_, you know! I reckon I never
+told you, but you were a regular safety valve for me in those days."
+
+"Was I?" laughed the lad.
+
+"Yes, even from that first day," nodded Genevieve, with a half-wistful
+smile. "Did I ever tell you the reason, the real reason, why Aunt Julia
+called you into the yard that afternoon?"
+
+"Why, no--not that I know of." Harold's face showed a puzzled frown.
+
+"Well, 'twas this. I'd been here a week, and I was so homesick and
+lonesome for father and the ranch and all. I was threatening to go back.
+I declared I'd walk back, if there was no other way. Poor Aunt Julia!
+She tried everything. Specially she tried to have me meet some nice
+girls, but I just wouldn't. I said I didn't want any girls that weren't
+Texas girls. I didn't want anything that wasn't Texas. That's what I'd
+been saying that very day out under the trees there, when Aunt Julia
+looked toward the street, saw you, and called you into the yard."
+
+"Is _that_ why she introduced me as the boy who was born in Texas?"
+laughed Harold.
+
+"Yes; and you know how I began to talk Texas right away."
+
+"But I couldn't help much--I left there when I was a baby."
+
+"I know, but you'd been there," laughed Genevieve, "and that helped.
+Then, through you, I met your cousin Alma, and the rest was easy, for I
+always had you for that safety valve, to talk Texas to. You see, it was
+just that I got homesick. All my life I'd lived on the ranch, and things
+here were so different. I didn't like to--to mind Mrs. Kennedy and Miss
+Jane, very well, I suspect. You see, at the ranch I'd always had my own
+way, and--I liked it."
+
+"Well, I'm sure that's natural," nodded Harold.
+
+"I know; but I wasn't nice about it," returned the girl, wistfully.
+"Father said I must do everything--everything they said. And I tried to.
+But Miss Jane had such heaps of things for me to do, and such tiresome
+things, like dusting and practising, and learning to cook and to sew!
+And it all was specially hard when you remember that I didn't want to
+come East in the first place. But I love it here, now; you know I do.
+Every one has been so good to me! Aunt Julia is a dear."
+
+"And--Miss Jane?" queried Harold, eyeing her a little mischievously.
+
+Genevieve blushed.
+
+"Miss Jane? Well, she's 'most a dear, too--sometimes. As for
+Sunbridge--I love both the East and the West now. Don't you see? But,
+to-day, coming up from Boston, I got to thinking about it--my dear
+prairie home; and how I had hated to leave it, and how now I was going
+back to it with Aunt Julia and the girls all with me. And I was so
+happy, so wonderfully happy, that a great big something rose within me,
+and I felt so--so queer, as if I could fly, and fly, and _fly_! And
+then, when I saw the girls all dressed alike so prettily, and heard the
+'Texas, Texas, Texas'--what did I do? I didn't do anything but
+cry--_cry_, Harold, just as if I didn't like things. And the girls were
+so disappointed, I know they were!"
+
+"Never mind; I guess you can make them understand--anyhow, you have me,"
+said Harold, trying to speak with a lightness that would hide the fact
+that her words had made him, too, feel "queer." Harold did not enjoy
+feeling "queer."
+
+A moment later they turned into the broad white driveway that led up to
+the Kennedy home.
+
+On the veranda of the fine old house stood a sweet-faced,
+motherly-looking woman with tender eyes and a loving smile. Near her was
+a taller, younger woman with eyes almost as interested, and a smile
+almost as cordial.
+
+"You dears--both of you!" cried Genevieve, running up the steps and
+into the arms of the two women.
+
+"Thank you, Harold," smiled Mrs. Kennedy over Genevieve's bobbing head;
+"thank you for bringing our little girl home."
+
+"As if I wasn't glad to do it!" laughed the boy, gallantly, as he picked
+up the reins and sprang into the cart. To the horse he added later, when
+quite out of earshot of the ladies: "Jerry, I'm thinking Genevieve isn't
+the only one in that house that has 'improved' since last August. It
+strikes me that Miss Jane Chick has done a little on her own account.
+Did you see that smile? That was a really, truly smile, Jerry. Not the
+'I-suppose-I-must' kind!"
+
+Genevieve and the two ladies were still on the veranda when the five
+white-clad girls turned in at the broad front walk.
+
+"We came around this way home," announced Tilly. "You _said_ you wanted
+us."
+
+"Want you! Well, I reckon I do," cried Genevieve, springing to her feet.
+"Come up here this minute! Now say it--say it again--that thing you did
+at the station. I want Aunt Julia to hear it--and Miss Jane."
+
+The change in Genevieve's voice and manner was unconscious, but it was
+very evident. No one noticed it apparently, however, but Tilly; and she
+only puckered her lips into an odd little smile as she formed in line
+with the other girls: Tilly was not without some experience herself with
+Miss Jane and her ways.
+
+"Now, one, two, three, ready!" counted Cordelia, sternly, her face a
+tragedy of responsibility lest this final triumph of their labors should
+be anything less than the glorious success the occasion demanded.
+
+Once more five eager, girlish countenances faced squarely front. Once
+more five fresh young voices chanted with lusty precision:
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           GENEVIEVE!"
+
+It was finished. Cordelia, with the expression of one from whom the
+weight of nations has been lifted, drew a happy sigh, and looked
+confidently about for her reward. Almost at once, however, her face
+clouded perplexedly.
+
+Genevieve was dancing lightly on her toes and clapping her hands softly.
+Mrs. Kennedy was laughing with her handkerchief to her lips. But Miss
+Jane Chick--Miss Jane Chick was sitting erect, her eyes plainly
+horrified, her hands clapped to her ears.
+
+"Children, children!" she gasped, as soon as there was a chance for her
+voice to be heard. "You don't mean to say that you did _that_--at a
+public railroad station!"
+
+Cordelia looked distressed. The other girls bit their lips and lifted
+their chins just a little: they did not like to be called "children."
+
+"But, Miss Chick," stammered Cordelia, "we didn't think--that is, we
+wanted to do something to welcome Genevieve, and--and--" Cordelia
+stopped, and swallowed chokingly.
+
+"But to shout like that," protested Miss Chick. "You--_young ladies_!"
+
+The girls bit their lips still harder and lifted their chins still
+higher: they were not quite sure whether they more disliked to be
+"children" or "young ladies"--in that tone of voice.
+
+"Oh, but Miss Jane," argued Genevieve, "you know Sunbridge station is
+just dead, simply dead at three o'clock in the afternoon. Nobody ever
+comes on that train, hardly, and there wasn't a soul around but that
+sleepy Mr. Jones and the station men, and that old Mrs. Palmer. And you
+know _she_ wouldn't hear a gun go off right under her nose."
+
+"Genevieve, my dear!" murmured Mrs. Kennedy--but her eyes were
+twinkling.
+
+Cordelia still looked troubled.
+
+"I know, Genevieve," she frowned anxiously, "but I never thought of it
+that way--what others would think. Maybe we ought not to have done it,
+after all. But I'm sure we didn't mean any harm."
+
+Promptly, now, Mrs. Kennedy came to the rescue.
+
+"Of course you did not, dear child," she said, smiling into Cordelia's
+troubled eyes; "and it was very sweet and lovely of you girls to think
+of giving Genevieve such a pretty welcome. Oh, of course," she added
+with a whimsical glance at her sister, "we shouldn't exactly advise you
+to make a practice of welcoming everybody home in that somewhat
+startling fashion. That really wouldn't do, you know. Sunbridge station
+might not be quite so dead next time," she finished, meeting Genevieve's
+grateful eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"That really was dear of you, Aunt Julia," confided Genevieve some time
+later, after the girls had gone, and when she and Mrs. Kennedy were
+alone together. (Miss Jane had gone up-stairs.) "Only think of the pains
+they took--to get themselves up to look so pretty, besides learning to
+give that yell so finely. I was so afraid they'd be hurt at what Miss
+Jane said! And I wouldn't want them hurt--after all that!"
+
+"Of course you wouldn't," smiled Mrs. Kennedy; "and my sister wouldn't
+either, dear."
+
+Genevieve stirred restlessly.
+
+"I know she wouldn't, Aunt Julia; but--but the girls don't know it.
+They--they don't understand Miss Jane."
+
+"And do you--always?" The question was gently put, but its meaning was
+unmistakable.
+
+Genevieve colored.
+
+"Maybe not--quite always; but--Miss Jane is so--so shockable!"
+
+Mrs. Kennedy made a sudden movement. Apparently she only stooped to pick
+up a small thread from the floor, but when she came upright her face was
+a deeper red than just that exertion would seem to occasion.
+
+"Genevieve, have you been to your room since you came home?" she asked.
+There were times when Mrs. Kennedy could change the subject almost as
+abruptly as could Genevieve herself.
+
+"No, Aunt Julia. You know Nancy carried up my suit-case, and I've been
+too busy telling you all about my visit to think of anything else."
+
+"Oh," smiled Mrs. Kennedy. "I was just wondering."
+
+Genevieve frowned in puzzled questioning.
+
+"Well, I'm going up right away, anyhow," she said. "Mercy! I reckon I'll
+go up right now," she added laughingly, springing to her feet as there
+came through the open window behind her the sound of a clock striking
+half-past five. "I had no idea it was so late."
+
+Genevieve was not many minutes in her room before she ceased to wonder
+at Mrs. Kennedy's questioning; for in plain sight on her dressing-table
+she soon found a small white box addressed to Genevieve Hartley. The
+box, upon being opened, disclosed in a white velvet nest a beautiful
+little chatelaine watch in dark blue enamel and gold.
+
+          "To keep Genevieve's time.
+            With much love from
+              Jane Chick."
+
+read Genevieve on the little card that was with the watch.
+
+"Oh, oh, oh, how lovely!" breathed the girl, hovering over the watch in
+delight. "And to think what I said!" With a heightened color she turned,
+tripped across the room and hurried down the hall to Miss Jane's door.
+
+"Miss Jane!"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"May I come in?"
+
+"Yes, indeed."
+
+"I--I want to thank you--oh, I do want to thank you, but I don't know
+how." Genevieve's eyes were misty.
+
+"For the watch? You like it, then?"
+
+"Like it! I just love it; and I never, never saw such a beauty!"
+
+"I'm glad you like it."
+
+There was a moment's pause. Over by the dressing-table Miss Jane was
+carefully smoothing a refractory lock of hair into place. She looked so
+calm, so self-contained, so--far away, thought Genevieve; if it had been
+Aunt Julia, now!
+
+Suddenly the girl gave a little skipping run and enveloped the lady in
+two wide-flung young arms, thereby ruffling up more than ever the
+carefully smoothed lock of hair.
+
+"Miss, Jane, I--I've just got to hug you, anyway!"
+
+"Why, Genevieve, my dear!" murmured Miss Jane, a little dazedly.
+
+From the door Genevieve called back incoherently--the hug had been as
+short in duration as it had been sudden in action:
+
+"I don't think I can be late now, Miss Jane, ever--with that lovely
+thing to keep time for me. And I wanted you to know--next year, when I
+come back, I'm just sure I shall cook and sew beautifully, and do my
+practising and everything, without once being told. And if I do sprain
+my ankle I'll be a perfect angel--truly I will. And I won't ever keep
+folks waiting, either, or--mercy! there's Nancy's first ring now, and
+I'm not one bit ready!" she broke off, as the musical notes of a Chinese
+gong sounded from the hall below. The next moment Miss Jane was alone
+with her thoughts--and with the lock of hair that she was still trying
+to smooth.
+
+"Dear child!" smiled the lady. Then she turned abruptly and hastened
+from the room, her hair still unsmoothed. "I'll just tell Nancy to be a
+little slow about ringing that second gong," she murmured.
+
+When Genevieve came down-stairs to supper that night, she brought with
+her two books: one a small paper-covered one, the other a larger one
+bound in dark red leather.
+
+"Here's the latest 'Pathfinder'--only I call it 'Path_loser_,'" she
+laughed, handing the smaller book to Miss Jane Chick; "and here
+is--well, just see what is here," she finished impressively, spreading
+open the leather-covered book before Mrs. Kennedy's eyes.
+
+"'Chronicles of the Hexagon Club,'" read Mrs. Kennedy. "Oh, a journal!"
+she smiled.
+
+"Yes, Aunt Julia. Isn't it lovely?"
+
+"Indeed it is! Who will keep it?"
+
+"All of us. We are going to take turns. We shall write a day apiece--we
+six Happy Hexagons of the Hexagon Club."
+
+"Do the girls know about it?" asked Miss Jane.
+
+"Not yet. I just thought of it yesterday when I saw the book in the
+store. Father bought it for the club--of course _my_ money was gone long
+ago--at such a time as _this_," she explained with laughing emphasis.
+"I'm going to show the book to the girls to-morrow. Won't they be
+tickled--I mean pleased," corrected Genevieve, throwing a hasty glance
+into Miss Jane's smiling eyes.
+
+"I think they will," agreed that lady, pleasantly.
+
+The girls were pleased, indeed, when Genevieve told of her plan and
+showed the book the next day. But even so entrancing a subject as a
+journal kept by each in turn could not hold their attention long; for
+time was very short now, and in every household there were a
+dozen-and-one last things to be done before the momentous fifth of July.
+Even the Fourth, with its fun and its firecrackers had no charms for the
+Happy Hexagons. Of so little consequence did they consider it, indeed,
+that at last one small boy quite lost his patience.
+
+"You won't fire my crackers, you won't take me to the picnic, you won't
+play ball, you won't do anything," he complained to his absorbed sister.
+"I shall be just glad when this old Texas thing is over!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ON THE WAY
+
+
+All the girls' friends came to see them off at the station that fifth of
+July.
+
+"Mercy! it would never do to spring our Texas yell to-day," chuckled
+Tilly, eyeing the assembled crowd; "but wouldn't I like to, though!"
+
+"There's nothing dead about Sunbridge now, sure," laughed Genevieve.
+
+"I should say not," declared Harold Day, who had begged the privilege of
+going to Boston to see them aboard their train for Washington.
+
+"For you see," he had argued, "it's to my state, after all, that you are
+going, so I ought to be allowed to do the honors at this end of the trip
+as long as I can't at the other!"
+
+They were off at last, Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. Hartley, the six girls, and
+Harold. But what a scrambling it was, and what a confusion of chatter,
+laughter, "good-byes," and "write soons"!
+
+In Boston there was a thirty-minute wait in the South Station before
+their train was due to leave; but long before the thirty minutes were
+over, the usually serene face of Mrs. Kennedy began to look flushed and
+worried.
+
+"Genevieve, my dear," she expostulated at last, "can't you keep those
+flutterbudget girls somewhere near together? It will be time, soon, to
+take our train, and only Cordelia is in sight. Not even Harold and your
+father are here!"
+
+Genevieve laughed soothingly.
+
+"I know, Aunt Julia; but they'll be here, I'm sure. There's still lots
+of time," she added, glancing proudly at her pretty new watch.
+
+"But where are they all?"
+
+"Tilly and Elsie have gone for some soda water, and Bertha for a
+sandwich at the lunch counter. She said she just couldn't eat a thing
+before she left home. Alma Lane has gone to a drug store across the
+street. I don't know where father and Harold are. They went off
+together, and--oh, here they are!" she broke off in relief, as the two
+wanderers appeared.
+
+"And now," summoned Mr. Hartley, "we'll be off to our car! Why, where
+are the rest of us?"
+
+"Well, they--they aren't all here," frowned Genevieve, a little
+anxiously.
+
+As at Sunbridge, it was a rush and a scramble at the last. Tilly, Elsie,
+and Bertha came back, but Genevieve went to look for Alma Lane; and when
+Alma returned without having seen Genevieve, Harold had to run
+post-haste for her.
+
+"Sure, dearie," said Mr. Hartley to his daughter, laughingly, when at
+last he had his charges all in the car, "this is a little worse than
+trying to corral a bunch of bronchos!"
+
+"Oh, but we won't be so bad again," promised the girl, waving her hand
+to Harold, who stood alone outside the window, watching them a little
+wistfully.
+
+They had a merry time getting settled, and more than one tired
+countenance in the car brightened at sight of the six eager young faces.
+
+"I couldn't get all five sections together," frowned Mr. Hartley. "I got
+three here, but the other two are down near the end of the car--you know
+the porter showed you. Do you think we can make them go, some way?" he
+questioned Mrs. Kennedy, anxiously. "I planned for you to have one of
+the sections down there by yourself, perhaps, with two of the young
+ladies in the other. Will that do?"
+
+"Of course it will--and finely, too," declared the lady. "Genevieve, you
+and I will go down there and take one of the girls with us--perhaps
+Bertha. That will leave your father for one up here, Elsie and Alma for
+another, and Tilly and Cordelia for the third."
+
+"I knew she'd put you with Cordelia," chuckled Bertha to Tilly, under
+cover of their scramble to pick out their suit-cases from the pile in
+which the porter had left them. "And I'm sure you ought to be," she
+laughed. "There'll be some hopes then that you'll be kept in order!"
+
+"Just look to yourself," retorted Tilly, serenely. "Mrs. Kennedy put
+_you_ down there near _her_--remember that!"
+
+"I declare, I felt just like an orange," giggled Elsie, "with all that
+talk about 'sections.'"
+
+"I don't see where the shelves are," whispered Cordelia, craning her
+short little neck to its full extent.
+
+"You'll see them all right," promised Tilly. "Just wait till it's dark,
+then--'The goblins'll get ye if ye don't watch out!'" she quoted, with
+mock impressiveness.
+
+"I feel as if I were ten years old, and playing house," chirped Alma
+Lane, as she happily frowned over just the proper place for her bag.
+
+"I feel as if it were all a dream, and that I shall wake up right at
+home," breathed Cordelia. "Seems as if it just couldn't be true--that
+we're really going to Texas! Oh, Genevieve, we can't ever thank you and
+your father enough," she finished, as Genevieve came up the aisle.
+
+"As if we wanted thanks, after what you've done for me!" cried
+Genevieve. "Besides, you girls can't be half so glad to go as I am to
+have you!"
+
+Some time later the porter began to make up the berths.
+
+Tilly nudged Cordelia violently.
+
+"There's shelf number one, Cordy. How do you think you'll like it?" she
+asked.
+
+Cordelia was too absorbed even to notice the hated "Cordy." With
+wide-eyed, breathless interest she was watching the porter.
+
+"I think--it's the most wonderful thing--I ever saw," she breathed in an
+awestruck voice.
+
+It was after the car was quiet that night that Genevieve, in her upper
+berth, pulled apart the heavy curtains and peeped out into the long
+narrow aisle between the swaying draperies.
+
+The train was moving very rapidly. The air was heavy and close. The
+night was an uncomfortably warm one. Genevieve had been too excited to
+sleep. Even yet it did not seem quite real--that the Happy Hexagons were
+all there with her, and that they were going to her far-away Texas home.
+
+With a sigh the girl fell back on her pillow, and tried to coax sleep to
+come to her. But sleep refused to come. Instead, the whole panorama of
+her Eastern winter unrolled itself before her, peopled with little fairy
+sprites, who danced with twinkling feet and smiled at her mockingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know you," murmured Genevieve, drowsily. "I know you all.
+You--you little black one--you're the cake I forgot in the oven, and let
+burn up. And you're the lessons I didn't learn--there are heaps of you!
+And you--you're those horrid scales I never could catch up with. My,
+how you run now! And you--you little shamed one over in the
+corner--you're the prank I played on Miss Jane.... Oh, you can dance
+now--but you won't, by and by! Next year there won't be any of you--not
+a one left. I'm going to be so good, so awfully good; and I'm not going
+to ever forget, or to cause anybody any trouble, or--"
+
+With a start Genevieve sat erect in her berth, fully awake.
+
+"Mercy! What a jounce that was!" she cried, just above her breath. "But
+we seem to be going all right now."
+
+Cautiously she parted her curtains and peeped out again. The next
+instant she almost gave a little shriek: she was looking straight into
+Bertha Brown's upraised, startled eyes, just below her.
+
+"Was that an accident?" chattered Bertha. "I told you there'd be one!
+I'm all dressed, anyhow--if 'tis!"
+
+"Sh-h! No, goosey," chuckled Genevieve.
+
+She would have said more but, at that moment, from up the aisle sounded
+a sibilant "S-s-s-s!" They turned to see a somewhat untidy fluff of red
+hair above a laughing, piquant face.
+
+"It's Tilly! She's motioning to us. Say, let's go," whispered Genevieve.
+And cautiously she began to let herself down from her perch.
+
+The next moment Bertha, fully dressed, and Genevieve in her long, dark
+blue kimono, were tripping softly up the aisle.
+
+"Why, you're both down here," exulted Genevieve, as she climbed into the
+lower berth.
+
+"Yes; Cordelia was afraid," giggled Tilly, "so I came down."
+
+"Tilly!--I was not," disputed Cordelia, in an indignant whisper. "You
+came of your own accord."
+
+"Pooh! Tilly's fooling, and we know it," soothed Bertha, climbing into
+the berth after Genevieve.
+
+"Why, Bertha Brown, you've got your shoes on!" gasped Tilly, forgetting
+to whisper.
+
+"Of course I have," retorted Bertha. "Do you suppose--sh!"
+
+There was a tug at the curtains, and Elsie Martin's round, good-natured
+face peered in.
+
+"Well, I like this," she bridled. "A special meeting of the Hexagon
+Club, and me not notified! I heard Genevieve and Bertha giggling in the
+aisle. Are you all here?"
+
+"All but Alma," rejoined Tilly, in an exultant whisper. "Say, get her,
+too!"
+
+"Well, now, if this isn't just a lark," crowed Bertha, gleefully, when
+the last of the six girls had crowded themselves into the narrow berth.
+
+"Ouch! my head," groaned Genevieve, as a soft thud threw the other girls
+into stifled laughter.
+
+"Pooh! I've been hitting my head against the up-stairs flat ever since I
+went to bed," quoth Elsie. "Isn't it fun! Now let's talk."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Texas, of course," cut in Tilly. "Girls, girls, wouldn't it be glorious
+to give our Texas yell, though, and see what happened!"
+
+"Tilly!" gasped the shocked Cordelia.
+
+"Oh, I wasn't going to, of course," chuckled Tilly, softly. "I was just
+imaginin', you know."
+
+"But even this--I'm not sure we ought--" began Cordelia.
+
+"No, of course not; you never are, Cordy," agreed Tilly, smoothly.
+
+"But let's talk Texas--we can whisper, you know. Tell us about Texas,
+Genevieve," cut in pacifier Alma, hurriedly. "What's it like--the
+ranch?"
+
+Genevieve drew a happy sigh.
+
+"Why, it's like--it's like nothing in Texas, we think," she breathed.
+"Of course we don't think any other ranch could come up to the Six
+Star!"
+
+Tilly gave a sudden cry.
+
+"The what?"
+
+"The Six Star--our ranch, you know."
+
+"You mean it's named the 'Six Star Ranch'?" demanded Tilly.
+
+"Sure! Didn't I ever tell you?" retorted Genevieve in plain surprise.
+
+Tilly clapped her hands softly.
+
+"_Did_ you! Well, I should say not! You've always called it just 'the
+ranch.' And now--why, girls, don't you see?--it's _our_ ranch. It
+couldn't have had a better name if we'd had it built to order. It's the
+Six Star Ranch--and we're the six star girls--the Happy Hexagons. And to
+think we never knew it before!"
+
+There was a chorus of half-stifled exclamations of delight; then
+Cordelia demanded anxiously:
+
+"But, Genevieve, will they be glad to see us, really--all your people
+out there?"
+
+"Glad! I reckon they will be," averred Genevieve, warmly. "The boys will
+give us a rousing welcome, and there won't be anything too good for Mr.
+Tim and Mammy Lindy to do."
+
+"Who are they?" asked Tilly.
+
+"Mr. Tim is the ranch foreman, 'the boss,' the boys call him. He's been
+with us ever since I can remember, and he's so good to me! Mammy Lindy
+is--well, Mammy Lindy is a dear! You'll love Ol' Mammy. She's been just
+a mother to me ever since my own mother died eight years ago."
+Genevieve's voice faltered a little, then went on more firmly. "She's a
+negro woman, you know. Her people were slaves, once."
+
+"And--the--boys?" asked Cordelia, dubiously. "Are they your--brothers,
+Genevieve?"
+
+Genevieve laughed--a little more loudly than perhaps she realized.
+
+"Brothers!--well, hardly! The boys are the cowboys--on the ranch, you
+know. My, but they'll give us a welcome! I reckon they'll ride into town
+to give it, too, in all their war paint. Just you wait till you see the
+boys--and hear them!" And Genevieve laughed again.
+
+All in the dark Cordelia looked distinctly shocked; but, being in the
+dark, nobody noticed it.
+
+"Well, I for one just can't wait," began Tilly, hugging herself with her
+arms about her knees. "Only think, it'll be whole days _now_ before we
+get there, and--"
+
+"Young ladies!"
+
+Tilly stopped with a little cry of dismay. A man's voice had spoken
+close to her ear.
+
+"Young ladies," came the mellow tones again. "I begs yo' pardon, but de
+lady what belongs down in number ten says maybe you done forgot dat dis
+am a _sleepin'_ car."
+
+"Aunt Julia!" breathed Genevieve. "She's number ten."
+
+"She sent the porter," gasped Cordelia. "How--how awful!--and you're in
+my house, too," she almost sobbed.
+
+"Now I know we're playing house," tittered Alma Lane, hysterically, as
+she followed Genevieve out of the berth.
+
+Once more in her own quarters, Genevieve lay back on her pillow with a
+remorseful sigh.
+
+"I don't see why it's so much easier to _say_ you'll never give anybody
+any trouble than 'tis to _do_ it," she lamented, as she turned over with
+a jerk.
+
+The girls began the "Chronicles of the Hexagon Club" the next morning.
+Genevieve made the first entry. She dwelt at some length on the
+confusion of the train-taking, both at Sunbridge and Boston. She also
+had something to say of Tilly Mack. She gave a full account, too, of the
+midnight session of the Hexagon Club in Cordelia's berth.
+
+"And I'm ashamed that Aunt Julia had to be ashamed of me so soon," she
+wrote contritely.
+
+Cordelia Wilson had agreed to make the second entry in the book; but the
+heat, the loss of sleep, and the strangeness and excitement added to her
+distress that "her house" should have been made to seem a disgrace in
+the eyes of the whole car, all conspired to make her feel so ill that
+she declared she could not think of writing for a day or two.
+
+"Very well, then, you sha'n't write; we'll hand the book to Tilly," said
+Genevieve, "and then we'll give it to some of the others. But I'll tell
+you what we will do, Cordelia; you shall make the last entry in the book
+just before we leave the train at Bolo. And you can make it a sort of
+retrospect--a 'review lesson' of the whole, you know."
+
+"But I thought the others--won't they each tell their day?"
+
+"That's _just_ what they'll tell--their day," retorted Genevieve,
+whimsically. "You _know_ what most of them are. Alma Lane would be all
+right, and would give a true description of everything; only she would
+go into particulars so, that she would tell everything she saw from the
+windows, and just what she had to eat all day, down to the last olive."
+
+"I know," nodded Cordelia, with a faint smile.
+
+"As for Tilly--you can't get real sense, of course, from her part. If
+there's any nonsense going, Tilly Mack will find it and trot it out.
+Bertha Brown will take up the most of her space by saying 'I always said
+that--' etc., etc. Bertha is a dear--but you know she does just love to
+say 'I told you so.' Elsie will write clothes, of course. We shall find
+out what everybody has on when Elsie writes."
+
+Cordelia laughed aloud--then clapped her hand to her aching head.
+
+"You poor dear! What a shame," sympathized Genevieve. "But, Cordelia,
+why does Elsie think so much of clothes? Mercy! for my part I think
+they're the most tiresome sort of things to bother with; and it's such a
+waste of time to be having to change your dress always!"
+
+Cordelia smiled; then her face sobered.
+
+"Poor Elsie! I'm sorry for Elsie. She does have such an unhappy time
+over clothes."
+
+"Why? How?--or isn't it fair to tell?" added Genevieve, with quick
+loyalty.
+
+"Oh, yes, it's fair. Everybody knows it, 'most, and I supposed you did.
+Elsie herself tells of it. You know she lives with her aunt, Mrs. Gale.
+Well, Mrs. Gale has three daughters, Fannie, about twenty-one, I guess,
+and the twins, nineteen; and she just loves to make over their things
+for Elsie--so she does it."
+
+"Are they so very--poor, then?"
+
+"Oh, no; they aren't poor at all. I don't think she really has to do it.
+Aunt Mary says she's just naturally thrifty, and that she loves to make
+them over. But you see, poor Elsie almost never has a new dress--of new
+material, I mean. Now Elsie loves red; but Fannie wears blue a lot, and
+the twins like queer shades like faded-out greens and browns which Elsie
+abhors. Poor Elsie--no wonder she's always looking at clothes!"
+
+"Hm-m; no wonder," nodded Genevieve, her pitying eyes on Elsie far down
+the aisle--Elsie, who, in a mustard-colored striped skirt and pongee
+blouse, was at that moment trying to perk up the loppy blue bows on a
+somewhat faded tan straw hat. "Well, anyhow," added Genevieve, with a
+sigh, "just remember, Cordelia, that you're to do the last day of the
+trip in the Chronicles. Now lie down and give your poor head a rest."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Long before the last day of the journey came, Cordelia had quite
+recovered from her headache; but, in accordance with Genevieve's plan,
+she did not add her share to the Chronicles until the appointed time.
+Then, with almost a reverent air, she accepted the book and pen from
+Genevieve's hands, and returned to the seclusion of her seat, rejoicing
+that Tilly was playing checkers with Bertha, and so would not,
+presumably, disturb her--for a time, at least.
+
+"To-day, at noon, we are to arrive at Bolo," she wrote a little
+unevenly; then with a firmer hand she went on. "Genevieve says this
+ought to be a retrospect, and touch lightly upon the whole trip; so I
+will try to make it so.
+
+"It has been a beautiful journey. Nothing serious has happened, though
+Bertha has worn her shoes all the time expecting it. The best thing, so
+far, was our lovely day in Washington that Mr. Hartley gave us, and the
+President. (I mean, we saw him and he smiled.) And the worst thing
+(except that first night in my berth that Genevieve wrote of) was the
+time we lost Tilly for three whole hours, and Mrs. Kennedy got so
+nervous and white and frightened. We supposed, of course, she had fallen
+off, or jumped off, or got left off at some station. But just as we
+were talking with the porter about telegraphing everywhere, she danced
+in with two very untidy, unclean little Armenian children. It seems she
+had been in the emigrant car all the time playing with the children and
+trying to make the men and women talk their queer English. I never knew
+that gentle Mrs. Kennedy could speak so sharply as she did then to
+Tilly.
+
+"And now--since Tuesday, some time--we have really been in Texas. Some
+things look just like Eastern things, but others are so strange and
+queer. It is very hot--I mean, very warm, too. But then, we have just as
+warm days in Sunbridge, I guess. The windmills look so queer--there are
+such a lot of them; but they look pretty, too. Some of the towns are
+very pretty, also, with their red roofs and blue barns and houses.
+Genevieve says lots of them are German villages.
+
+"In some places lots of things are growing, but in others it is all just
+gray and bare-looking with nothing much growing except those queer
+prairie-dog cities with the funny little creatures sitting on top of
+their houses, or popping down into their holes only to turn around and
+look at you out of their bright little eyes. We had a splendid chance to
+see them once when our train stopped right in the middle of a prairie
+for a long time. We got off and walked quite a way with Mr. Hartley. I
+saw a rattlesnake, and I'm afraid I screamed. I screamed again when the
+horrid thing wiggled into one of the dog houses. Mr. Hartley says they
+live together sometimes, but if I were that dog he wouldn't live with
+me!
+
+"We have seen lots of cattle and goats and hogs--though Tilly says she
+hasn't seen any of the latter under any gate yet. I have seen a mesquite
+tree (so I have done one of my things), and it _does_ have thorns. We
+are on another prairie now, and oh, how big it is, and such a lot of
+grass as there is on it--just as far as you can see, grass, grass,
+grass! I guess there won't be any danger of my not having plenty of that
+to take home. I have seen lots of men on horseback, but I don't know
+whether they were cowboys or not. They did not shoot, anyway, but some
+of them did yell.
+
+"Genevieve says cowboys are to meet us, and that probably they will come
+away to Bolo in full war paint. I thought it was only Indians who
+painted--except silly ladies, of course--and I was going to say so; but
+Tilly was there, so I didn't like to. Of course I ought not to mind the
+cowboys--if Genevieve likes them, and they are her friends; but I can't
+help remembering what Mrs. Miller told me about their 'shooting up
+towns' in a very dreadful way when they were angry. I hope none of the
+men I want to find will turn out to be cowboys." (Here there were signs
+of an attempted erasure, but the words still stood, and immediately
+after them came another sentence.) "That is, I mean I should hate to
+find that any friends of mine had become cowboys.
+
+"I have just been reading over what I have written, and I am
+disappointed in it. I am sure I ought to have mentioned a great many
+things about which I have been silent. But there were so many things,
+and they all crowded at once before me, so that I had to just touch on
+the big things and the tall things--like windmills, for instance.
+
+"We are getting nearer Bolo now, and I must stop and eat some luncheon,
+Genevieve says, as we sha'n't have anything else till supper on the
+ranch. Oh, I am so excited! Seems as if I couldn't draw a breath deep
+enough. And the idea of trying to eat when I feel like this!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BOYS PREPARE A WELCOME
+
+
+On the back gallery of the long, low ranch house, the boys were waiting
+for Teresa to ring the bell for supper. Comfortably they lolled about on
+hammocks, chairs, and steps, with their shirts open at the neck and
+plentifully powdered with the dust of the corral.
+
+From the doorway, Tim Nolan, the ranch foreman, spoke to them hurriedly.
+
+"See here, boys, I'm right sorry, but I've got to see Benson to-morrow
+about those steers. That means that I've got to go as far as Bolo
+to-night, and that I sha'n't be back in time to start with the rest of
+you to meet the folks. But I'll see you in Bolo day after to-morrow at
+noon. The train is due then. Now be on hand, all of you that can. We
+want Miss Genevieve and her friends to have a right royal welcome. I
+reckon now I'd better be off. So long! Now remember--day after to-morrow
+at noon!" he finished, turning away.
+
+"As if we'd be a-forgettin' it," grinned Long John, a tall, lank fellow
+sprawled in a hammock, "when the little mistress hain't set her pretty
+foot on the place since last August!"
+
+"If only she wa'n't bringin' all them others," groaned the short,
+sandy-haired man on the steps. "I'd just like to rope the whole bunch
+and send 'em back East again, old lady and all--all but the little
+mistress, of course. Boys, what are we a-goin' to do with an old
+lady--even though she ain't so awful old--and five tom-fool girls on the
+Six Star Ranch?"
+
+"Ees not the Senorita a gurrl, also?" laughed a dark-eyed Mexican from
+his perch on the gallery railing. "Eh, Reddy?"
+
+"Sure, Pedro," retorted the sandy-haired man, testily. (Pedro was the
+only Mexican cowboy at the ranch, and even he was barely tolerated.)
+"But the little mistress ain't no tenderfoot girl. She don't howl at a
+rattlesnake nor jump at a prairie dog; and she knows how to ride, and
+which end of a gun goes off!"
+
+There was a general laugh, followed by a long silence--the boys did not
+usually talk so much together, but to-night a curious restlessness
+pervaded them all. Suddenly the tall man in the hammock pulled himself
+erect.
+
+"Look a-here, boys, that's jest it," he began in a worried voice. "What
+if the little mistress has changed? What if she hain't no use for us and
+the ranch any more? I never told ye, but at the first, last August,
+'fore she went away, I heard the boss and Mr. Hartley a-talkin'. They
+was sayin' she'd got to go East to learn how to live like a lady
+should--to know girls, and books, and all that. They said she was
+runnin' wild here with only us for playmates, and that they had just got
+ter pasture her out where the grass was finer, and the fences nearer
+tergether."
+
+"Did they say--that?" gasped half a dozen worried voices.
+
+"They sure did--and more. They said two real ladies was a-goin' ter take
+her and make her like themselves--a lady. And, boys, I was
+wonderin'--how is a lady goin' ter like us, and the ranch?"
+
+There was a moment's tense silence. The boys were staring, wide-eyed and
+appalled, into each other's faces.
+
+From somewhere came a deep sigh.
+
+"Gorry!--she can't, she just can't, after all her book-learnin' and
+culturin'," groaned a new voice.
+
+For a time no one spoke; then Reddy cleared his throat.
+
+"Look a-here, there ain't but jest one thing to do. If she don't like
+the ranch--and us--we'll jest have to make the ranch--and us--so she
+will like 'em."
+
+"How?" demanded a skeptical chorus.
+
+"Slick 'em up--and us," retorted the sandy-haired man, with finality. "I
+was raised East, and I know the sort of doin's they hanker after.
+To-morrow mornin' we'll begin. I'll show you; you'll see," he finished
+in a louder tone, as Teresa's clanging supper bell sent them in a
+stampede through the long covered way that led to the dining-room which,
+with the cook room, occupied the large, low building thirty feet to the
+rear of the ranch house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Tim Nolan arrived at the Bolo station a little before noon two days
+later, he stared in open-mouthed wonder at the sight that greeted his
+eyes. In a wavering, straggling line stood ten stiff, red-faced,
+miserable men, dressed in what was, to Tim Nolan, the strangest
+assortment of garments he had ever seen.
+
+Two of the men were in dead black, from head to foot. Four wore stiff,
+not over-clean white shirts. Six sported flaming red neckties. One had
+unearthed from somewhere a frock coat three sizes too small for him,
+which he wore very proudly, however, over a flannel shirt adorned with a
+red-and-green silk handkerchief knotted at the throat. Another displayed
+a somewhat battered silk hat. But, whatever they wore, each showed a
+face upon which hope, despair, pride, shame, and physical misery were
+curiously blended.
+
+For an instant Tim Nolan peered at them with unrecognizing eyes; then
+he gave a low ejaculation.
+
+"Reddy! Carlos! Jim! Boys!" he gasped. "What in the world is the meaning
+of this?"
+
+"Eet ees that we welcome the little Senorita an' her frien's," bowed
+Pedro, doffing his sombrero which was the only part of his usual costume
+that he had retained.
+
+"But--I don't understand," demurred the foreman; "these rigs of yours!
+Reddy, where in time did you corral that coat?"
+
+Reddy shifted from one uneasy foot to the other.
+
+"Pedro's told you--we're here to welcome the little mistress, of course.
+We've slicked up. We--we didn't want the shock too sudden--from the
+East, you know."
+
+For another moment Tim Nolan stared; then he threw back his head and
+laughed--laughed till the faces of the men before him grew red with
+something more than discomfort.
+
+At that moment a pretty young girl in khaki and a cowboy hat made her
+appearance astride a frisky little mustang. She wore a cartridge belt
+about her waist--though there was no revolver in her holster.
+
+"Is Genevieve coming to-day, sure?" she called out joyfully. "I heard
+she was, and I've come to meet her."
+
+"There, boys," bantered the ranch foreman, "now here's a young lady who
+knows how to welcome the mistress of the Six Star Ranch!" Then, to the
+girl: "Sure, Miss Susie, we do expect Genevieve, and we're here to
+welcome her, as you see," he finished with a sweep of his broad-brimmed
+hat.
+
+It looked, for a moment, as if the wavering, straggling men would break
+ranks and run; but a sudden distant whistle, and a sharp command from
+Reddy brought them right about face.
+
+"Buck up, boys," he ordered sharply. "I reckon the little mistress ain't
+a-goin' ter turn us down! She'll like it. You'll see!"
+
+The train had scarcely come to a stop before Genevieve was off the car
+steps.
+
+"Mr. Tim, Mr. Tim--here I am! Oh, how good you look!" she cried, holding
+out both her hands. A minute later she turned to introduce the
+embarrassed foreman to Mrs. Kennedy and the girls, who, with her father,
+were following close at her heels. This task was not half completed,
+however, when she spied the red-faced, anxious-eyed men.
+
+As Mr. Tim had done, she stared dumbly for a moment; then, leaving the
+rest of the introductions to her father, she ran toward them.
+
+"Why, it's the boys--our boys! Carlos, Long John, Reddy! But what _is_
+the matter? How queer you look! Is anybody sick--or--dead?" she
+stammered, plainly in doubt what to say.
+
+"Sure, it's for you--we're a-welcomin' you," exploded Long John,
+jerking at his collar which was obviously too small for him.
+
+Genevieve's face showed a puzzled frown.
+
+"But these clothes!--why are you like this?--and after all I've promised
+the girls about you, too!"
+
+"You mean--you don't like it--this?" demanded Reddy, incredulous hope in
+his eyes and voice.
+
+"Of course I don't like it! I've been promising the girls all the way
+here that you'd give them a welcome that _was_ a welcome! And now--but
+why did you do it, boys?"
+
+Long John drew himself to his full height.
+
+"Why? 'Cause Reddy said to," he answered. "Reddy said we'd better ease
+up on the shock it would be to you--here, after all you'd been used to
+back East--fine clothes, fine feed, and fine doin's all around, to say
+nothin' of books and learnin' in between times; so we--we tried to break
+ye in easy. That's all," he finished, a little lamely.
+
+"And then these clothes mean--that?" demanded the girl.
+
+Long John nodded dumbly.
+
+Genevieve gave a ringing laugh, but her eyes grew soft as she extended
+her hand to each man in turn.
+
+"What old dears you are--every one of you!" she exclaimed. "Now go home
+quick, and get comfortable." She would have said more, but some one
+called her and she turned abruptly. Cordelia Wilson, looking half
+frightened, half exultant, but wholly excited, was pulling at her
+sleeve.
+
+"Genevieve, Genevieve, quick," she was panting; "is that a cowboy--that,
+over there--talking to your father?"
+
+Genevieve turned with a wondering frown. The next moment she burst into
+a merry laugh.
+
+"Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia, you will be the death of me, yet! No, that
+isn't a cowboy. It's Susie Billings. She lives on a ranch near here."
+
+"A girl--dressed like that--and carrying a revolver! Just a common
+'Susie!'" gasped Cordelia.
+
+"Yes--just a common 'Susie,'" twinkled Genevieve.
+
+"But I thought she was a--a cowboy," quavered Cordelia. "You _said_
+they'd be here in--in all their war paint!"
+
+From behind them sounded a muffled snort and a low-voiced:
+
+"Boys, she thinks that's a cowboy! Come on--say we show 'em! Eh?"
+
+Genevieve laughed softly at what Cordelia had said, and at the
+disappointment in her voice.
+
+"Cowboys? Well, they _are_ here," she acknowledged with twitching lips,
+"and in their war paint, too--of a kind! They're right here--Why,
+they're _gone_," she broke off. "Never mind," she laughed, as she
+caught sight of a silk hat and a black coat hurrying toward a group of
+saddled ponies. "I reckon you'll see all the cowboys you want to before
+you go back East again. Now come up and meet Susie--and she hasn't,
+really, any revolver there, Cordelia, in spite of that cartridge belt
+and holster. She's always rigging up that way. She likes it!"
+
+Susie proved to be "a girl just like us," as Cordelia amazedly expressed
+it to Alma Lane. She was certainly a very pleasant one, they all
+decided. But even Susie could not keep their eyes from wandering to the
+unfamiliar scene around them.
+
+It was a bare little station set in the midst of a bare little prairie
+town, and quite unlike anything the Easterners had ever seen before.
+Broad, dusty streets led seemingly nowhere. Low, straggling houses
+stretched out lazy lengths of untidiness, except where a group of
+taller, more pretentious buildings indicated the stores, a hotel or two,
+several boarding houses, and numerous saloons and dance halls.
+
+From the station doorway, a blanketed Indian looked out with stolid,
+unsmiling face. Leaning against a post a dreamy-eyed Mexican in tight
+trousers, red sash, and tall peaked hat, smoked a cigarette. Halfway
+down the platform a tired-looking man in heavy cowhide boots and rough
+clothes, watched beside a huge canvas-topped wagon beyond which could
+be seen the switching tails of six great oxen.
+
+"There's Fred's 'boat,'" remarked Bertha, laughingly, to Cordelia.
+
+"Where? What?" Cordelia had been trying to look in all directions at
+once.
+
+"That prairie schooner down there."
+
+"Now that looks like the pictures," asserted Cordelia. "I wonder if the
+cowboys will."
+
+"I declare, the whole thing is worse than a three-ring circus," declared
+Tilly, aggrievedly, to Genevieve. "I simply can't see everything!"
+
+"All aboard for the ranch," called Mr. Hartley, leading the way around
+to the other side of the station; and like a flock of prairie chickens,
+as Genevieve put it, they all trooped after him.
+
+"Why, what funny horses!" cried Tilly, as Mr. Hartley stopped before a
+large, old-fashioned three-seated carriage drawn up to the platform.
+
+At Genevieve's chuckling laugh, Tilly threw a sharper glance toward the
+two gray creatures attached to the carriage.
+
+"Why, they aren't horses at all--yes, they are--no, they aren't,
+either!"
+
+"I always heard young ladies were a bit changeable," grinned Tim Nolan,
+mischievously; "but do they always change their minds as often as that,
+Miss?"
+
+"Yes, they do--when the occasion demands it," retorted Tilly, with a
+merry glance; and Tim Nolan laughed appreciatively.
+
+"Well, they aren't horses," smiled Mr. Hartley, as he gave his hand to
+help Mrs. Kennedy into the carriage. "They happen to be mules. Now, Miss
+Tilly, if you'll come in here with Mrs. Kennedy, we'll put two other
+young ladies and myself in the other two seats, and leave Genevieve to
+do the honors in one of the ranch wagons with the rest of you. The
+baggage, the boys are already putting in the other wagon, I see," he
+added, looking back to where two men were busy with a pile of trunks and
+bags. "They'll come along after us. Mr. Tim is on his horse, of course.
+We'll let him show us the way. Now stow yourselves comfortably," he
+admonished his guests. "You know we have an eighteen-mile ride ahead of
+us!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CORDELIA SEES A COWBOY
+
+
+Through the broad, dusty streets, by the straggling houses, and out on
+to the boundless sea of grass trailed the carriage and the ranch wagons,
+with Mr. Tim in the lead.
+
+Five pairs of eyes grew wide with wonder and awe.
+
+"I didn't suppose anything in the world could be so--so far," breathed
+Cordelia, who was with Mr. Hartley on the front seat of the carriage.
+
+"No wonder Genevieve was always talking about 'space, wide, wide
+space,'" cried Bertha. "Why, it's just like the ocean--only more so,
+because there aren't any waves."
+
+"As if anything could be more like the ocean than the ocean itself,"
+giggled Tilly.
+
+Mr. Hartley laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"Never mind, Miss Bertha," he nodded. "Just you wait till there's a
+little more wind, and you'll see some waves, I reckon. It's mighty still
+just now; and yet--there, look! Over there to the right--see?"
+
+They all looked, and they all saw. They saw far in the distance the
+green change to gray, and the gray to faint purple, and back again to
+green, while curious shifting lights and shadows glancing across the
+waving blades of grass, made them ripple like water in the sunlight. At
+the same time, from somewhere, came a soft, cool wind.
+
+"Why, it is--it is just like the ocean," exulted Cordelia. "I've seen it
+look like that down to Nantasket, 'way, 'way off at sea."
+
+"I told you 'twas," triumphed Bertha.
+
+"Well, anyway," observed Tilly, demurely, "they must be awfully dry
+waves--not much fun to jump!"
+
+"Tilly, how can you?" protested Cordelia. "How you do take the poetry
+out of anything! I believe you'd take the poetry out of--of Shakespeare
+himself!"
+
+"Pooh! Never saw much in him to take out," shrugged Tilly.
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia.
+
+"Tilly can't see poetry in anything that doesn't jingle like 'If you
+love me as I love you, no knife can cut our love in two,'" chanted
+Bertha.
+
+"My dears!" remonstrated Mrs. Kennedy, feebly.
+
+Tilly turned with swift pacification.
+
+"Don't you worry, Mrs. Kennedy. I'm used to it. They can't trouble me
+any!"
+
+It was Mr. Hartley who broke the silence that followed.
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia," he asked laughingly, "what is the matter? You've
+been peering in all directions, and you look as if you hadn't found what
+you were hunting for. You weren't expecting to find soda fountains and
+candy stores on the prairie, were you?"
+
+Cordelia smiled and shook her head.
+
+"Of course not, Mr. Hartley! I was looking for the blue bonnets--the
+flowers, you know. Genevieve said they grew wild all through the prairie
+grass."
+
+"And so they do--specially, early in the spring, my dear. I wish you
+could see them, then."
+
+"I wish I could--Genevieve has told me so much about them. She says
+they're the state flower. I thought they had such a funny name; I wanted
+to pick one, if I could. She says they're lovely, too."
+
+"They are, indeed, and I wish you could see them when they are at their
+best," rejoined Mr. Hartley; then he turned to Bertha, who had been
+listening with evident interest. "In the spring it's a blue ocean, Miss
+Bertha--I wish you could see the wind sweep across it then! And I wish
+you could smell it, too," he added with a laugh. "I reckon you wouldn't
+think it much like your salty, fishy east wind," he finished,
+twinkling.
+
+"Oh, but we just love that salty, fishy east wind, every time we go near
+the shore," retorted a chorus of loyal Eastern voices; and Mr. Hartley
+laughed again.
+
+In the ranch wagon behind them, Genevieve was doing the honors of the
+prairie right royally. Here, there, and everywhere she was pointing out
+something of interest. In the ranch wagon, too, the marvelous hush and
+charm of limitless distance had wrought its own spell; and all had
+fallen silent.
+
+It was Alma Lane who broke the pause.
+
+"What are all those deep, narrow paths, such a lot of them, running
+parallel to the wheel tracks?" she asked curiously. "I've been watching
+them ever since we left Bolo. They are on both sides, too."
+
+"They're made by the cattle," answered Genevieve; "such a lot of them,
+you know, traveling single file on their way to Bolo. Bolo is a 'cow
+town'--that is, they ship cattle to market from there."
+
+"Poor things," sighed Elsie, sympathetically. "I saw some yesterday from
+the train. I thought then I never wanted to eat another piece of
+beefsteak--and I adore beefsteak, too."
+
+Genevieve sobered a little.
+
+"I know it; I know just how you feel. I hate that part--but it's
+business, I suppose. I reckon I hate business, anyhow--but I love the
+ranch! I can't get used to the branding, either."
+
+"What's that?" asked Elsie.
+
+Genevieve shook her head. A look of pain crossed her face.
+
+"Don't ask me, Elsie, please. You'll find out soon enough. Branding is
+business, too, I suppose--but it's horrid. Mammy Lindy says that the
+first time I saw our brand on a calf and realized what it meant and how
+it got there, I cried for hours--for days, in fact, much of the time."
+
+"Why, Genevieve," cried Elsie, wonderingly. "How dreadful! What is a
+brand? I thought 'brand' meant the kind of coffee or tea one drank."
+
+Alma frowned and threw a quick look into Genevieve's face.
+
+"What a funny little town Bolo is!" she exclaimed, with a swift change
+of subject. "I declare, it looked 'most as sleepy as Sunbridge."
+
+"Sleepy!" laughed Genevieve, her face clearing, much to Alma's
+satisfaction. "You should see Bolo when it's really awake--say when some
+association of cattlemen meet there. And there's going to be one next
+month, I think. There's no end of fun and frolic and horse-racing then,
+with everybody there, from the cowboys and cattle-kings to the trappers
+and Indians. You wouldn't think there was anything sleepy about Bolo
+then, I reckon," nodded Genevieve, gayly.
+
+"Genevieve, quick--look!--off there," cried Elsie, excitedly.
+
+"Some more of Fred's 'boats'--three of them this time," laughed Alma,
+her eyes on the three white-topped wagons glistening in the sunlight.
+
+"Boats?" questioned Genevieve.
+
+"That's what little Fred Wilson told us we were going to ride in,"
+explained Alma. "He said they had prairie schooners here, and schooners
+were boats, of course."
+
+Genevieve laughed merrily.
+
+"I wish Fred could see these 'boats,'" she said.
+
+"Well, I don't know; I feel as if they were boats," declared Alma,
+stoutly. "I'm sure I don't think anybody on the ocean could be any more
+glad to see a sail than I should be to see one of these, if I were a
+lonely traveler on this sea of grass!"
+
+"But where are they going?" questioned Elsie.
+
+"I don't know--nor do they, probably," rejoined Genevieve, with a
+quizzical smile. "They're presumably emigrants hunting up cheap land for
+a new home. There used to be lots of them, Father says; but there aren't
+so many now. See--they're going to cross our way just ahead of us. We'll
+get a splendid view of them."
+
+Nearer and nearer came the curiously clumsy, yet curiously airy-looking
+wagons. Sallow-faced women looked out mournfully, and tow-headed
+children peeped from every vantage point. Brawny, but weary-looking men
+stalked beside their teams.
+
+"Look at the men--_walking_!" cried Elsie.
+
+"They're 'bull-whackers,'" nodded Genevieve, mischievously.
+
+"Bull-whackers!"
+
+"Yes, because their teams happen to be oxen; if they were mules, now,
+they'd be 'mule-skinners.'"
+
+"Is that what you are, then?" asked Elsie, with a demureness that
+rivaled Tilly's best efforts. "You're driving mules, you know."
+
+"Well, you better not call me that," laughed Genevieve. "See, they've
+stopped to speak to Father. I reckon we'll have to stop, too."
+
+"I 'reckon' we shall," mimicked Elsie, good-naturedly.
+
+"They've got all their household goods and gods in those wagons," said
+Genevieve, musingly. "I can see a tin coffeepot hanging straight over
+one woman's head."
+
+"I shouldn't think they had anything but children," laughed Alma, as
+from every wagon there tumbled a scrambling, squirming mass of barefoot
+legs, thin brown arms, and touseled hair above wide, questioning eyes.
+
+Long minutes later, from the carriage, Cordelia Wilson followed with
+dreamy eyes the slow-receding wagons, now again upon their way.
+
+"I feel just like 'ships that pass in the night,'" she murmured.
+
+"I don't. I feel just like supper," whispered Tilly. Then she laughed
+at the frightened look Cordelia flung at Mr. Hartley.
+
+On and on through the shimmering heat, under the cloudless sky, trailed
+the carriage and the ranch wagons. Mr. Tim had long ago galloped out of
+sight.
+
+It was when they were within five miles of the ranch that Cordelia,
+looking far ahead, saw against the horizon a rapidly growing black
+speck. For some time she watched it in silence; then, suddenly, she
+became aware that, large as was the speck now, it had broken into other
+specks--bobbing, shifting specks that promptly became not specks at all,
+but men on horseback.
+
+Spasmodically she clutched Mr. Hartley's arm.
+
+"What--are--those?" she questioned, with dry lips.
+
+Mr. Hartley gave an indifferent glance ahead.
+
+"Cowboys, I should say," he answered.
+
+Cordelia caught her breath. At that moment a shot rang out, then
+another, and another.
+
+Mr. Hartley looked up now, sharply, a little angrily. The indifference
+was quite gone from his face.
+
+It was then that Genevieve's voice came clear and strong from the wagon
+behind.
+
+"It's the boys, Father--our boys!" she called. "I know it's the boys. I
+told them I'd promised the girls a welcome, and they're giving it to
+us!"
+
+"By George! it is our boys," breathed Mr. Hartley. And the scowl on his
+face gave way to a broad smile.
+
+"Is it really all--fun?" quavered Cordelia, breathlessly.
+
+"Every bit," Mr. Hartley assured her. And then--though still
+breathlessly--Cordelia gave herself up to the excitement of the moment.
+
+They were all about them soon--those lithe, supple figures, swaying
+lightly, or sitting superbly erect in their saddles. From the top of
+their broad-brimmed hats to the tips of their high-heeled cowboy boots
+they were a wonder and a joy to the amazed eyes of Cordelia. With
+stirrups so long the chains clanked musically, they galloped back and
+forth, shouting, laughing, and shooting wildly into the air. With their
+chaparejos, or leather overalls, their big revolvers, their spurs, their
+bright silk handkerchiefs knotted loosely around their necks over the
+open collar of their flannel shirts, they made a brave show, indeed. Nor
+was the least of the wonders about them the graceful swirls of
+loosely-coiled lariats hanging from the horns of their saddles.
+
+After all, it lasted only a minute before the revolvers were thrust into
+the waiting holsters, and before the men, bareheaded, were making a
+sweeping bow from their saddles.
+
+It was Genevieve who led the clapping.
+
+"Oh, boys, thank you! That was fine--just fine!" she crowed. "Now I
+reckon Cordelia thinks she has seen a cowboy all right!"
+
+And Cordelia did. A little white, but bravely smiling, she was sitting
+erect, apparently serene. And only Mr. Hartley knew that one of her
+hands was clutched about his arm in a grasp that actually hurt.
+
+"They did that--all that shooting and yelling--just for a joke, then?"
+she asked Mr. Hartley, a little later.
+
+"Only that. They were giving you a welcome to the Six Star Ranch."
+
+"Then they don't act like that all the time?"
+
+"Hardly!" laughed the man. "I reckon they wouldn't get much work done if
+they did."
+
+Cordelia drew a relieved sigh. Her eyes, a little less fearful, rested
+on the erect figure of the nearest cowboy, just to the right of the
+carriage.
+
+"I'm so glad," she murmured. "I'll tell Mrs. Miller. She thought they
+did, you know--yell always without just and due provocation, and shoot
+at sight."
+
+The man's lips twitched; but the next moment they grew a bit stern at
+the corners.
+
+"That's exactly it, Miss Cordelia--exactly the idea that some people
+have of the boys, and I'll grant that when they--they drink too much
+whiskey, they aren't exactly what you might call peaceable, desirable
+companions--though three-fourths of their antics then are caused by
+reckless high spirits rather than by real ugliness--with exceptions, of
+course. But when sober they are quiet, straightforward, generous-hearted
+good fellows, hard-working and honest; certainly my boys are."
+
+Mr. Hartley hesitated, then went on, still gravely.
+
+"There's just as much difference in ranches, of course, Miss Cordelia,
+as there is in folks; and all the ranches are changing fast, anyway,
+nowadays. Lots of the owners are quitting living on them at all. They've
+gone into the towns to live. On the Six Star the boys take their meals
+with the family; and in many places they don't do that, I know, even
+where the owner lives on the ranch. Our boys are very loyal to us, and
+very much interested in all that concerns us. They fairly worship
+Genevieve, and have, all the way up."
+
+"I'm so glad," murmured Cordelia, again; and this time there was a look
+very much like admiration in the eyes that rested on Long John just
+ahead.
+
+It was some time later that Mr. Hartley said, half turning around:
+
+"Look straight ahead, a little to the right, young ladies, and you'll
+get a very good view of the Six Star Ranch."
+
+"Oh, and you've got a windmill," cried Tilly. "I can see it against the
+sky; I know I can!"
+
+"Yes, we've got a windmill," nodded Mr. Hartley.
+
+"I love windmills," exulted Cordelia.
+
+"So does Genevieve," observed Mr. Hartley, raising his eyebrows a
+little.
+
+Only Cordelia noticed the odd smile he gave as he spoke, and she did not
+know what it meant. Later, however, she remembered it. She was too much
+excited now to think of anything but the fact that the Six Star Ranch
+was so near.
+
+Bertha craned her neck to look ahead.
+
+"Only think, we haven't passed a house, not a house since we left Bolo,"
+she cried.
+
+Mr. Hartley smiled.
+
+"You see, Miss Bertha, Bolo, eighteen miles away, is our nearest
+neighbor; and you'll have to go even farther than that in any other
+direction to strike another neighbor."
+
+"My stars!" gasped Bertha. "How awful lonesome it must be, Mr. Hartley."
+
+"Anyhow, you can't be much bothered with neighbors running in to borrow
+two eggs and a little soda, can you?" giggled Tilly.
+
+"No; that isn't one of the difficulties we have to deal with," smiled
+Mr. Hartley; but Bertha bridled visibly.
+
+"Well, really, Tilly Mack," she exclaimed in pretended anger, "I should
+like to know if you mean anything special! You see," she added
+laughingly to Mr. Hartley, "I happen to live next to Tilly, myself!"
+
+From both carriage and wagon, now, came a babel of eager chatter. There
+was so much to be seen on the one hand, so much to be explained on the
+other. The buildings and corrals were plainly visible by this time, and
+each minute they became more clearly defined.
+
+"Do you mean that all that belongs to just one ranch?" demanded Tilly.
+
+"Sure!" twinkled Mr. Hartley. "You see, if folks can't borrow of us, we
+can't borrow of them, either; so it's rather necessary that we have all
+the comforts of home ourselves."
+
+"Well, I guess you've got them," laughed Tilly, looking wonderingly
+about her.
+
+"I reckon we have," nodded Mr. Hartley, as he began to point out one and
+another of the buildings.
+
+There was the long, low ranch house facing the wide reach of the
+prairie. Behind it, and connected with it by a covered way, were the
+dining room and the cook room. Beyond that was the long bunk house where
+the men slept, flanked by another building for the Mexican servants.
+There were stables, sheds, a storehouse and saddle-room, and a
+blacksmith's shop. Below the house an oblong bit of fenced ground showed
+a riot of color--Genevieve's flower garden. Below that was a vegetable
+garden. There was a large corral for the cattle, and a smaller one,
+high and circular, for the horses. There were three or four green trees
+near the house--tall, thin cottonwoods that had grown up along the
+slender streams of waste water from the windmill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE RANCH HOUSE
+
+
+"And here we are at the Six Star Ranch," cried Mr. Hartley, as he leaped
+from the carriage before the wide-open door of the ranch house. "Well,
+Mammy Lindy," he added, as the kindly, wrinkled old face of a colored
+woman appeared in the doorway, "I've corralled the whole bunch and
+brought them West with me!"
+
+A little stiffly the girls got down from their seats--all but Genevieve.
+She, in the space of a breath, seemingly, had leaped to the ground and
+run up on to the wide gallery where the negress, with adoring eyes,
+awaited her.
+
+"Laws, chil'e," Tilly, who was nearest, heard a tenderly crooning voice
+say, "but I am jes' pow'ful glad to see ye, honey!"
+
+"Mammy, you old darling!" cried Genevieve, giving the rotund, gayly-clad
+figure a bear-like hug. "You look just as good as you used to--and my,
+my! just see all this new finery to welcome me," she added, holding off
+her beaming-faced old nurse at arms' length. "I reckon you'll think
+something has come, Mammy Lindy, when we all get settled," she added
+laughingly, as she turned to present the old woman to Mrs. Kennedy and
+the girls.
+
+A little later, Tilly, in the wide, center hallway, was looking
+wonderingly about her.
+
+"Well, Genevieve Hartley, I didn't think you _could_ have room enough
+for us all," she declared; "but I'll give it up. I should think you
+might entertain the whole state of Texas in this house!"
+
+"We try to, sometimes," laughed Genevieve. "You know we Texans pride
+ourselves on always having room for everybody."
+
+"Well, I should think you did--and, only think, all on one floor, too!"
+
+Genevieve did not answer. She was looking around her with a thoughtful
+little frown between her eyebrows as if she saw something she did not
+quite understand.
+
+The girls were standing in the wide center hallway that ran straight
+through the house. On one side, through a wide archway, could be seen a
+large living-room with piano, bookshelves, comfortable chairs, a couch,
+and a good-sized table. Beyond that there was a narrow hall with two
+large rooms leading from it. From the other side of the center hall
+opened another narrow hall at right angles, from which led the six
+remaining rooms of the house.
+
+"This is more fun than getting settled in the sleepers," declared Elsie
+Martin, as Genevieve began to fly about arranging her guests.
+
+The boys made quick work of bringing in the trunks and bags; and then
+for a brief half-hour there was quiet while eight pairs of hurried hands
+attempted to remove part of the dust of travel and to unearth fresh
+blouses and clean linen from long-packed trunks.
+
+It was a hungry, merry crowd, a little later, that trooped through the
+long covered way leading to the dining-room.
+
+"Now I know why this house has got so much room in it," declared Tilly.
+"We could have room in the East if we banished our dining-rooms and
+kitchens and pantries to the neighbors like this!"
+
+Genevieve did not answer. They had reached the long narrow room with the
+big table running lengthwise of it. Only one end of the table was set
+with places for eight.
+
+"Why, where are the boys?" questioned Genevieve.
+
+Mammy Lindy shook her head.
+
+"Dey ain't here, chil'e."
+
+"But, Mammy, you are mistaken. They are here. They came home with us."
+
+"Yas'm, dey done come home, sure 'nuf, but dey ain't eatin' now, honey."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Again the old woman shook her head. She did not answer. She turned
+troubled eyes first on the two young Mexican maids by the doorway, then
+on Mr. Hartley.
+
+"Father, do you know what this means?" demanded Genevieve.
+
+"No, dearie, I must say I don't," frowned Mr. Hartley.
+
+"Then I shall find out," avowed the mistress of the Six Star Ranch.
+"Mammy Lindy, please seat my guests, and have the supper served right
+away. I'll find Mr. Tim."
+
+"But, my dear," remonstrated Mrs. Kennedy, gently, "wouldn't it be
+better if you ate your own supper first--with your guests?"
+
+Genevieve shook her head. Her face flushed painfully.
+
+"I know, Aunt Julia, of course, what you mean. You don't think it's
+civil in me to run off like this. But it's the boys--something is the
+matter. They always eat with us. Why, they may be thinking we don't
+_want_ them, Aunt Julia. Please, please excuse me, everybody," she
+entreated, as she ran from the room.
+
+Halfway to the bunk house Genevieve met the ranch foreman.
+
+"Why, Mr. Tim, supper is ready. Didn't you know?" she called, hurrying
+toward him. "Where are the boys?"
+
+An odd expression crossed the man's kindly, weather-beaten face.
+
+"Oh, they're 'round--in spots."
+
+"Why don't they come to supper?"
+
+Mr. Tim's eyebrows went up.
+
+"Well, as near as I can make out, that's part of the welcome they're
+giving you."
+
+"Welcome!--to stay away from supper!"
+
+Mr. Tim laughed.
+
+"I reckon maybe I'll have to explain," he replied. "Long John told me
+they'd got it all fixed up that, after your fine doings back East, you
+wouldn't take to things on the ranch very well. So for two days the
+whole bunch has been slicking things up, including themselves. They
+hunted up every stiff hat and b'iled shirt in this part of Texas, I
+reckon, for that splurge at Bolo; and Mammy Lindy says they've been
+pestering the life out of her, slicking up the house."
+
+Genevieve drew in her breath with a little cry.
+
+"There! That's what was the matter with the rooms," she ejaculated.
+"Nothing looked natural--but some things weren't exactly 'slicked up,'
+Mr. Tim. I couldn't turn around without finding a book at my elbow.
+There's scarcely one left on the shelves!"
+
+"Maybe I can explain that," returned the man, with a twinkle in his
+eyes. "Reddy said the East was mighty strong on books and culturing, so
+I s'pose he thought he'd have 'em 'round handy. It's lucky your father
+had all them books come out while you was studying, or else I reckon the
+boys would have hit the trail for the nearest book-store and roped every
+book in sight."
+
+Genevieve laughed appreciatively.
+
+"But, the supper?" she frowned again.
+
+"Oh, that's part of the outfit--and Reddy said it was 'dinner,' too. He
+said that he was raised back East, and that he knew; and that 'twas more
+seemly that you ate it without their company."
+
+"Humph! Well, it isn't, and I sha'n't," settled Genevieve, emphatically.
+"Where is Reddy? Go in to supper," she laughed, "and I'll round up the
+boys--I mean, I'll find them," she corrected demurely. "Miss Jane
+doesn't like me to say 'round up,' Mr. Tim."
+
+Mr. Tim smiled, but his eyes grew tender--almost anxious.
+
+"I reckon they haven't spoiled you back East, after all, little girl.
+You're the same true blue, like you was, before."
+
+Genevieve laughed and colored a little.
+
+"Of course I am," she declared. "Now I'm going for the boys."
+
+Mr. Tim laid a detaining hand on her arm.
+
+"Not to-night; it's late, and it would make no end of fuss all around.
+But I'll tell them. They'll be on hand for breakfast, all right. Now go
+back to your own supper, yourself."
+
+"All right," agreed Genevieve, reluctantly. "But--to-morrow, remember!"
+
+"I ain't forgetting--to-morrow," nodded the man.
+
+In the dining-room Genevieve was greeted with a merry clamor, under
+cover of which she said hurriedly to her father:
+
+"It's all right. They'll come to-morrow."
+
+"I guess you won't find we've left you much to eat," gurgled Elsie
+Martin, her mouth full of fried chicken.
+
+"Oh, yes, I shall--in Texas," retorted Genevieve.
+
+"But I'm so ashamed," apologized Cordelia. "I don't think we ought to
+eat so much."
+
+"I do," disagreed Tilly, "when everything is so perfectly lovely as this
+is. They are just the nicest things! And just guess how many hot
+biscuits I've eaten with this delicious plum sauce! Mr. Hartley says
+they're wild--the plums, I mean, not the biscuits."
+
+"And it's all such a surprise, too," interposed Alma Lane; "milk, and
+butter, and all."
+
+Genevieve stared frankly.
+
+"Surprise!--_milk and butter!_" she exclaimed. "Didn't you suppose we
+had milk and butter?"
+
+Alma blushed.
+
+"Why, Genevieve, I--I didn't mean anything, you know, truly I didn't,"
+she stammered. "It's only that--that ranches don't usually have them,
+you know."
+
+"Don't usually have them!" frowned Genevieve. "Alma Lane, what _are_ you
+talking about?"
+
+"Why, we read it, you know, in a book," explained Cordelia, hastily,
+coming to the rescue. "They said in spite of there being so many cows
+all around everywhere, there wasn't any butter or milk, and that the
+cowboys wouldn't like to be asked to milk, you know."
+
+"You read it? Where?" Genevieve's forehead still wore its frown.
+
+Mr. Hartley gave a chuckling laugh.
+
+"I reckon Genevieve doesn't know much about such ranches," he observed.
+"As I was telling you, Miss Cordelia, coming out this afternoon, there's
+just as much difference in ranches as there is in folks; and ours
+happens to be the kind where we like all the comforts of home pretty
+well. To be sure, I wouldn't just like to ask Reddy or Long John to
+milk, maybe," he added, with a whimsical smile; "but I don't have to,
+you see. I've got Carlos for just such work. He looks after the
+vegetable garden, too, and Genevieve's flowers. By the way, dearie,"--he
+turned to his daughter--"Tim says Carlos has been putting in his
+prettiest work on your garden this summer. Be sure you don't forget to
+notice it."
+
+"As if I could help noticing it," returned Genevieve. She was about to
+say more when there came an earnest question from Cordelia.
+
+"Mr. Hartley, please, what did you call those two men?"
+
+"What men?"
+
+"The ones you--you wouldn't wish to ask to milk."
+
+"Oh, the boys? I don't remember--I reckon 'twas Reddy and Long John that
+I mentioned, maybe."
+
+"Yes, sir; that's the one I mean--the John one. What is his other name,
+please?"
+
+"His surname? Why, really, Miss Cordelia, I reckon I've forgotten what
+it is. The boys all go by their first names, mostly, else by a nickname.
+Why? Found a long-lost friend?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir. Well, I mean--that is--he may be lost, but he isn't mine,"
+stammered Cordelia, who was always very literal.
+
+"Then don't blush so, Cordy," bantered Tilly, wickedly, "else we shall
+think he is yours."
+
+Cordelia blushed a still deeper pink, but she said nothing; and in the
+confusion of leaving the dining-room she managed to place herself as far
+from Tilly as possible. On the back gallery she saw the ranch foreman.
+As the others went chattering through the hall to the gallery beyond,
+she lingered timidly.
+
+"Mr. Nolan, would--would you please tell me Mr.--Mr. John's other name?"
+
+"John? Oh, you mean 'Long John,' Miss?"
+
+"Yes; but--'John' what?"
+
+Tim Nolan frowned.
+
+"Why, let me see,"--he bit his lip in thought--"'Pierce'--no, 'Proctor.'
+Yes, that's it--'John Proctor.'"
+
+A look of mingled disappointment and relief crossed Cordelia's face.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Nolan, very much," she faltered, as she hurried after
+her companions.
+
+"I don't know whether I'm glad or sorry," she was thinking. "Of course
+'twould have been nice if he'd been John Sanborn, only I'm afraid Hermit
+Joe wouldn't like a cowboy for a son, specially as there wouldn't be
+anything for him to do in Sunbridge at his trade."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy announced soon after supper that she should take matters in
+hand very sternly that night and insist upon an early bedtime hour.
+
+"It has been a long, hot, fatiguing day," she said, "but you are all so
+excited you'd sit up half the night asking questions and telling
+stories; so I shall take advantage of my position as chaperon, and send
+you to bed very soon."
+
+"O dear!" sighed Tilly. "If only it would come morning quick! Just
+think, we've got to wait a whole night before we can do any of the
+things we're dying to do!"
+
+"Never mind; there are lots of days coming," laughed Mr. Hartley. "What
+a fine family of young folks I have, to be sure," he gloried, looking
+around him contentedly.
+
+They were all about him on the front gallery, in hammocks and chairs, or
+sitting on the steps; and a very attractive group they made, indeed.
+
+"I think it would help the waiting if Genevieve would go in and sing to
+us," suggested Bertha, after a moment's silence. "It will be so heavenly
+to sit out here and listen to it!"
+
+"Oh, sing that lovely Mexican 'Swallow Song,'" coaxed Elsie. "'_La
+Gol--_' _--Gol_-something, anyhow."
+
+"Don't swear, Elsie," reproved Tilly, with becoming dignity.
+
+"_'La Golondrina'?_" laughed Genevieve.
+
+"Yes, it's a dear," sighed Elsie.
+
+"I'd rather have that Creole Love Song that you say Mammy Lindy taught
+you," breathed Cordelia. "That would be perfect for such a scene as
+this."
+
+"Pooh! I'd rather have one of those tinkly little tunes where you can
+hear the banjos and the tambourines," averred Tilly.
+
+"Indeed! At this rate I don't see how I'm going to sing at all," laughed
+Genevieve, "with so many conflicting wishes. Anything different anybody
+wants?"
+
+"Yes," declared Mr. Hartley, promptly. "I want them all."
+
+"Of course!" cried half a dozen voices.
+
+"All right!" rejoined Genevieve, laughingly, springing to her feet.
+
+And so while everybody watched the stars in the far-reaching sky,
+Genevieve, in the living room, played and sang till the back gallery and
+the long covered way at the rear of the house were full of the moving
+shadows of soft-stepping Mexican servants and cowboys. And everywhere
+there was the hush of perfect content while from the living room there
+floated out the clear, sweet tones, the weird, dreamy melodies, and the
+tinkle of the tambourines.
+
+One by one, an hour later, the lighted windows in the long, low ranch
+house became dark. The last to change was the one behind which sat
+Cordelia Wilson in the room she shared with Tilly.
+
+"Cordelia, why don't you put out that light and go to bed?" demanded
+Tilly at last, drowsily. "Morning will never come at this rate!"
+
+"Yes, Tilly, I'm going to bed in just a minute," promised Cordelia, as
+carefully she wrote in the space opposite Mrs. Miller's name on her list
+of "things to do":
+
+"Cowboys are good, kind gentlemen; but they are noisy, and some
+rough-looking."
+
+Five minutes later, Cordelia, from her little bed on one side of the
+room called a soft "good night" across to Tilly. But Tilly was already
+asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MISTRESS OF THE SIX STAR RANCH
+
+
+Breakfast was an early matter at the Six Star Ranch. It came almost with
+the sunrise, in fact. Genevieve had assured her guests, on the night of
+their arrival, however, that their breakfast might be hours later--that
+it might, indeed, be at any hour they pleased. But on this first morning
+at the ranch, there was not one guest that did not promptly respond to
+the breakfast-bell except Mrs. Kennedy. The stir of life out of doors
+had proved an effectual rising-bell for all; and it was anything but a
+sleepy-looking crowd of young people that tripped into the dining-room
+to find the boys already waiting for them--a little quiet and shy, to be
+sure, but very red and shiny-looking as to face and hands, speaking
+loudly of a vigorous use of soap and water.
+
+Before the meal was half over, Mrs. Kennedy came in, only to meet a
+chorus of remonstrances that she should have disturbed herself so early.
+
+Genevieve, however, assumed a look of mock severity.
+
+"Aunt Julia," she began reprovingly in so perfect an imitation of Miss
+Jane Chick's severest manner that Mrs. Kennedy's lips twitched; "didn't
+you hear the rising-bell, my dear? How often must I ask you not to be
+late to your meals?"
+
+For one brief moment there was a dazed hush about the table; then, at
+sight of Cordelia's horrified face, Genevieve lost her self-control and
+giggled.
+
+"Oh, but that was such a good chance," she chuckled. "Please, Aunt
+Julia, I just couldn't help it. I had to!"
+
+"I don't doubt it," smiled back Mrs. Kennedy; and at the meaning
+emphasis in her voice there was a general laugh.
+
+"Well, what shall we do first?" demanded Tilly, when breakfast was over.
+
+Genevieve put her finger to her lips.
+
+"I wonder, now. Oh, I know! Let's go out and see if they've driven in
+the saddle band yet; then we'll watch the boys rope them and start to
+work."
+
+"What's a saddle band?--sounds like a girth," frowned Tilly.
+
+"Humph! I reckon it isn't one, all the same," laughed Genevieve. "It's
+the horses the boys ride. Each one has his own string, you know."
+
+"No, I don't know," retorted Tilly, aggrievedly. "And you needn't use
+all those funny words--'string' and 'saddle band' and 'rope
+them'--without explaining them, either, Genevieve Hartley. You've been
+talking like that ever since we came. Just as if we knew what all that
+meant!"
+
+Genevieve laughed again.
+
+"No, you don't, of course," she admitted, "any more than I understood
+some of your terms back East. But come; let's go out and watch the boys.
+One of the sheds has a lovely low, flat roof, and we can see right over
+into the horse corral from there. It's easy; there's a ladder. Come on!"
+
+"Why, what a lot of horses!" cried Tilly, a moment later, as they
+stepped out of doors. "Do they ride all those?"
+
+"Not this morning," laughed Genevieve. "You see, each man has his own
+string of horses, and he picks out some one of the bunch, and lets the
+rest go. That's Reddy, now, driving them into the corral. The other boys
+will be here pretty quick now, and the fun will begin. You'll see!"
+
+The horse corral was high and circular, and there was a fine view of it
+from the shed roof. A snubbing post was in the middle of the corral, and
+a wing was built out at one side from the entrance gate, so that the
+horses could be driven in more easily; yet Reddy quite had his hands
+full as it was. At last they were all in, and a merry time they were
+having of it, racing in a circle about the enclosure, heads up, and
+tails and manes flying.
+
+"Regular merry-go-round, isn't it?" giggled Tilly. But Cordelia clutched
+Genevieve's arm.
+
+"Genevieve, look--they've got ropes! Genevieve, what _are_ they going to
+do?" she gasped, her eyes on the boys who were running from all
+directions now, toward the corral. "Why, Genevieve, they're going _in_
+there, with all those horses!"
+
+"I reckon they are," rejoined the mistress of the Six Star Ranch. "Now
+watch, and you'll see. There!--see there?--in the middle by that post!
+Each man will pick out one of his own horses and rope him; then he'll
+lead him out and saddle him, and the deed's done."
+
+"I guess that's easier to say than to do," observed Bertha, dryly. "I
+notice there aren't any of those horses just hanging 'round waiting to
+be caught!"
+
+"No, there aren't, to-day," laughed Genevieve; "though some of the
+horses will do just that, at times--specially Long John's. They're
+pretty lively now, however, and it _does_ take some skill to make a nice
+job of it when they're jamming and jostling like that. But the boys are
+equal to it. We've got some splendid ropers!" This time there was a note
+of very evident pride in the voice of the mistress of the Six Star
+Ranch.
+
+It was a brief but exciting time that followed, filled, as it was, with
+the shouts of the boys--the jeers at some failure, the cheers at some
+success--the thud of the horses' hoofs, the swirl of the skillfully
+flung ropes. It was almost as exciting when the boys, their horses once
+caught, led out, and saddled, rode off for their morning's work. To
+Cordelia, especially, it was an experience never to be forgotten.
+
+"Going to turn cowboy, Miss Cordelia?" asked Mr. Hartley, with a smile,
+as he met the girl coming into the house a little later. Mr. Hartley, in
+his broad-brimmed hat, and his gray tweed trousers tucked into his high
+boots, looked the picture of the prosperous ranchman at home.
+
+Cordelia showed a distinctly shocked face.
+
+"Oh, no, sir!" she cried.
+
+"Don't think you could learn to swing the rope--eh?" he teased.
+
+"Mercy, no!"
+
+A half-proud, wholly-gratified smile crossed the man's face.
+
+"It isn't as easy as it looks to be," he said. "Once in a while we get a
+tenderfoot out here, though, who thinks he's going to learn it all in a
+minute--or, rather, do it without any learning. But to be a good roper,
+one has to give it long, hard practice. The best of 'em begin young.
+Reddy, the crack roper in my outfit, tells me he began with his mother's
+clothes-line at the age of four years, with his rocking-horse for a
+victim. It seems there was a picture in one of his books of a cowboy
+roping a pony, and--"
+
+Mr. Hartley stopped, as if listening. From the rear of the house had
+sounded the creak of the windmill crank. The man turned, entered the
+hall, and crossed to the window. Then he shook his head with a smile.
+
+"I'm afraid Genevieve is up to her old tricks," he said. "She's stopping
+the windmill so she can climb to the top of the tower, I reckon."
+
+"Genevieve!--at the top of that tower!" exclaimed Cordelia.
+
+Mr. Hartley's lips twitched.
+
+"Yes. That used to be a daily stunt of hers, and--I let her," added the
+man, a little doggedly. "It made her well and strong, anyhow, and helped
+to develop her muscle. You see, we--we don't have gymnasiums on the
+ranch," he concluded whimsically, as they stepped together out on to the
+back gallery.
+
+A babel of gleeful shouts and laughter greeted their ears. A moment
+later Mr. Hartley and Cordelia came in sight of the windmill. At its
+base four chattering, shrieking girls were laughing and clapping their
+hands. Above their heads, Genevieve, in a dark blue gymnasium suit, was
+swinging herself gracefully from cross-piece to cross-piece in the
+tower.
+
+"You see," smiled Mr. Hartley; but he was interrupted by a shocked,
+frightened voice behind him.
+
+"Genevieve, my dear!" gasped Mrs. Kennedy, hurrying forward.
+
+Genevieve did not hear, apparently. To the girls she waved a free hand,
+joyously. She was almost at the top.
+
+"It's fine--mighty fine up here," she caroled. "I can see 'way, 'way
+over the prairie!"
+
+"Genevieve! Genevieve Hartley, come down this instant," commanded Mrs.
+Kennedy. Then her voice shook, and grew piteously frightened, as she
+stammered: "No, no--don't come down, dear! Genevieve, how _can_ you come
+down?" Mrs. Kennedy was wringing her hands now.
+
+This time Genevieve heard.
+
+"Why, Aunt Julia, what is it? What is the matter?" The girl's voice
+expressed only concerned surprise.
+
+"What is the matter?" echoed Mrs. Kennedy, faintly. "Genevieve, how can
+you come down?"
+
+"Come down? Why, that's easy! But I don't want to come down."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy's lips grew stern.
+
+"Genevieve," she said, with an obvious effort to speak quietly; "if you
+can come down, I desire you to do so at once."
+
+Genevieve came down. Her eyes flashed a little, and her cheeks were
+redder than usual. She did not once glance toward the girls, clustered
+in a silent, frightened little group. She did not appear to notice even
+her father, standing by. She went straight to Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"I've come down, Aunt Julia."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy had been seriously disturbed, and genuinely frightened. To
+her, Genevieve's climb to the top of the windmill tower was very
+dangerous, as well as very unladylike. Yet it was the fright, even more
+than the displeasure that made her voice sound so cold now in her effort
+to steady it.
+
+"Thank you, Genevieve. Please see that there is no occasion for you to
+_come down_ again," she said meaningly. Then she turned and went into
+the house.
+
+Just how it happened, Genevieve did not know, but almost at once she
+found herself alone with her father on the back gallery. The girls had
+disappeared.
+
+Genevieve was very angry now.
+
+"Father, it wasn't fair, to speak like that," she choked, "before the
+girls and you, when I hadn't done a thing--not a thing! Why, it--it was
+just like Miss Jane! I never knew Aunt Julia to be like that."
+
+For a moment her father was silent. His face wore a thoughtful frown.
+
+"I know it, dearie," he said at last. "But I don't think Mrs. Kennedy
+quite realized, quite understood--how _you'd_ feel. She didn't think it
+just right for you to be there."
+
+"But I was in my gym suit, Father. I skipped in and put it on purposely,
+while the others were doing something else; then I climbed the tower.
+I'd planned 'way ahead how I'd surprise them."
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"I know, dearie," he nodded, after a moment; "but I reckon it was just a
+little too much of a surprise for Mrs. Kennedy. You know she isn't used
+to the West; and--do Boston young ladies climb windmill towers?"
+
+In spite of her anger, Genevieve laughed. The mention of Boston had put
+her in mind of some Boston friends of Mrs. Kennedy's, whom she knew. She
+had a sudden vision of what Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield's faces
+would have been, had their stern, sixty-year-old eyes seen what Mrs.
+Kennedy saw.
+
+"I reckon, too," went on Mr. Hartley, with a sigh, "that I have sort of
+spoiled you, letting you have your own way. And maybe Mammy Lindy and I,
+in our anxiety that you should be well and strong, and sit the saddle
+like a Texas daughter should, haven't taught you always just the dainty
+little lady ways--that you ought to have been taught."
+
+"You've taught me everything--everything good and lovely," protested the
+girl, hotly.
+
+He shook his head. A far-away look came into his eyes.
+
+"I haven't, dearie--and that's why I sent you East."
+
+Genevieve flushed.
+
+"But I didn't want to go East, in the first place," she stormed. "I
+wanted to stay here with you. Besides, Aunt Julia isn't really any
+relation,--nor Miss Jane, either. They haven't any right to--to speak to
+me like that."
+
+A dull red stole to John Hartley's cheek.
+
+"Tut, tut, dearie," he demurred, with a shake of the head. "You mustn't
+forget how good they've been to you. Besides--they have got the right. I
+gave it to them. I told them to make you like themselves."
+
+There was a long silence. Genevieve's eyes were moodily fixed on the
+floor. Her father gave her a swift glance, then went on, softly:
+
+"I suspect, too, maybe we're both forgetting, dearie. After all, Mrs.
+Kennedy did it every bit through--love. She was frightened. She was so
+scared she just shook, dearie."
+
+"She--was?" Genevieve's voice was amazed.
+
+"Yes. I reckon that's more than half why she spoke so stern, and why
+she's in her room crying this minute--as I'll warrant she is. I saw her
+eyes, and I saw how her hands shook. And I saw it was all she could do
+to keep from falling right on your neck--because she had you back safe
+and sound. Maybe you didn't see that, dearie."
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"You see, their _ways_ back East, and ours, aren't alike," resumed the
+man, after a time; "but I reckon their--_love_ is."
+
+Genevieve drew a long breath. Her brown eyes were not clear.
+
+"I reckon maybe I'll go and find--Aunt Julia," she said in a low voice.
+
+The next moment her father sat alone on the back gallery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+REDDY AND THE BRONCHO
+
+
+There was no lack of interesting things to do that first day at the
+ranch. There was one half-hour, to be sure, when five of the Happy
+Hexagons sat a little quietly on the front gallery and tried to talk as
+if there were no such thing as a windmill, and no such person as a girl
+who could climb to the top of it; but after Genevieve and Mrs. Kennedy,
+arm in arm, came through the front door--with eyes indeed, a little
+misty, but with lips cheerfully smiling--every vestige of constraint
+fled. Genevieve, once more in her pretty linen frock, was again the
+alert little hostess, and very soon they were all off to inspect the
+flower garden, the vegetable garden, the cow corral, the sheds, the
+stables, and the blacksmith's shop, not forgetting Teresa, the cook, who
+was making tamales in the kitchen for them, nor Pepito, Genevieve's own
+horse that she rode before she went East.
+
+"And we'll have the boys pick out some horses for you, too," cried
+Genevieve, smoothing Pepito's sleek coat in response to his welcoming
+whinny of delight. "I'm sure they can find something all right for us."
+
+Tilly's eyes brightened, so, too, did Bertha's; but Cordelia spoke
+hastily, her eyes bent a bit distrustfully on the spirited little horse
+Genevieve was petting.
+
+"Oh, but I don't believe they'll have time to hunt up horses for us,
+Genevieve. Really, I don't think we ought to ask them to."
+
+"Maybe we won't, then--for _you_," teased Tilly, saucily. "We'll just
+let them take time for ours."
+
+It is a question, however, if that afternoon, even Tilly wanted to ride;
+for, according to Cordelia's notes that night in "Things to do," they
+saw a broncho "bursted."
+
+It was Mr. Tim who had said at the dinner table that noon:
+
+"If you young people happen to be on hand, say at about four o'clock,
+you'll see something doing. Reddy's got a horse or two he's going to put
+through their paces--and one of 'em's never been saddled."
+
+Privately, to Mr. Hartley, Mrs. Kennedy objected a little.
+
+"Are you sure, Mr. Hartley, the girls ought to witness such a sight?"
+she asked uneasily. "Of course I don't want to be too strict in my
+demands," she went on with a little twinkle in her eyes that Mr. Hartley
+thoroughly understood. "I realize the West isn't the East. But, will
+this be--all right?"
+
+"I think it will--even in your judgment," he assured her. "It's no
+professional broncho-buster that they'll see to-day. I seldom hire them,
+anyway, as I prefer to have our own men break in the horses--specially
+as we're lucky enough to have three or four mighty skillful ones right
+in our own outfit. There'll be nothing brutal or rough to-day, Mrs.
+Kennedy. Only one beast is entirely wild, and he's not really vicious,
+Reddy says. Genevieve tells me the girls have heard a lot about
+broncho-busting, and that they're wild to see it. They wouldn't think
+they'd been to Texas, I'm afraid, if they didn't see something of the
+sort."
+
+"Very well," agreed Mrs. Kennedy, with visible reluctance.
+
+"Oh, of course," went on Mr. Hartley, his eyes twinkling, "you mustn't
+expect that they'll see exactly a pony parade drawing baby carriages
+down Beacon Street; but they will see some of the best horsemanship that
+the state of Texas can show. I take it you never saw a little beast
+whose chief aim in life was to get clear of his rider--eh, Mrs.
+Kennedy?"
+
+"No, I never did," shuddered the lady; "and I'm not sure that I'd want
+to," she finished decisively, as she turned away.
+
+The new horse proved to be a fiery little bay mustang, and the fight
+began from the first moment that the noose settled about his untamed
+little neck. As Tilly told of the affair in the Chronicles of the
+Hexagon Club, it was like this:
+
+"We saw a broncho busted this afternoon. Reddy busted it, and he was
+splendid. Mercy! I shall never think anything my old Beauty does is bad
+again. Beauty is a snail and a saint beside this jumping, plunging,
+squealing creature that never by any chance was on his feet
+properly--except when he came down hard on all four of them at once with
+his back humped right up in the middle in a perfectly frightful
+fashion--and I suppose that wasn't 'properly.' Anyhow, I shouldn't have
+thought it was, if I had had to try to sit on that hump!
+
+"But that wasn't the only thing that he did. Dear me, no! He danced, and
+rolled, and seesawed up and down--'pitching,' Mr. Hartley called it. And
+I'm sure it looked like it. First he'd try standing on his two fore
+feet, then he'd give them a rest, and take the other two. And sometimes
+he couldn't seem to make up his mind which he wanted to use, or which
+way he wanted to turn, and he'd change about right up in the air so he'd
+come down facing the other way. My, he was the most uncertain creature!
+
+"It didn't seem to make a mite of difference where the horse was, or
+what he did with his feet, though. Reddy was right there every time, and
+all _ready_, too. (Yes, I know a pun is the lowest order of wit. But I
+don't care. I couldn't help it, anyway--it was such a _ready_ one!)
+There he sat, so loose and easy, too, with his quirt (that's a whip),
+and it looked sometimes just as if he wasn't half trying--that he didn't
+need to. But I'm sure he was trying. Anyhow, I know I couldn't have
+stayed on that horse five minutes; and I don't believe even Genevieve
+could. (I said that to Mr. Tim Nolan, and he laughed so hard I thought
+I'd put it in here, and let somebody else laugh.)
+
+"Of course every one of us was awfully excited, and the boys kept
+shouting and cheering, and yelling 'Stay with him!' and telling him not
+to 'go to leather'--whatever that may mean! And Reddy did stay. He
+stayed till the little horse got tired out; then he got off, and led the
+horse away, and some of the other boys went through a good deal the same
+sort of thing with other horses, only these had all been partly broken
+before, they told us. But, mercy, they were bad enough, anyhow, I
+thought, to have been brand-new. Reddy did another one, too, and this
+time he put silver half-dollars under his feet in the stirrups: And when
+the little beast--the horse, I mean, not Reddy--got through his antics,
+there the half-dollars were, still there in the same old place. How the
+boys did yell and cheer then!
+
+"After that, they all just 'showed off' for us, throwing their ropes
+over anything and everything, and playing like a crowd of little boys on
+a picnic, only Mr. Hartley said they were doing some 'mighty fine
+roping' with it all. Their ropes are mostly about forty feet long, and
+it looked as if they just slung them any old way; but I know they don't,
+for afterward, just before we went in to supper, Reddy let me take his
+rope, and I tried to throw it. I aimed for a post a little way ahead of
+me, but I got Pedro, the Mexican cowboy, behind me, right 'in the neck,'
+as Mr. Tim said. Pedro grinned, and of course everybody else laughed
+horribly.
+
+"And thus endeth the account of how the bronchos were busted. (P.S. I
+hope whoever reads the above will own up that for once Tilly Mack got
+some sense into her part. So there!) I forgot to say we took a nap after
+dinner. Everybody does here. 'Siestas' they call them, Genevieve says."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was after supper that Genevieve said:
+
+"Now let's go out on to the front gallery and watch the sunset. Supper
+was too late last night for us to see much of it, but to-night it will
+be fine--and you've no idea what a sunset really can be until you've
+seen it on the prairie!"
+
+Tilly pursed her lips.
+
+"There, Genevieve Hartley, there's another of those mysterious words of
+yours; and it isn't the first time I've heard it here, either."
+
+"What word?"
+
+"'Gallery.' What is a gallery? I'm sure I don't see what there can be
+about a one-story house to be called a 'gallery'!"
+
+Genevieve laughed.
+
+"You call them 'verandas' or 'piazzas,' back East, Tilly. We call them
+'galleries' in Texas."
+
+"Oh, is that it?" frowned Tilly. "But you never called Sunbridge piazzas
+that."
+
+Genevieve shook her head.
+
+"No; it's only when I get back here that the old names come back to me
+so naturally. Besides--when I was East, I very soon found out what you
+called them; so I called them that, too."
+
+"Well, anyhow," retorted Tilly, saucily, "I've got my opinion of folks
+that will call a one-story piazza a 'gallery.' I should just like to
+show them what we call a 'gallery' at home--say, the top one in the
+Boston Theater, you know, where it runs 'way back."
+
+Genevieve only laughed good-naturedly.
+
+On the front gallery all settled themselves comfortably to watch the
+sunset. Already the sun was low in the west, a huge ball of fire just
+ready to drop into the sea of prairie grass.
+
+"It doesn't seem nearly so hot here as I thought it would," observed
+Bertha, after a time. "Oh, it's been warm to-day, of course--part of
+the time awfully warm," she added hastily. "But I've been just as hot in
+New Hampshire."
+
+"We think we've got a mighty fine climate," spoke up Mr. Hartley. "Now,
+last year, you in the East, had heaps of prostrations from the heat.
+Texas had just three."
+
+"I suppose that was owing to the Northers," murmured Cordelia,
+interestedly. "Now, feel it!" She put up her hand. "There's a breeze,
+now. Is that a Norther?"
+
+Mr. Hartley coughed suddenly. Genevieve stared.
+
+"What do you know about Northers?" she demanded.
+
+"Why, I--I read about them. It said you--you had them."
+
+Genevieve broke into a merry laugh.
+
+"I should think, by the way you put it, that they were the measles or
+the whooping cough! We do have them, Cordelia--in the winter, specially,
+but not so often in July. Besides, they don't feel much like this little
+breeze--as you'd soon find out, if you happened to be in one."
+
+For a moment there was silence; then Genevieve spoke again.
+
+"See here, where'd you find out all these things about Texas--that we
+didn't have butter, and did have Northers?"
+
+Before Cordelia could answer, Tilly interposed with a chuckling laugh:
+
+"I'll tell you, Genevieve, just where they found out," she cut in,
+utterly ignoring her own share of the "they." "Now, listen! How do you
+suppose they spent all the time you were in New Jersey? I'll tell you.
+They were digging up Texas every single minute; and they dug, and dug,
+and dug, until there wasn't a mean annual temperature, or a mean
+anything else that they didn't drag from its hiding-place and hold up
+triumphantly, and shout: 'Behold, this is Texas!'"
+
+"Girls--you didn't!" cried Genevieve, choking with laughter.
+
+"They did!" affirmed Tilly.
+
+"Yes, _we_ did--including Tilly," declared Cordelia, with unexpected
+spirit.
+
+Everybody laughed this time, but it was Alma, the peacemaker, who spoke
+next.
+
+"Oh, look--look at the sun!" she exclaimed. "Aren't those rose-pink
+clouds gorgeous?"
+
+"My, wouldn't they make a lovely dress?" sighed Elsie.
+
+"Yes, and see the golden pathway the sun has made, straight down to the
+prairie," cried Bertha Brown.
+
+"Oh, look, look, Mr. Hartley! Is that grass on fire?" gasped Cordelia.
+
+Mr. Hartley shook his head.
+
+"No--I hope not."
+
+"But you do have prairie fires?"
+
+"Sometimes; but not so often nowadays--though I've seen some bad ones,
+in my time."
+
+There was a long silence. All eyes were turned toward the west. Above, a
+riot of rose and gold and purple flamed across the sky. Below, more
+softly, the colors seemed almost repeated in the waving, shifting,
+changing expanse of fairylike loveliness that the prairie had become.
+
+"Oh, how beautiful it all is, and how I do love it," breathed Genevieve,
+after a time, as if to herself.
+
+Gradually the gorgeous rose and gold and purple changed, softened, and
+faded quite away. The slender crescent of the moon appeared, and one by
+one the stars showed in the darkening sky.
+
+"It's all so quiet, so wonderfully quiet," sighed Cordelia; then,
+abruptly, she cried: "Why, what's that?"
+
+There had sounded a far-away shout, then another, nearer. On the breeze
+was borne the muffled tread of hundreds of hoofs. A dog began to bark
+lustily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later, they swept into view--a troop of cowboys, and a thronging,
+jostling mass of cattle.
+
+"On the way to a round-up, probably," explained Mr. Hartley, as he rose
+to his feet and went to meet the foreman, who was coming toward the
+house.
+
+Still later, he explained more fully.
+
+"They've put them in our pens for the night. The boys have gone into
+camp a mile or so away."
+
+Genevieve shuddered.
+
+"I hate round-ups," she cried passionately.
+
+"What are round-ups?" asked Bertha Brown.
+
+"Where they brand the cattle," answered Genevieve, quickly, but in a low
+voice.
+
+Cordelia, who was near her, shuddered. She seemed now to see before her
+eyes that seething mass of heads and horns, sweeping on and on
+unceasingly.
+
+Cordelia had two dreams that night. She wondered, afterward, which was
+the worse. She dreamed, first, that an endless stream of cattle climbed
+the windmill tower and jumped clear to the edge of the prairie, where
+the sun went down. She dreamed, secondly, that she was very hungry, and
+that twenty feet away stood a table laden with hot biscuits and fried
+chicken; but that the only way she could obtain any food was to "rope
+it" with Reddy's lariat. At the time of waking up she had not obtained
+so much as one biscuit or a chicken wing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+CORDELIA GOES TO CHURCH
+
+
+"We're going to have church to-morrow," Genevieve had announced on the
+first Saturday night at the ranch. "A minister is coming from Bolo, and
+he holds the service out of doors. Everybody on the place comes, and we
+sing, and it's lovely!"
+
+As it happened, Cordelia had not been present when Genevieve made this
+announcement. It was left for Tilly, therefore, to tell her.
+
+"Oh, Cordelia, I forgot. We're going to have church to-morrow," she said
+that night, as she was brushing her hair in their room.
+
+Cordelia, who was taking off her shoes, looked up delightedly.
+
+"Oh, Tilly--church? We're going to church?"
+
+Tilly laughed; then an odd little twist came to her mouth.
+
+"Yes, Cordelia; we're--going to church," she answered.
+
+"What time?"
+
+"Eleven o'clock, Genevieve said."
+
+"Oh, won't that be fun--I mean, I'm very glad," corrected Cordelia,
+hastily, a confused red in her cheeks.
+
+In Cordelia's bed that night, Cordelia thought happily:
+
+"Maybe now I can get some new ideas for Uncle Thomas to put in his
+services. They do everything so differently here in the West, and
+Uncle's audiences get so small sometimes, specially Sunday evenings."
+
+In Tilly's bed, Tilly, a little guilty as to conscience, was trying to
+excuse herself.
+
+"Well, anyhow," she was arguing mentally, "Genevieve said 'everybody
+comes,' and if they 'come' they must 'go'; so of course we're 'going' to
+church."
+
+Not until Cordelia was dropping off to sleep did something occur to her.
+She sat up, then, suddenly.
+
+"Tilly," she called softly, "where is that church? Do we have to ride
+eighteen miles to Bolo?"
+
+Tilly did not answer. She was asleep, decided Cordelia--it was dark, and
+Cordelia could not see the pillow Tilly was stuffing into her mouth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just after breakfast Sunday morning, Elsie Martin said a low word in
+Genevieve's ear, and drew her out of earshot of the others. Her eyes
+were anxious.
+
+"Genevieve, do you have to dress up much for this kind of--of church?"
+she questioned.
+
+"Not a bit, dear. Don't worry. Anything you have will be lovely."
+
+"I know; but--well, you see, it's just this," she quavered. "Aunt Kate
+fixed up the girls' green chambray for me just before we came. I saw
+then it didn't look just right, but we were in such an awful hurry there
+wasn't time to do anything; and I was so excited, anyway, that I didn't
+seem to mind, much. But out here, in the bright light, it looks
+awfully!"
+
+"Nonsense! That's all your own notion, Elsie," rejoined Genevieve,
+comfortingly. "I'm sure it looks lovely. Anyhow, it wouldn't matter if
+it didn't--here."
+
+Elsie shook her head despondently.
+
+"But you don't understand," she said. "You know the twins dress alike,
+and this was their green chambray. Aunt Kate always likes to use their
+things, she says, because there's always double quantity; but this time
+it didn't work so well. You see, Cora was sick a lot last summer, when
+they had this dress, and she didn't wear hers half so much as Clara did,
+so hers wasn't faded hardly any. It was an awful funny color to begin
+with; but it's worse now, with part of it one shade, and part another.
+You see, one sleeve's made of Cora's, and one of Clara's; and the front
+breadth is Cora's and the back is Clara's. Of course Aunt Kate cut it
+out where she could do it best, and didn't think but what they were
+alike; but you don't know what a funny-looking thing that dress is! I--I
+don't know whether to turn Clara toward folks, or Cora," she finished
+with a little laugh.
+
+Genevieve heard the laugh--but she saw that it came through trembling
+lips.
+
+"Well, I just wouldn't fret," she declared, with an affectionate little
+hug. "If you don't want to wear it, wear something else. What a nuisance
+clothes are, anyhow! I've always said I wished we didn't have to change
+our dress every time we turned around!"
+
+Elsie's eyes became wistful. She shook her head sadly.
+
+"You don't know anything about it, Genevieve. Your clothes _haven't_
+been a nuisance to you--even if you think they have. You see, you don't
+realize how nice it is to have such a lot of pretty things--and all
+new," she sighed as she turned away.
+
+When Genevieve went to her room to dress for "church" that morning, she
+looked a little thoughtfully at the array of pretty frocks hanging in
+her closet.
+
+"I wish I could give some to Elsie," she sighed; "but Elsie isn't poor,
+of course, and I suppose she--she wouldn't take them. But I suspect I
+don't half appreciate them myself--just as Elsie said," she finished, as
+she took down a fresh, white linen.
+
+At quarter before eleven Cordelia Wilson knocked at Genevieve's door.
+Genevieve opened it to find Cordelia in a neat jacket suit, hat on, and
+gloves in hand.
+
+"Am I all right, Genevieve?" she asked. "I wasn't quite sure just what
+to wear."
+
+"Why, y-yes--only you don't need the hat, nor the gloves, dear; and I
+shouldn't think you'd want that coat, it's so warm!"
+
+"Not want a hat, or gloves," burst out Cordelia, looking distinctly
+shocked. "Why, Genevieve Hartley! I know you do very strange things here
+in the West, but I did suppose you--you dressed properly to go to
+church!"
+
+"But it isn't really church, Cordelia," smiled Genevieve. "I only call
+it so, you know. And of course we don't 'go' at all--only as far as the
+back gallery."
+
+Cordelia stared, frowningly.
+
+"You mean you don't drive off--anywhere?" she demanded. "That you have a
+service right here?"
+
+"Yes. I thought you knew."
+
+"But Tilly said--why, I don't know what she did say, exactly, but she
+let me think we were going to drive off somewhere. And look at
+me--rigged out like this! You know how she'll tease me!" There were
+almost tears in Cordelia's sensitive eyes.
+
+"Has she seen you--in this?"
+
+"No; but she will when I go back. I saw her whisk through the hall to
+our room just as I crossed through to come in here."
+
+"Then we won't let her see you," chuckled Genevieve. "Here, let's have
+your hat and gloves and coat. I'll hide them in my closet. You can get
+them later when Tilly isn't around. Now run back and put a serene face
+on it. Just don't let her suspect you ever thought of your hat and
+gloves."
+
+"But, do you think I ought to do--that? Won't it be--deceit?"
+
+"No, dear, it won't," declared Genevieve, emphatically; "not any sort of
+deceit that's any harm. It will just be depriving Miss Tilly of the
+naughty fun she expected to have with you. You _know_ how Tilly loves to
+tease folks. Well, she'll just find the tables turned, this time. Now
+run back quick, or she'll suspect things!" And, a little doubtfully,
+Cordelia went.
+
+As she had expected, she found Tilly in their room.
+
+"Why don't you get ready for church, Cordy?" demanded Tilly, promptly.
+
+"I am ready. I dressed early, before you came in," returned Cordelia,
+trying to speak very unconcernedly. "Why? Don't you think this will do?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. You look very nice," murmured Tilly, a little
+hastily, sending a furtive glance into Cordelia's face. There was
+nothing, apparently, about Cordelia to indicate that anything
+unexpected had occurred, or was about to occur; and she herself could
+not, of course, ask why no preparations for an eighteen-mile journey
+were being made, specially when she had pretended to be asleep the night
+before when Cordelia asked her question about that same journey. "You
+look very nice, I'm sure," murmured Tilly, again. And Cordelia, hearing
+the vague disappointment in Tilly's voice, was filled with joy--that yet
+carried a pang of remorse.
+
+It was a little later, just as Tilly was leaving the room, that Cordelia
+turned abruptly.
+
+"Tilly, I did have on my hat and coat," she burst out hurriedly. "I did
+think we were going to drive 'way off somewhere to church. But I found
+out and hid them in Genevieve's room, so you would not know and--and
+tease me," she finished breathlessly.
+
+Tilly turned back with a laugh.
+
+"You little rogue!" she began; then she stopped short. Her face changed.
+"But--why in the world did you tell me now?" she demanded curiously.
+
+"I thought I ought to."
+
+"Ought to!--ought to let me tease you!" echoed the dumfounded Tilly.
+
+Cordelia stirred restlessly.
+
+"Not that, of course, exactly," she stammered. "It's only that--that it
+seemed somehow like--deceiving you."
+
+For a moment Tilly stared; then, suddenly, she darted across the room
+and put both arms around the minister's niece. Cordelia was not quite
+sure whether she was hugging her, or shaking her.
+
+"Oh, you--you--I don't know _what_ you are!" Tilly was exclaiming. "But
+you're a dear, anyhow!" And it was actually a sob that the astounded
+Cordelia heard as Tilly turned and fled from the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To Sunbridge eyes, "church" that morning was something very new and
+novel. At eleven o'clock Genevieve and her father piloted their guests
+to the back gallery where seats had been reserved for them. The
+minister, a dark-haired, tired-looking man with kind eyes, had arrived
+some time before on horseback. To Mrs. Kennedy, especially, he looked a
+little too unconventional in his heavy boots and coarse garments which,
+though plainly recently brushed, still showed the dust of the prairie in
+spots. He sat now at one side talking with Mr. Tim while his
+"congregation" was gathering.
+
+And what a congregation it was! As Genevieve had said, everybody on the
+ranch came, except those whose duties prohibited them from coming.
+Singly, or in picturesque groups, they settled themselves comfortably on
+the back gallery, or along the covered way leading to the dining-room.
+Even Teresa, in a huge fresh apron that made her great bulk look even
+greater, sat just outside the dining-room door, where she could easily
+run in from time to time, to see that the roast chickens in the oven
+were not burning, nor the beets on the stove boiling dry.
+
+The "pulpit" was a little stand placed at the house-end of the covered
+way. The "choir" was the piano in the living-room drawn up close to the
+window, with Genevieve herself seated at it. Nor was the "church" itself
+devoid of beauty, with its growing vines and flowers, and its shifting
+lights and shadows as the soft clouds sailed slowly through the blue sky
+overhead. As to the audience--no scholarly orator in a Fifth Avenue
+cathedral found that day more attentive listeners than did that
+tired-looking minister find in the curiously-assorted groups before
+him--the swarthy Mexicans, the picturesque cowboys, the eager-eyed,
+fresh-faced young girls from a far-away town in the East.
+
+They sang first, Genevieve's own clear voice leading; and even Tilly,
+who seldom sang in church at home, found herself joining heartily in
+"Nearer my God to Thee," and "Bringing in the Sheaves." There was
+something so free, so whole-souled about the music in that soft outdoor
+air, that she, as well as some of the others, decided that never before
+had any music sounded so inspiring.
+
+For the first two minutes after the preacher arose to begin his sermon,
+Mrs. Kennedy saw nothing but the dust on the right shoulder of his coat.
+But after that she saw nothing but his earnest eyes. She had fallen
+then quite under the sway of his clear, ringing voice.
+
+"'While Josiah was yet young, in the sixteenth year of his age, he began
+to seek the God of his fathers,'" announced the clear, ringing voice as
+the text; and Genevieve, hearing it, wondered if the minister could have
+known that at least a part of his audience that day would be so exactly,
+or so very nearly, "in the sixteenth year" of their own age.
+
+It was a good sermon, and it was well preached. The time, the place, the
+occasion, the atmosphere all helped, too. All the Happy Hexagons paid
+reverent attention. Tilly, fresh from her somewhat amazing experience
+with Cordelia, made many and stern resolutions to be everything that was
+good and helpful, nothing that was bad and hateful. Genevieve, who had
+slipped off her piano stool to an easier chair, sat with dreamy, tender
+eyes. She was thinking of the dear mother, who, as she could so well
+remember, had told her that she must always be good and brave and true
+first, before anything else.
+
+"Good and brave and true!" She wondered if she could--always. It seemed
+so easy to do it now, with this good man's earnest voice in her ears.
+But it was so hard, so strangely hard, at other times. And there were so
+many things--so many, many _little_ things--that to Aunt Julia and Miss
+Jane looked so big!--things, too, that to her seemed eminently all
+right.
+
+"'When Josiah was yet young, in the sixteenth year of his age, he began
+to seek the God of his fathers,'" quoted the minister again,
+impressively; and Genevieve realized then, with misty eyes, that the
+sermon was done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The minister stayed to dinner, of course; and, in spite of her interest
+in the sermon, Teresa had seen to it that the dinner was everything that
+one could ask of it. The minister had the place of honor at the table,
+and proved to be a most agreeable talker. Genevieve had not caught his
+name distinctly, but she thought it was "Jones." He lived in Bolo, he
+said, having recently moved there from a distant part of the state. He
+hoped that he might be able to do good work there. Certainly there was
+need that somebody do something. In response to Mr. Hartley's cordial
+invitation to stay a few days at the ranch, he answered with visible
+regret:
+
+"Thank you, sir. Nothing would please me more, but it is quite out of
+the question. I must go back this afternoon. I have a service in Bolo
+this evening."
+
+"You must be a busy man," observed Mr. Hartley, genially.
+
+The minister sighed.
+
+"I am--yet I can't do half that I want to. This outside work among the
+ranches I shall try to carry on as best I can. But you're all so afraid
+you'll have a neighbor nearer than a score of miles," he added with a
+whimsical smile, "that I can't get among you very often."
+
+It was after dinner that the minister chanced to hear Genevieve speak of
+herself as a Happy Hexagon.
+
+"Hexagon?--Hexagon?" he echoed smilingly. "And are you, too, a Happy
+Hexagon?" he asked, turning to the mistress of the Six Star Ranch.
+
+"Why, yes. Do you mean you know another one?" questioned the girl, all
+interest immediately. "It's the name of our girls' club--the Hexagon
+Club."
+
+"No, but I heard of one, once," rejoined the man. "And it isn't usual,
+you know, so it attracted my attention."
+
+"But where was it? When was it? We supposed we were the only Happy
+Hexagons in the world," cried Genevieve.
+
+The minister smiled.
+
+"I found my Happy Hexagons at the bottom of a letter from the East."
+
+"A letter from the East?" Genevieve's voice held now a curious note of
+wild unbelief.
+
+"Yes. It came before we moved to Bolo. My elder daughter was teaching
+in the East, and was taken ill. Some of her girls wrote to us."
+
+Genevieve sprang to her feet.
+
+"Are you--you can't be--the Rev. Luke Jones!" she cried.
+
+"That is my name."
+
+"And is Quentina your daughter?"
+
+It was the minister's turn to look amazed.
+
+"Why, yes; but--how do you know? Are you--you can't be--_my_ Happy
+Hexagons!" he ejaculated.
+
+She nodded laughingly. She spoke, too; but what she said was not heard.
+All of the Happy Hexagons were talking by that time. The Rev. Mr. Jones,
+indeed, found himself besieged on all sides with eager questions and
+amazed comments.
+
+Under cover of the confusion, Mr. Hartley turned in puzzled wonder to
+Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"_Will_ you tell me what all this is about?" he begged.
+
+Mrs. Kennedy smiled.
+
+"Of course! I think perhaps it is all new to you. Last winter Miss Alice
+Jones, a Texas lady and the girls' Latin teacher, was taken ill. The
+girls were very attentive, and did lots of little things for her; but
+she grew worse and had to leave. Just before she went, the mother wrote
+a letter thanking the girls, and in the letter was a note signed
+'Quentina Jones.' Quentina was a younger sister, it seemed, and she,
+too, wished to thank the girls. Of course the girls were delighted, and
+immediately answered it, signing themselves 'The Happy Hexagons.' The
+teacher went away then, and the girls heard nothing more. But they have
+talked of Quentina Jones ever since."
+
+"But it's all so wonderful," cried Genevieve, her voice rising dominant
+at last. "Where is Miss Alice Jones, and how is she?"
+
+"She is better, thank you, though not very strong yet. She is teaching
+in Colorado."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad," cried Genevieve, "but I wish we could see her, too.
+Only think, girls, of Quentina Jones being right here, only eighteen
+miles away!"
+
+"One would think eighteen miles were a mere step!" laughed Tilly.
+
+"They are--in Texas," retorted Genevieve. Then, to the minister she
+said: "Now tell us, please, Mr. Jones, what we can do. We want to see
+Quentina right away, quick. We can't wait! Can she come over? _Can't_
+she? We'd love to have her!"
+
+The minister shook his head slowly.
+
+"I'm afraid not, Miss Genevieve--thank you just the same. I'd love to
+have her. It would do her such a world of good, poor little girl, to
+have one happy time with all you young people! But my wife has a lame
+foot just now, and Quentina simply cannot be spared. You know she has
+several brothers, so we have quite a family. But, I'll tell you
+what--you young ladies must all come to see us."
+
+"Oh, thank you! We'd love to--and we will, too." (Back in her ranch
+home, it was easy for Genevieve to slip into her old independent way of
+consulting no one's will but her own.) "When do you want us?"
+
+"But, my dear," interposed Mrs. Kennedy, hastily, "if Mrs. Jones is not
+well, surely we cannot ask her to take in six noisy girls as guests!"
+
+"Why, no--of course not," stammered Genevieve. The rest of the Happy
+Hexagons looked suddenly heartbroken. But the minister smiled
+reassuringly.
+
+"My wife isn't ill--only lame; and she loves young people. She'll be
+just as eager for you to come as Quentina will be--and Quentina just
+simply won't take 'no' for an answer, I'm sure. She talked for days of
+the Happy Hexagons, after your letter came. You must come, only--" he
+hesitated, "only I'm afraid you'll be a little cramped for room. A
+village parsonage isn't a ranch, you know. But, if you don't mind sort
+of--picnicking, and having to stand up in the corner to sleep--" he
+paused quizzically.
+
+"We adore standing up and sleeping in corners," declared Genevieve,
+promptly.
+
+"Then shall we call it Tuesday?" smiled Mr. Jones.
+
+"But how can they go?" questioned Mrs. Kennedy, in an anxious voice.
+
+"Why, they might ride it," began Mr. Hartley, slowly; "still, that would
+hardly do--even should the ponies come in time--such a long trip when
+they haven't ridden any here, yet. I'll tell you. We'll let Carlos drive
+them over in the carriage early Tuesday morning. I reckon the seven of
+them can stow themselves away, somehow--it holds six with room to spare
+on every seat. Then, Wednesday afternoon, he can drive them back.
+Meanwhile, he can stay himself in the town and get some supplies that
+I'm needing."
+
+"But seems to me that gives us a very short visit," demurred Mr. Jones,
+as he rose to take his leave.
+
+"Quite long enough--for the good wife," declared Mrs. Kennedy,
+decisively. And thus the matter was settled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+QUENTINA
+
+
+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," chuckled 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,
+saucily.
+
+Cordelia frowned, hesitated, then spoke.
+
+"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 ranch. 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,
+afterward, 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, Senorita! 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 wry face.
+
+"I'm afraid Carlos remembers that I was never on time, girls," she
+pouted. "But you don't know, Carlos, what a marvel of promptness I've
+become back East--specially 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
+herds of cattle they met, and the groups of cowboys they saw galloping
+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 outright.
+
+"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," shrugged 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 homely--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 Rev. 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 petunias.
+
+"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 literally to tumble out upon
+the steps several boys of "assorted sizes," as Tilly expressed it
+afterward. Then the girls saw her in the doorway--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," giggled 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 stammered; "and I'm
+so glad you're not fat and homely, too--er--that is," she corrected
+feverishly, "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 implored
+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 lame 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, fervently, "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 giggle 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 poetic license."
+
+Genevieve laughed frankly. Tilly giggled. Cordelia looked nervously from
+them to Quentina.
+
+"I'm sure, that--that's very pretty," she faltered.
+
+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 jingles, 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, most
+angelic expression, but Genevieve knew very well the naughtiness behind
+it. Quentina, however, accepted it as pure gold.
+
+"Yes, wasn't it?" she rejoined cheerfully. "I felt right bad,
+particularly as I was going to send you all a copy when it was
+published."
+
+"You can give us a manuscript copy, Quentina. We would love that,"
+interposed Genevieve, hurriedly. Behind Quentina's back she gave Tilly
+then a frowning shake of the head--though it must be confessed that her
+dancing eyes rather spoiled the effect of it.
+
+"Maybe it's because her name rhymes--'Clorinda Dorinda,'" suggested
+Tilly, interestedly; "maybe that's why she likes to write poetry so
+well."
+
+Mrs. Jones laughed.
+
+"That's what her father says. But Clorinda herself changed her own name
+about as soon as she could talk. She couldn't manage the hard 'Clorinda'
+very well, and I had a Mexican nurse girl, Quentina, whose name she much
+preferred. So very soon she was calling herself 'Quentina,' and
+insisting that every one else should do the same."
+
+"But it's so much prettier," declared the minister's daughter,
+fervently. "Of course 'Clorinda Dorinda' are some pretty, because they
+rhyme so, but I like 'Quentina' better. Besides, there are lots more
+pretty words to make that rhyme with--Florena, Dulcina, Rowena, and
+verbena, you know."
+
+"And 'you've seen her,'" suggested Tilly, gravely.
+
+Quentina frowned a moment in thought.
+
+"Y-yes," she admitted; "but I don't think that's a very pretty one."
+
+It was Genevieve this time who choked a giggle into a cough, and who, a
+moment later, turned very eagerly to welcome an interruption in the
+person of the Rev. Mr. Jones.
+
+Soon after this Quentina suggested a trip through the house.
+
+"You see I want to show you where you're going to sleep," she explained.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Jones told us that," observed Tilly, as the seven girls trooped
+up the narrow stairway. "He said we were to stand up in the corners."
+Tilly spoke with the utmost gravity.
+
+Quentina turned, wide-eyed.
+
+"Why, you couldn't! You'd never sleep a bit," she demurred concernedly.
+"Besides, it isn't necessary."
+
+All but Tilly and Genevieve tittered audibly. Tilly still looked the
+picture of innocence. Genevieve frowned at her sternly, then stepped
+forward and put her arm around Quentina's waist.
+
+"Tilly was only joking, Quentina," she explained. "When you know Tilly
+better you'll find she never by any chance talks sense--but always
+nonsense," she finished, looking at Tilly severely.
+
+Tilly wrinkled up her nose and pouted; but her eyes laughed.
+
+"There, here's my room," announced Quentina, a moment later. "We've put
+a couch in it, and if you don't mind my sleeping with you, three can be
+here. Then across the hall here is the twins' room, and two more can
+sleep in this; and Paul and Ned's room down there at the end of the hall
+will take the other two. There! You see we've got it fixed right well."
+
+"Oh, yes--well for us; but how about the boys?" cried Genevieve. "Where
+will they sleep?"
+
+Quentina's lips parted, but before the words were uttered, a new thought
+seemed to have come to her. With an odd little glance at Tilly, she
+drawled demurely:
+
+"Oh, they are going to sleep in the corners."
+
+They all laughed this time.
+
+"Well, now we've done the whole house, and we'll take the yard,"
+proposed Quentina, as, a little later, she led the way down-stairs and
+out of doors. "There! aren't my nasturtiums beautiful?" she exulted,
+with the air of a fond mother displaying her first-born. She was
+pointing to a bed of straggling, puny plants, beautifully free from
+weeds, and showing here and there a few brilliant blossoms.
+
+Tilly turned her back suddenly. Cordelia looked distressed. Bertha cried
+thoughtlessly:
+
+"Oh, but you ought to see Genevieve's, Quentina, if you want to see
+nasturtiums!"
+
+"Oh, but I have Carlos," cut in Genevieve, hurriedly, "and Carlos can
+make anything grow. What a pretty dark one this is," she finished,
+bending over one of the plants.
+
+Quentina's face clouded.
+
+"I don't suppose they are much, really," she admitted. "But I've worked
+so hard over them! Father says the earth isn't good at all. I was so
+pleased when that big red one came out! I made a poem on it right off:
+
+          "'O nasturtium, sweet nasturtium,
+            Did you blossom just for me?
+            Where, oh, where did you unearth 'em--
+            All those colors that I see?'
+
+That's the way it began. Wasn't I lucky to think of that 'unearth 'em?'
+Besides, it's really true, you know. They do unearth 'em, and 'twas such
+a nice rhyme for nasturtium. Now there's petunia; I think that's a
+perfectly beautiful sounding word, but I've never been able to find a
+single thing that rhymed with it. I do love flowers so," she added,
+after a moment; "but we've never had many. They always burn up, or dry
+up, or get eaten up, or just don't come up at all. Of course we've never
+had a really pretty place. Ministers like us don't, you know," she
+finished cheerfully.
+
+There was no reply to this. Not one of the Happy Hexagons could think of
+anything to say. For once even Tilly was at a loss for words. It was
+Quentina herself who broke the silence.
+
+"Now tell me all about the East. Let's go up on the gallery and sit
+down. I do so want to go East to school; but of course I can't."
+
+"Why not?" asked Bertha.
+
+"Oh, it costs too much," returned Quentina. "You know ministers don't
+have money for such things." Her voice was still impersonally cheerful.
+
+"How old are you?" asked Elsie, as they seated themselves on chairs and
+steps.
+
+"Sixteen last month."
+
+"Oh, I wish you could go," cried Genevieve. "Wouldn't it be just lovely
+if you could come to Sunbridge and go to school with us!"
+
+"Where is Sunbridge? I always thought of it as just 'East,' you know."
+
+"In New Hampshire."
+
+"Oh," said Quentina, with a sigh of disappointment. "I hoped it was in
+Massachusetts, near Boston, you know. I thought Alice said it was near
+Boston."
+
+"Well, we aren't so awfully far from Boston," bridled Tilly. "It only
+takes an hour and a half or less to go there. I go with mother every
+little while when I'm home."
+
+Quentina sprang to her feet.
+
+"Boston! Oh, girls, you don't know how I want to see Boston, and Paul
+Revere's grave, and the Common, and the old State House, and Bunker
+Hill, and that lovely North Church where they hung the lantern, you
+know.
+
+          'Listen, my children, and you shall hear
+           Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,'"
+
+she began to chant impressively. "Oh, don't you just love that poem?"
+
+"Who was Paul Revere?" asked Tilly, pleasantly.
+
+"Paul Revere!" exclaimed Quentina, plainly shocked. "Who was _Paul
+Revere_!"
+
+"Tilly!" scolded Genevieve, as soon as she could command her voice.
+"Quentina, that's only some of Tilly's nonsense. Tilly knows very well
+who Paul Revere was."
+
+"Yes, of course she does; and we all do," interposed Elsie Martin. "But
+I'll own right up, I don't know half as much about all those historical
+things and places as I ought to."
+
+"Neither do I," chimed in Bertha. "Just because they're right there
+handy, and we can go any time, we--"
+
+"We _don't_ go any time," laughed Alma Lane, finishing the sentence for
+her.
+
+"I know it," said Elsie. "We had a cousin with us for two weeks last
+summer, and she just doted on old relics and graveyards. She made us
+take her into Boston 'most every day, and she asked all sorts of
+questions which I couldn't answer."
+
+"Yes, I know; but excuse me, please," put in Tilly, flippantly. "I don't
+want any graveyards and relics in mine."
+
+"That's slang, Tilly," reproved Cordelia.
+
+"Is it?" murmured Tilly, serenely.
+
+"Besides, people come from miles and miles just to see those things that
+we neglect, right at our doors, almost."
+
+"But how can you neglect them?" remonstrated Quentina. "Why, if I ever
+go to Boston, I sha'n't sleep nor eat till I've seen Paul Revere's
+grave!"
+
+"Well, I shouldn't sleep nor eat if I did," shuddered Tilly.
+
+"You mean you've _never_ seen it?" gasped Quentina, unbelievingly.
+
+"Guilty!" Tilly held up her hand unblushingly.
+
+"Never you mind, Quentina," soothed Genevieve. "We are interested in
+those things, really."
+
+"Then you have seen it?"
+
+"Er--n-no, not that one," confessed Genevieve, coloring. "But I've seen
+heaps of other graves there," she assured her hopefully, as if graves
+were the only open door to Quentina's favor.
+
+"Oh, you've had such chances," envied Quentina. "Just think--Boston! You
+_said_ you were near Boston?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Less than two hours away?"
+
+"Why, yes," exclaimed Tilly, "I told you. We're less than an hour and a
+half away."
+
+"And are you a D. A. R., and Colonial Dames, and Mayflower Society
+members, and all that?"
+
+"Dear me! I don't know," laughed Genevieve. "Why?"
+
+"And do you read the _Atlantic Monthly_, and eat beans Saturday night,
+and fishballs Sunday morning?" still hurried on Quentina. "You don't any
+of you wear glasses, and I don't think you speak very low."
+
+"Anything else?" asked Tilly politely.
+
+"Oh, yes, lots of things," answered Quentina, "but I've forgotten most
+of them."
+
+"Quentina, what _are_ you talking about?" laughed Genevieve.
+
+Quentina smiled oddly, then she sighed.
+
+"It wasn't true, of course. I knew it couldn't be."
+
+"What wasn't true?"
+
+"Something I found in one of father's church papers about Rules for
+Living in New England. I cut it out. Wait a minute--it's here,
+somewhere!" And, to the girls' amazement, she dived into a pocket at the
+side of her dress, pulling out several clippings which seemed, mostly,
+to be verse. One was prose, and it was on this she pounced. "Here it is.
+Listen." And she read:
+
+"'Rules for Living in New England. You must be descended from the
+Puritans, and should belong to the Mayflower Society, or be a D. A. R.,
+a Colonial Dame, or an S. A. R. You must graduate from Harvard, or
+Radcliffe, and must disdain all other colleges. You must quote Emerson,
+read the _Atlantic Monthly_, and swear by the _Transcript_. You must
+wear glasses, speak in a low voice, eat beans on Saturday night, and
+fishballs on Sunday morning. Always you must carry with you a green bag,
+and you should be a professional man, or woman, preferably of the
+literary variety. You should live not farther away from Boston than two
+hours' ride, and of course you will be devoted to tombstones, relics,
+and antiques. You may tolerate Europe, but you must ignore the West. You
+must be slow of speech, dignified of conduct, and serene of temper. You
+must never be surprised, nor display undue emotion. Above all, you must
+be _cultured_.'
+
+"Now you see you haven't done all those things," she declared, as she
+finished the article.
+
+"I reckon there are a few omissions--specially on my part," laughed
+Genevieve.
+
+"But you are happy there?"
+
+"Indeed I am!"
+
+"How I do wish I could go," sighed Quentina. "I should love Boston, I
+know. Alice did--though she still liked Texas better."
+
+"Well, I know Boston would love you," chuckled Tilly, unexpectedly.
+"Girls, wouldn't she be a picnic in Sunbridge? She'd be more of a circus
+than you were, Genevieve!"
+
+"Thank you," bowed Genevieve, with mock stiffness.
+
+"Oh, we loved you right away--and we should Quentina, of course."
+
+"Thank you," bowed Quentina, in her turn, laughingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE OPENING OF A BARREL
+
+
+It was a merry afternoon and evening that the Happy Hexagons spent at
+Quentina's home, and it was still a merrier time that they had getting
+settled for the night. Even Tilly said at last:
+
+"Well, Quentina, it's lucky a lame foot doesn't have ears. I don't know
+what your mother will say to us!"
+
+"Only fancy if Miss Jane were here," shivered Genevieve.
+
+It was just as the family were finishing breakfast the next morning that
+there came a knock at the door, and a man rolled in a large barrel.
+
+"Oh, it's the missionary barrel--our barrel from the East!" cried
+Quentina. "I wonder now--what do you suppose there is in it?"
+
+"There isn't anything, I reckon, except old things," piped up Rob,
+shrilly.
+
+Mrs. Jones colored painfully.
+
+"Robert, my son!" she remonstrated, in evident distress.
+
+"Well, mother, you _know_ there isn't--most generally," defended
+Robert.
+
+"And if they _are_ new, they're the sort of things we couldn't ever
+use," added Ned.
+
+"Boys, boys, that will do," commanded the minister, quickly.
+
+The minister, with Paul's help, had the barrel nearly open by this time.
+
+"It isn't from Sunbridge, is it?" asked Genevieve.
+
+"No--though we get them from there sometimes; but this is from a little
+town in Vermont," replied Mrs. Jones. "We had a letter last week from
+the minister. He--he apologized a little; said that times had been hard,
+and that they'd had trouble to fill it. As if it wasn't hard enough for
+us to take it, without that!" she finished bitterly, with almost a sob.
+
+"Rita, my dear!" murmured her husband, in a low, distressed voice.
+
+Mrs. Jones dashed quick tears from her eyes.
+
+"I know; I don't mean to be ungrateful. But--times have been a little
+hard--with _us_!"
+
+Silent, and a little awed, the Happy Hexagons stood at one side.
+Genevieve, especially, looked out from troubled eyes. Very slowly
+Genevieve was waking up to the fact that not every one in the world had
+luxuries, or even what she would call ordinary comforts of living. Mrs.
+Jones, seeing her face, spoke hurriedly.
+
+"There, there, girls, please forget what I said! It was very kind of
+those good people to send the barrel--very kind; and I am sure we shall
+find in it just what we want."
+
+"I know what you hope will be there," cried Bob, "a new coat for Father,
+and a dress for you, and some underclothes for us boys. I heard you say
+so last night."
+
+"Yes; and Quentina wants a ribbon--not dirty ones," observed Rob.
+
+"Robert!" cried Quentina, very red of face. "You know I don't _expect_
+anything of the sort."
+
+The barrel was open now, and eagerly the family gathered around it. Even
+Mrs. Jones's chair was drawn forward so that she, too, might peep into
+it.
+
+First there was a great quantity of newspapers--the people had, indeed,
+found trouble to fill it, evidently. Next came a pincushion--faded pink
+satin, frilled with not over-clean white lace.
+
+"I can use the lace for a collar," cried Quentina, taking prompt
+possession of the cushion. "I'm right glad of this!"
+
+A picture came next in a tarnished gilt frame--evidently somebody's
+early attempts to paint nasturtiums in oil.
+
+"There's a rival for your posies out in the yard," murmured Tilly in
+Quentina's ear.
+
+A pair of skates was pulled out next, then three dolls, one minus an
+arm.
+
+"These might be good--on ice," remarked Paul, who had picked up the
+skates.
+
+"Do you ever have any ice to skate on, here?" asked Bertha.
+
+"Not in the part of Texas I've ever been in," he sighed.
+
+Mrs. Jones was ruefully smoothing the one-armed doll's flimsy dress.
+
+"I--I _told_ them there were no little girls in the family," she said,
+her worried eyes seeking her husband's face. "It--it's all right, of
+course; only--only these dolls did take space."
+
+Some magazines came next, and a few old books, upon which the boys fell
+greedily--though the books they soon threw to one side as if they were
+of little interest.
+
+Undergarments appeared then, plainly much worn and patched. To Genevieve
+they looked quite impossible. She almost cried when she saw how eagerly
+Mrs. Jones gathered the motley pile into her arms and began to sort them
+out with little exclamations of satisfaction.
+
+Next in the barrel were found an ink-stained apron, a bath-robe, nearly
+new--which plainly owed its presence to its hideous colors--two or three
+tin dishes (not new), a harmonica, a box containing a straw hat trimmed
+with drooping blue bows, several fans, a box of dominoes, a pocket-knife
+with a broken blade, several pairs of new hose, marked plainly
+"seconds," some sheets and pillow-cases (half-worn, but hailed with joy
+by Mrs. Jones), a kimono, an assortment of men's half-worn
+shoes--pounced upon at once by Paul and his father, and not abandoned
+until it was found that only two were mates, and only one of these good
+for much wear.
+
+It was at this point that there came a muffled shout from Ned, whose
+head was far down in the barrel.
+
+"Here's a package--a big one--and it's marked 'dress for Mrs. Jones.'
+Mother, you did get it, after all!" he cried, tumbling the package into
+his mother's lap.
+
+Tremblingly half a dozen pairs of hands attempted to untie the strings
+and to unwrap the coverings; then, across Mrs. Jones's lap there lay a
+tawdry dress of pale-blue silk, spotted and soiled. Pinned to it was a
+note in a scrawling feminine hand: "This will wash and make over nicely,
+I think, if you can't wear it just as it is."
+
+"We have so many chances to wear light-blue silk, too," was all that
+Mrs. Jones said.
+
+In the bottom of the barrel were a few new towels, very coarse, and some
+tablecloths and small, fringed napkins, also very coarse.
+
+"Well, I'm sure, these are handy," stammered the minister, who had not
+found his coat.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered his wife, wearily; "only--well, it so happens that
+every box for the last five years has held tea-napkins--and I don't give
+many teas, you know, dear."
+
+Genevieve choked back a sob.
+
+"I--I never saw such a--a horrid thing in all my life, as that barrel
+was," she stormed hotly. "I don't see what folks were thinking of--to
+send such things!"
+
+"They weren't thinking, my dear, and that's just what the trouble was,"
+answered Mrs. Jones, gently. "They didn't think, nor understand.
+Besides, there are very many nice things here that we can use
+beautifully. There always are, in every box, only--of course, some
+things _aren't_ so useful."
+
+"I should say not!" snapped Genevieve.
+
+"Well, I didn't suppose anything could make me glad because Aunt Kate
+makes over the girls' things for me," spoke up Elsie Martin; "but
+something has now. She can't send them in any missionary boxes, anyhow!"
+
+Mrs. Jones laughed, though she looked still more disturbed.
+
+"But, girls, dear girls, please don't say such things," she
+expostulated. "We are very, very grateful--indeed we are; and it is
+right kind of them to remember us far-away missionaries with boxes and
+barrels!"
+
+"'Missionary'!" sputtered Genevieve. "'Missionary'! I should think
+somebody had better be missionary to them, and teach them what to send.
+Dolls and skates, indeed!"
+
+"But, my dear," smiled Mrs. Jones, "those might have been just the
+things--in some places; and besides, some of the boxes are--are better
+than this. Indeed they are!"
+
+It was at this point that Cordelia came forward hurriedly, and touched
+Mrs. Jones's arm. Her face was a little white and strained looking.
+
+"Mrs. Jones," she faltered, "I think I ought to tell you. I'm a
+minister's niece, and I've seen lots of missionary boxes packed. I know
+just how they do it, too. I know just how thoughtless they--I mean
+we--are; and I just wanted to say that I'm very, very sure the next time
+we pack a box for any missionary, we'll--we'll see that our old shoes
+are mates, and that we don't send dolls to boys!"
+
+There was a shout of gleeful appreciation from the boys, but there were
+only troubled sighs and frowns on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Jones.
+
+"Dear me! I--I wish the barrel hadn't come when you were here,"
+regretted the minister's wife; "for indeed the things are all very, very
+nice. Indeed they are!"
+
+"And now let's go out to the flowers," proposed Quentina. "Maybe a new
+nasturtium has blossomed."
+
+All but one of the girls had left the room when Mr. Jones felt a timid
+touch on his arm.
+
+"Mr. Jones, could I speak to you--just a minute, please?" asked a low
+voice. "I'm Cordelia Wilson, you know."
+
+"Why, certainly, Miss Cordelia! What can I do for you?" he answered
+genially, leading the way to the tiny study off the sitting room.
+
+"Well, I'm not sure you can do anything," replied Cordelia, with
+hesitating truthfulness. "But I wanted to ask: _do_ you know anybody in
+Texas by the name of Mr. John Sanborn, or Mrs. Lizzie Higgins, or Mr.
+Lester Goodwin, or Mr. James Hunt?"
+
+The minister looked a little surprised.
+
+"N-no, I can't say that I do," he said, slowly.
+
+Cordelia's countenance fell.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry! You see I thought--being a minister out here,
+so,--you might know them."
+
+"But--Texas is quite a large state," he reminded her, with a smile.
+
+"I know," sighed the girl. "I've found that out."
+
+"Are these people friends of yours?"
+
+"Oh, no; they're just a son, and a brother, and a cousin, and a runaway
+daughter that I'm looking up for Sunbridge people."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" The minister hoped his voice was politely steady.
+
+"Yes, sir. Of course I haven't had a chance to ask many people,
+yet--only one or two of the cowboys. One of them was named 'John,' but
+he wasn't my John--I mean, he wasn't the right John," corrected
+Cordelia with a pink blush.
+
+The minister coughed a little spasmodically behind his hand. As he did
+not speak Cordelia went on, her eyes a little wistful.
+
+"Would you be willing, please, to take those names down on paper, Mr.
+Jones?"
+
+"Why, certainly, Miss Cordelia," agreed the man, reaching for his
+notebook.
+
+"You see you _are_ a minister, and you do meet people, so you might find
+them. I'd be so glad if you could, or if I could. They're all needed
+very much--indeed they are. You see, Hermit Joe is so lonesome for his
+son, and Mrs. Snow so worried about Lizzie, and Mrs. Granger has lost
+her husband, so she hasn't anybody left but her cousin, now, and Miss
+Sally is so very poor and needs her brother so much."
+
+"Of course, of course," murmured the minister.
+
+A few moments later his notebook bore this entry, which had been made
+under Cordelia's careful direction:
+
+          "Wanted:--Information about--
+
+          John Sanborn          whose father is lonesome,
+          Mrs. Lizzie Higgins     "   mother "  worried,
+          Lester Goodwin          "   cousin "  a widow,
+          and
+          James Hunt              "   sister "  very poor."
+
+"If I find any of these people I'll convey all your messages to the best
+of my ability," promised the minister.
+
+"Thank you. Then I'll go out now to the nasturtiums," sighed the girl,
+contentedly.
+
+All too soon the visit came to a close, and all too soon Carlos appeared
+with the carriage. Then came hurried good-byes, full of laughter, tears,
+and promises, with all the Jones family except the mother, grouped upon
+the steps--and the mother's chair was close to the window.
+
+          "Oh, Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons,
+           Come again another day.
+           Oh, don't forget me, Happy Hexagons,
+           When you are so far away!"
+
+chanted Quentina, waving one handkerchief, and wiping her eyes with
+another.
+
+"Girls, quick!--give her the Texas yell," cried Genevieve in a low
+voice; "only say 'Quentina' at the end instead of my name. Now,
+remember--'Quentina'!" she finished excitedly.
+
+"Good!" exulted Tilly. "Of course we will! Now count, Cordelia."
+
+A moment later, Quentina's amazed, delighted ears heard:
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           Quentina!"
+
+Then, amidst a chorus of shouts and laughter, the carriage drove away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, young ladies," demanded Mr. Hartley, when the tired but happy
+Hexagon Club trooped up the front steps of the ranch house late that
+afternoon, "how about it? What did you think of the fair Quentina?"
+
+"Think of her! O Quentina, you should 'seen her!" sang Tilly, in so
+perfect an imitation of the minister's daughter that the girls broke
+into peals of laughter.
+
+"She's lovely, Father--honestly, she is," declared Genevieve, as soon as
+she could speak.
+
+"And so pretty!" added Cordelia, "and has such a sweet, slow way of
+speaking!"
+
+"Such lovely dark eyes!"--this from Alma.
+
+"And such glorious hair--all golden and kinky!" breathed Bertha.
+
+"And she looks just as pretty in her high-necked apron as she does in
+her white dress," cried Elsie.
+
+"Well, well, upon my soul! What is this young lady--a paragon?" laughed
+Mr. Hartley, raising his eyebrows.
+
+"I'll tell you just what she is, sir," vouchsafed Tilly, confidentially.
+"She _is_ a rhyming dictionary, Mr. Hartley, just as I said in the first
+place; and I'd be willing to guarantee any time that she'd find a rhyme
+for any word in this or any other language within two seconds after the
+gun is fired. If you don't believe it, you should hear her 'unearth 'em'
+on the 'nasturtium.'"
+
+"Tilly, Tilly!" choked Genevieve, convulsively.
+
+"Oh, but she _said_ she couldn't find one for petunia," broke in the
+exact Cordelia.
+
+"You don't mean she actually writes--_poetry_!" ejaculated Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"Writes it!--my dear lady!" (Tilly had assumed her most superior air.)
+"If that were all! But she talks it, day in and day out. Everything is a
+poem, from a letter to a scraggly nasturtium. She carries an unfailing
+supply of her own verses in her head, and of other people's in her
+pocket. If you ask for the butter at the table, you're never sure she
+won't strike an attitude, and chant:
+
+          "'Butter, Butter, Oh, good-by!
+            Better butter ne'er did--er--fly.'"
+
+"I think I should like to see this young person," observed Mrs. Kennedy,
+when the laughter at Tilly's sally had subsided.
+
+"Maybe you will sometime. She wants to go East," rejoined Tilly.
+
+"She does? What for?"
+
+"Principally to see Paul Revere's grave, I believe; incidentally to go
+to school."
+
+"Oh, I wish she could come East to school!" exclaimed Genevieve.
+
+"So do I--if she'd come to Sunbridge," laughed Tilly. "She takes things
+even more literally than Cordelia does. Sometime I'm going to tell her
+the moon _is_ made of green cheese, and ask her if she doesn't want a
+piece. Ten to one if she won't answer that she doesn't care for cheese,
+thank you. Oh, I wouldn't ask to go to _another_ show for a whole year
+if she should come to Sunbridge!"
+
+"Tilly! I don't think you ought to talk like that," remonstrated
+Cordelia. "One would think that Quentina was a--a vaudeville show."
+
+Tilly considered this gravely.
+
+"Why, Cordelia, do you know?--I believe that is _just_ what she is.
+Thank you so much for thinking of it."
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, horrified.
+
+Genevieve frowned.
+
+"Honestly, Tilly, I don't think you are quite fair," she demurred.
+"Quentina isn't one bit of a show. She's sweet and dear and lovely, with
+just some funny ways to make her specially interesting."
+
+"All right; we'll let it go at that, then," retorted Tilly, merrily.
+"She's just specially interesting."
+
+"She must be," smiled Mrs. Kennedy. "In fact, I should very much like to
+see her, and--I don't believe Tilly means her comments to be quite so
+unkind as perhaps they sound," she finished with a gentle emphasis that
+was not lost on her young audience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE PRAIRIE--AND MOONLIGHT
+
+
+One by one the long, happy July days slipped away. There was no lack of
+amusement, no time that hung heavy--there was so much to be seen, so
+much to be done!
+
+Very soon after the trip to Quentina's home, Mr. Tim produced from
+somewhere five stout little ponies, warranted to be broken to
+"skirts"--which Genevieve had said would be absolutely necessary, as the
+girls would never consent to ride astride.
+
+It was a nervous morning, however, for five of the Happy Hexagons when
+the horses were led up to the door. Cordelia was frankly white-faced and
+trembling. Even Tilly looked a little doubtful, as she said, trying to
+speak with her usual lightness:
+
+"Oh, we _know_, of course, Genevieve, that these little beasts won't
+teeter up and down like Reddy's broncho; and we hope they'll bear in
+mind that Westerners ought to be politely gentle with Easterners, who
+aren't brought up to ride jumping jacks. But still, we can't help
+wondering."
+
+"Genevieve, I--I really think I won't ride at all to-day," stammered
+Cordelia, faintly; "that is, if you don't mind."
+
+"But I do mind," rejoined Genevieve, looking much distressed. "Of
+course, girls, I wouldn't urge you against your will, for the world; but
+we can't have half the fun here unless you ride, for we go everywhere,
+'most, in the saddle. And, honestly, Mr. Tim says these horses are
+regular cows. Father told him he must get steady ones. Won't you
+please--try it? It will break my heart, if you don't. You see I've said
+so much to the boys, since I came, about your riding! They were so
+surprised to think you could ride, and I was so proud to say you did!"
+
+"You--you were?" stammered Cordelia.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, young ladies," called Mr. Tim, at that moment, "here's the
+steadiest little string of horses going! Who'll have the first pick?"
+
+"I will," cried Cordelia, wetting her dry lips, and speaking with a
+stern determination that yet did not quite hide the shake in her voice.
+"That is--I don't care about my pick, but I'm going to ride--right
+away--quick!" she finished, determined that at least Genevieve should
+not be ashamed--of her.
+
+After all, it was only the first five minutes that were hard. The little
+horses were politeness itself, and seemed fully to realize the
+responsibilities of their position. The girls, determined not to shame
+Genevieve, acquitted themselves with a grace and ease that brought forth
+an appreciative cheer from the boys as the young people rode away.
+
+"Now I feel as if I were in Texas," exulted Tilly, drawing in a full
+breath of the fresh, early morning air.
+
+"I'm so glad--so glad we're all in Texas," cried Genevieve, looking
+about her with shining eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+According to Tilly, there was always "something doing" at the ranch
+house. The boys--much to their own surprise, it must be confessed--had
+adopted "the whole bunch" (as Long John called the young people), and
+were never too busy or too tired to display their skill as ropers or
+riders. Always there was the fascinating morning start to work to watch,
+and frequently there was in the afternoon some wild little broncho that
+needed to be broken to the saddle, or to be trained to stop, wheel
+instantly, stand motionless, or to start at top speed, according to his
+master's wishes; all of which was a never-ending source of delight to
+unaccustomed Eastern eyes.
+
+For pleasant days there were, too, rides, drives to Bolo, picnic
+luncheons, and frolics of every sort. For rainy days there were games
+and music in the living room, to say nothing of letters from home to be
+read and answered. Most of the twilights--if fair--were spent by
+everybody on the front gallery watching the golden ball in the west set
+the whole prairie, as well as the sky itself, on fire. In the early
+afternoon, of course, there was the inevitable siesta--Tilly's abhorred
+"naps."
+
+There were callers at the ranch house, too. Sometimes a cowboy from a
+neighboring ranch came to look after a lost pony, or to see if his
+cattle had strayed off the range through a broken fence. Sometimes a
+hunter or trapper would stop for a chat on his way to or from Bolo. Once
+Susie Billings in her khaki suit and cowboy hat came to spend the day;
+and once, on Sunday, Mr. Jones came to hold service again. Much to the
+girls' disappointment, Quentina did not come with him. The mother's foot
+was better, Mr. Jones said, but the twins had come down with the
+whooping cough, and poor Quentina could not be spared to leave home.
+
+Sometimes a score of men and teams and cowboys with their strings of
+horses would pass on their way to a round-up; and once two huge prairie
+schooners "docked in the yard," as Tilly termed it; and their weary
+owners, at Mr. Hartley's invitation, stopped for a night's rest.
+
+That was, indeed, a time of great excitement for the Happy Hexagons, for
+under Genevieve's fearless leadership they promptly made friends with
+the sallow-faced women and the forlorn children, and soon were shown
+the mysteries of the inside of the wagon-homes.
+
+"Mercy! it looks just like play housekeeping; doesn't it?" gurgled
+Tilly.
+
+"But it isn't play at all, my dear," replied one of the women, a little
+sadly. "Seems now like as if I ever had a home again what stayed put,
+that I'd be happy, no matter where 'twas. Ain't that the way you feel,
+Mis' Higgins?"
+
+"Yes," nodded the other woman, dully, from her perch on the driver's
+seat. "But I reckon my man ain't never goin' ter quit wheelin', now."
+
+Even Genevieve seemed scarcely to know what to reply to this; but a few
+minutes later she had succeeded in gaining the confidence of the several
+children hanging about their mothers' skirts. Laughingly, then, the
+young people trooped away together to look at the flowers--all but
+Cordelia Wilson. Cordelia remained behind with the two women.
+
+"Please--I beg your pardon--but did you say your name was 'Mrs.
+Higgins'?" she asked eagerly, turning to the woman on the driver's seat.
+
+"Why, no--I didn't, Miss. But that's my name."
+
+"Yes, I know; 'twas the other lady who called you that, of course; but
+it doesn't matter, so long as I know 'tis that."
+
+"Oh, don't it?" murmured the woman, a little curiously.
+
+"No; and--you came from New Hampshire, once, didn't you?"
+
+An odd look crossed the woman's face.
+
+"Well, I ain't sayin' that."
+
+"But you did--please say that you did," begged Cordelia. "You see, I'm
+so anxious to find you!"
+
+A look that was almost terror came to the woman's eyes now.
+
+"I don't know nothin' what you're talkin' about, and I don't want to
+know, neither," she finished coldly, turning squarely around in her
+seat.
+
+Cordelia hesitated; then she stammered:
+
+"If--if you think it's because your mother will scold you, I can assure
+you that she will not. She is very anxious to hear from you--that's all.
+She's been so worried! She wants to know if you're doing well, and all
+that."
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?" demanded the woman, turning sharply back
+to Cordelia.
+
+"Your--mother."
+
+"My mother is--dead, Miss."
+
+"Oh-h!" gasped Cordelia. "You mean you _aren't_ Mrs. Lizzie Higgins--she
+that was Lizzie Snow of Sunbridge, New Hampshire, who eloped with Mr.
+Higgins and ran away to Texas years ago?"
+
+The woman laughed. Her face cleared. Whatever it was that she had
+feared--she evidently feared it no longer.
+
+"No, Miss. My name isn't 'Lizzie,' and it wa'n't 'Snow,' and I never
+heard of Sunbridge, New Hampshire."
+
+"O dear!" quavered Cordelia. "Mrs. Snow will be so sorry--that is, of
+course she'll be glad, too; for you aren't--" With a little gasp of
+dismay Cordelia pulled herself up before the words were uttered, but not
+before their meaning was quite clear to the woman.
+
+"Oh, yes, she'll be glad, too, no doubt," she cut in bitterly; "because
+I'm not exactly what a woman would want for a lost daughter, now, am I?"
+
+Cordelia blushed painfully.
+
+"Oh, please, please don't talk like that! I am sure Mrs. Snow would be
+glad to find any one for a daughter--she wants her so! And she's
+her--mother, you know."
+
+The woman's face softened.
+
+"All right," she smiled, a little bitterly. "If I find her I'll send her
+to you."
+
+"Oh, will you? Thank you so much," cried Cordelia. "And there are some
+others, too, that I'm hunting for. Maybe you can find them--traveling
+around so much as you do. If you've got a little piece of paper and a
+pencil, I'll just write them down, please."
+
+Thus it happened that when the prairie schooners "sailed away" (again
+to quote Tilly), one of them carried a bit of paper on which had been
+written full instructions how to proceed should the wife of its owner
+ever run across John Sanborn, Lizzie Higgins, Lester Goodwin, or James
+Hunt.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was soon after this that the Happy Hexagons and Mr. Tim, returning on
+horseback from a long day on the range, met with a delay that would
+prevent their reaching the ranch house until some time after dark.
+
+"Oh, goody! I don't care a bit," chuckled Genevieve, when she realized
+the facts of the case. "There is a perfectly glorious moon, and now you
+can see the prairie by moonlight. And you never really have seen the
+prairie until you do see it by moonlight, you know!"
+
+"But we have seen it by moonlight--right from your steps," cried Tilly.
+
+"Oh, but not the same as it will be out here--away from the ranch
+house," cried Genevieve. "You just wait! You'll see."
+
+And they did wait. And they did see.
+
+It did seem, indeed, that they never before had really seen the prairie;
+they all agreed to that, as they gazed in awed delight at the vast,
+silvery wonder all about them, some time later.
+
+"Why, it looks more than ever like the ocean," cried Bertha.
+
+"That grass over there actually ripples like water in the moonlight,"
+declared Elsie.
+
+"I didn't suppose anything could be so beautiful," breathed Cordelia.
+"But, Genevieve, won't Mrs. Kennedy be dreadfully worried, at our being
+so late?"
+
+Genevieve gave a sigh.
+
+"Yes, I'm afraid so," she admitted. "Still, she has Father to comfort
+her, and he'll remind her that Mr. Tim is with us, and that delays are
+always happening on a day's run like ours."
+
+"I wish she could see this beautiful sight herself," cried Alma. "She
+wouldn't blame us, then, for going wild over it and not minding if we
+are a little hungry."
+
+Tilly, for once, was silent.
+
+"Well?" questioned Genevieve, after a time, riding up to her side.
+
+"I don't know any one--only Quentina--who could do justice to it,"
+breathed Tilly. And, to Genevieve's amazement, the moonlight showed a
+tear on Tilly's cheek.
+
+There was a long minute of silence. The moon was very bright, yet the
+many swift-flying clouds brought moments of soft darkness, and cast
+weird shadows across the far-reaching prairie.
+
+"I think I smell a storm coming--sometime," sniffed Mr. Tim, his face to
+the wind.
+
+"Wouldn't it be lovely to have it come while we were out here," gurgled
+Tilly.
+
+"Hardly!" rejoined Mr. Tim with emphasis. "I reckon you needn't worry
+about that storm for some hours yet. I'll have you all safely corralled
+long before it breaks--never fear."
+
+"I wasn't fearing. I was hoping," retorted Tilly in a voice that brought
+a chuckle to the man's lips.
+
+A moment later Mr. Tim stopped his horse and pointed to the right.
+
+"Do you see that black shadow over there?" he asked Bertha Brown, who
+was nearest him.
+
+"Yes. From a cloud, isn't it?" Bertha, too, stopped to look.
+
+"I think not. It's a bunch of cattle, I reckon. I think I make out the
+guards riding round them."
+
+"What is it, Mr. Tim?" Genevieve and the other girls had caught up with
+them now.
+
+"Cattle--over there. See?" explained Mr. Tim, briefly.
+
+At that moment the moon came out unusually clear.
+
+"I can see two men on horseback, passing each other," cried Bertha.
+
+Mr. Tim nodded.
+
+"Yes--the guard. They ride around the bunch in opposite ways, you know."
+
+"Let's go nearer! I want to see," proposed Tilly, trying to quiet the
+restless movements of her pony.
+
+[Illustration: "'FOLLOW ME--QUICK!' HE ORDERED"]
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"I reckon not, Miss Tilly. A stampede ain't what I'm looking for to
+amuse you all to-night."
+
+"What's a stampede?" asked Tilly.
+
+"Mr. Tim, look--quick!" Genevieve's voice was urgent, a little
+frightened. But the man had not needed that. With a sharp word behind
+his teeth, he spurred his horse.
+
+"Follow me--quick!" he ordered. And with a frightened cry they obeyed.
+
+Genevieve obeyed, too--but she looked back over her shoulder.
+
+The moon was very bright now. The black shadow to the right had become a
+wedge-shaped, compact, seething mass, sweeping rapidly toward them.
+There was a rushing swish in the air, and the sound of hoarse shouts. A
+few moments later the maddened beasts swept across their path, well to
+the rear.
+
+"I'll answer your question, now, Miss Tilly," said Mr. Tim, as they
+reined in their horses and looked backward at the shadowy mass. "That
+was a stampede."
+
+"But what will they do with them?" chattered Cordelia, with white lips.
+"How can they ever stop them?"
+
+"Oh, they'll head them off--get them to running in a circle, probably,
+till they can quiet them and make them lie down again."
+
+"And will they be all right--then?" shivered Elsie.
+
+"Hm-m; yes," nodded Mr. Tim, "--till the next thing sets them going.
+Then they'll be again on their feet, every last one of them--heads and
+tails erect. Oh, they're a pretty sight then--they are!"
+
+"They must be," remarked Tilly. "Still--well, I sha'n't ask you again
+what a stampede is--not to-night."
+
+Mr. Tim laughed.
+
+"Well, Miss Tilly, 'tain't likely I could show you one if you did. I
+don't always keep 'em so handy! And now I reckon we'd better hit the
+trail for the Six Star, and be right lively about it, too," he added,
+"or we'll be having Mis' Kennedy out here herself on a broncho after
+ye!"
+
+Half an hour later a white-faced, teary-eyed little woman at the Six
+Star Ranch was trying to get her joyful arms around six girls at once.
+
+It was the next morning, and just before Mr. Tim's predicted storm
+broke, that the girls found the injured man almost hidden in the tall
+grass near the ranch house. They had gone out for a short ride, but had
+kept near shelter owing to the threatening sky. Tilly saw the man first.
+
+"Genevieve, there's a man down there," she cried softly. "He's hurt, I
+think."
+
+Genevieve was off her horse at once. The man was found to be breathing,
+but apparently unconscious. He lay twisted in a little huddled heap,
+with one of his legs bent under him. He groaned faintly when Genevieve
+spoke to him.
+
+Genevieve was a little white when she straightened up.
+
+"I think we'll have to get a wagon, or something, and two of the boys,"
+she said. "I'll ride back to the house if some of you girls will stay
+here."
+
+"We'll all stay," promised Cordelia; "only be quick," she added,
+slipping from her pony's back, and giving the reins to Bertha. "Maybe if
+I could hold his poor head he'd be more comfortable."
+
+Cautiously she sat down on the ground and lifted the man's head to her
+lap. He groaned again faintly, and opened his eyes. They were large and
+dark. For a moment there was only pain in their depths; then, gradually,
+there came a look of profound amazement.
+
+"Where am I?" he asked feebly.
+
+"Sh! Don't talk. You are on the prairie. You must have got hurt, some
+way."
+
+He tried to move, and groaned again.
+
+"Please be still," begged Cordelia. "You'll make things worse. We've
+sent for help, and they'll be here right away."
+
+The man closed his eyes now. He did not speak again.
+
+It seemed a long time, but it was really a very short one, before
+Genevieve came with Carlos and Pedro and one of the ranch wagons. The
+man groaned again, and grew frightfully white when they lifted him
+carefully into the wagon. Then he fainted. He was still unconscious when
+they reached the ranch house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A MAN AND A MYSTERY
+
+
+August came. The first few days of the month were particularly busy ones
+as some of the boys were off to a round-up on the fifth, and Mr. Hartley
+was going with them for a week. To the girls the big four-horse wagon
+for the food and bedding--the "wheeled house" that was to be home for
+the boys--was always an object of great interest. Then there was the
+excitement of the start on the day itself, which this time was made
+particularly momentous by the going of Mr. Hartley.
+
+The ranch house seemed very lonely without its genial, generous-hearted
+owner, and everybody was glad that he had promised to come back in a
+week. Meanwhile, of course, there was "the man."
+
+The man was he who had been found by the girls in the prairie grass. He
+was still almost as much of a mystery as ever. Mr. Hartley had insisted
+upon his staying--and, indeed (though no bones were broken), he was
+quite too badly injured to be moved for a time. He was able now to sit
+in the big comfortable chairs on the back gallery; and he spent hours
+there every day, sometimes reading, more often sitting motionless, with
+his dark eyes closed, and his hands resting on his crutches by his side.
+
+He had not seemed to care to talk of himself. He had merely said that
+his horse had thrown him, and that he had lain in the grass for some
+time before he was found. He was quiet, had good manners, and used good
+language. He said that his name was John Edwards. He seemed deeply
+grateful for all kindness shown him, but was plainly anxious to be well
+enough to be on his way again. Mr. Hartley, however, had won his promise
+to remain till he himself returned from the round-up.
+
+All the young people did their best to make the injured man's time pass
+as pleasantly as possible; and very often one or another of them might
+be found reading to him, or playing a game of checkers or chess with
+him.
+
+It was on such an occasion that Cordelia Wilson, at the conclusion of a
+game of checkers, found the courage to say something that had long been
+on her mind.
+
+"Mr. Edwards, do--do you know Texas very well?"
+
+The man smiled a little.
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia, Texas is rather large, you know."
+
+Cordelia sighed almost impatiently.
+
+"Dear me! I--I wish every one wouldn't always say that," she lamented.
+"It's so discouraging!"
+
+"Dis--couraging?"
+
+"Yes--when you're trying to find some one."
+
+"Oh! And are you trying to find some one?"
+
+"Yes, sir; four some ones."
+
+"Well, I should think that might be difficult--in Texas, unless you know
+where they are," smiled the man.
+
+"I don't; and that's what's the matter," sighed Cordelia. "That's why I
+was going to ask you, to see if you didn't know, perhaps."
+
+"Ask _me_?"
+
+"Yes. That is, if you had been around any--in Texas. You see I ask
+everybody, almost. I have to," she apologized a little wistfully. "And
+even then it looks as if I should have to go back to Sunbridge without
+finding one of them. And I'd so hate to do that!"
+
+The man started visibly.
+
+"Go back--where?"
+
+"To Sunbridge."
+
+"Sunbridge--?"
+
+"Sunbridge, New Hampshire; home, you know."
+
+An odd expression crossed the man's face.
+
+"No--I didn't know," he said, after a moment.
+
+"Why, didn't any of us ever tell you we were from the East?" cried
+Cordelia.
+
+"Oh, yes, lots of times. But you never happened to mention the town
+before, I think."
+
+"Why, how funny!" murmured Cordelia.
+
+The man did not speak. He seemed to have fallen into a reverie. Cordelia
+stirred restlessly in her seat.
+
+"Did you say you would help me?" she asked at last, timidly.
+
+"Help you?" The man seemed to have forgotten what she had been speaking
+of.
+
+"Help me to find them, you know--those people I'm looking for."
+
+"Why, of course," laughed the man, easily. "Who are--" He stopped
+abruptly. For the second time an odd expression crossed his face. "Are
+they--Sunbridge people?" he asked, stooping to pick up a dried leaf from
+the gallery floor.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Edwards. There are four of them--three men and one woman. They
+are John Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt, and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins.
+Maybe you know some of them. Do you?"
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia,"--the man stopped a minute, as he reached for a
+leaf still farther away--"is that quite to be expected?" he asked then,
+lightly.
+
+"No, I suppose not," she sighed; "for, of course, Texas _is_ big. But if
+you would please just put their names down on paper same as the others
+have, that would help a great deal."
+
+"Why, certainly," agreed the man, reaching into his pocket and bringing
+out a little notebook not unlike the minister's. "Now suppose you--you
+give me those names again, Miss Cordelia."
+
+"John Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt, and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins. And
+I am Cordelia Wilson, you know. Just 'Sunbridge, New Hampshire,' would
+reach me--if you found any of them."
+
+"I'll remember--if I find any of them," murmured the man, as he wrote
+the last name.
+
+"And thank you so much!" beamed Cordelia.
+
+There was a moment's silence. The man was playing with his pencil.
+
+"Did you say you were _asked_ to find these people?" he inquired at
+last, examining the lead of his pencil intently.
+
+"Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"Indeed! And may I inquire who asked you?"
+
+"Why, of course! The people who belong to them--who are so anxious for
+them to come back, you know."
+
+"Oh, then they want them?" The man was still examining the point of his
+pencil.
+
+"Indeed they do, Mr. Edwards," cried Cordelia, glad to find her new
+audience so interested. "Mrs. Lizzie Higgins eloped years ago, and her
+mother, Mrs. Snow, is terribly worried. She's never heard a word from
+her. Mrs. Granger is a widow, and very poor. Her husband died last year.
+She hasn't any one left but her cousin, Lester Goodwin, now, and she so
+wishes she could find him. Lester's had some money left him, but if he
+isn't found this year, it'll go to some one else."
+
+"Oh!" The man gave a short little laugh that sounded not quite pleasant,
+as he lifted his head suddenly. "I begin to see. Mrs. Granger thinks if
+she had Lester, and Lester had the money, why she'd get the money, too,
+eh?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir--not exactly," objected Cordelia. "You see, if he _isn't_
+found the money goes to _her_, so she thinks she ought to make a special
+effort to find him. She says she wouldn't sleep a wink if she took all
+that money _without_ trying to find him; so she asked me. Of course the
+lawyers are hunting, anyway."
+
+"Oh-h!" said the man again; but this time he did not laugh. "Hm-m;
+well--are there any fortunes left the other two?" he asked, after a
+moment's silence. He had gone back to his pencil point.
+
+"Oh, no, sir," laughed Cordelia, a little ruefully. "I'm afraid they
+won't think so. _They're_ wanted to _help_ folks."
+
+"To help folks!"
+
+"Yes, sir. You see John Sanborn's father is very poor, and he lives all
+alone in a little bit of a house in the woods. He's called 'Hermit
+Joe.'"
+
+"Yes--go on," bade the man, as Cordelia stopped for breath. The man's
+voice was husky--perhaps because he had stooped to pick up another dried
+leaf.
+
+"There isn't much more about him, only he's terribly lonesome and wants
+his boy, he says. You see, the boy ran away years and years ago. I don't
+think that was very nice of him. Do you?"
+
+There was no answer. The man sat now with his hand over his eyes.
+Cordelia wondered if perhaps she had tired him.
+
+"And that's all," she said hurriedly; "only Sally Hunt's brother, James.
+If he isn't found she'll have to go to the Poor Farm, I'm afraid."
+
+"What?"
+
+Cordelia started nervously. The man had turned upon her so sharply that
+his crutches fell to the floor with a crash.
+
+"Oh, sir, I beg your pardon," she apologized, springing to her feet.
+"I'm so afraid you were asleep, and I startled you. I--I will go now.
+And--and thank you ever so much for writing down those names!"
+
+The man shook his head decidedly.
+
+"Don't go," he begged. "You have not tired me, and I like to hear you
+talk. Now sit down, please, and tell me all about these people--this
+James Hunt's sister, and all the rest."
+
+"Oh, do you really want to know about them?" cried Cordelia, joyfully.
+"Then I will tell you; for maybe it would help you find them, you know."
+
+"Yes, maybe it would," agreed the man, in a curiously vibrant voice, as
+Cordelia seated herself again at his side. "Now talk."
+
+And Cordelia talked. She talked not only then, but several times after
+that, and she talked always of Sunbridge. Mr. Edwards seemed so
+interested in everything and everybody there, though specially, of
+course, in the relatives of the four lost people she was trying to
+find--which was natural, certainly, thought Cordelia, inasmuch as he,
+too, was going to search for them in the weeks to come.
+
+Mr. Edwards improved in health very rapidly these days. He discarded his
+crutches, and seemed feverishly anxious to test his strength on every
+occasion. Upon Mr. Hartley's return from the round-up, the injured man
+insisted that he was quite well enough to go away; and, in spite of the
+kind ranchman's protests, he did go the next day after Mr. Hartley's
+return. Carlos drove him to Bolo, and the Happy Hexagons stood on the
+ranch-house steps and gave him their Texas yell as a send-off,
+substituting a lusty "MR. EDWARDS" for Genevieve's name at the end.
+
+"That is the most convenient yell," chuckled Tilly, as the ranch wagon
+with Carlos and Mr. Edwards drove away. "It'll do for anything and
+anybody. And didn't Mr. Edwards like it!"
+
+"Of course he did! He couldn't help it," cried Genevieve.
+
+"I think Mr. Edwards is a very nice man," observed Cordelia, with
+emphasis, "and I wish he could have stayed for the party."
+
+"Why, of course he's a nice man," chimed in the other girls, eyeing her
+earnest face a little curiously.
+
+"Who said he wasn't?" laughed Tilly. "My! but it is hot, isn't it?" she
+added, dropping into one of the big wicker chairs near her.
+
+"Oh, of course we have to have some warm weather," bridled Genevieve,
+"else you'd be homesick for New Hampshire!"
+
+"The mean annual temperature of the country near--" began Tilly,
+mischievously; but Genevieve put her hands to her ears and fled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fourteenth of August was to be a gala occasion at the Six Star
+Ranch, for there was to be a supper and dance to entertain the friends
+from the East.
+
+"But where'll you get your guests?" demanded Tilly, when she first heard
+of the plan. "Whom can you have, 'way off here like this?--all will
+please take notice that I said '_whom_'!"
+
+Genevieve laughed and tossed her head a little.
+
+"Well, we'll have the boys here on the ranch, of course, and Susie
+Billings, and some of the other Bolo girls. We can't have Quentina, of
+course--Poor thing! Isn't it a shame about that whooping cough?--and
+Ned's got it, too, now, you know!--but I think the Boyntons will come.
+Their ranch is only thirty-five miles away, and they could stay all
+night, of course."
+
+"Only thirty-five miles away," repeated Tilly, airily. "Of course
+nobody'd mind a little thing like that, for a party!"
+
+"No, they wouldn't--in Texas," retorted Genevieve. "There's the
+Wetherbys, too. They live five miles out from Bolo on the other side.
+Maybe they'll come. We'll ask them, anyhow. Oh, we'll have a
+party--never you fear!"
+
+When the night of the fourteenth arrived, things looked, indeed, very
+like "a party." Everywhere were confusion and excitement, even to the
+saddle room and blacksmith's shop, and to the two big tents that were
+being put up for extra sleeping quarters. Everywhere, too (Mrs. Kennedy
+declared), were dishes heaped with chocolate candies. Mr. Edwards, who
+had left the ranch only the day before, had sent back by Carlos
+twenty-five pounds of the best candy Bolo could supply; and the girls
+had been lavish in its disposal.
+
+Five Wetherbys and six Boyntons had arrived together with a dozen
+cowboys on horseback. Susie Billings, minus her khaki and cartridges,
+looked the picture of demureness in white muslin and baby-blue ribbons.
+There were other pretty girls, too, from Bolo, in white, and in pale
+pink and yellow. And everywhere were the Happy Hexagons, wildly excited,
+and delighted with it all.
+
+The big hall and the living-room had been cleared for dancing. The
+galleries and the long covered way leading to the dining room had been
+decorated with flowers and lanterns. The long table in the dining-room
+was decorated, too, and would later be loaded with all sorts of good
+things: sandwiches, hot biscuits, tamales, cakes, and black coffee
+without sugar. In the center of the table already there was a huge round
+white something that called forth delighted clappings from the Happy
+Hexagons as they flocked in at seven o'clock to look at the table
+decorations.
+
+"Oh, what a lovely cake," gurgled Tilly, "and such a big one!"
+
+Genevieve laughed mischievously.
+
+"I'll give you the whole cake--if you'll cut it," she proposed.
+
+With manifest alacrity Tilly reached for a knife.
+
+"Done!" she cried.
+
+Before the knife descended, Genevieve caught her hand.
+
+"Wait! Look here," she parleyed. Taking the knife, she thrust its point
+through the elaborate white frosting, with two or three gentle taps.
+
+"Why, it's hard!--hard as stone," ejaculated Tilly, trying for herself.
+
+"It _is_ stone," laughed Genevieve.
+
+"Stone!" cried a chorus of unbelieving voices.
+
+"Yes, stone--frosted with sugar and the whites of eggs. Oh, if you'd
+lived in Texas as long as I have you'd have seen them before," nodded
+Genevieve.
+
+"Well, I've got my opinion of Texas cakes, then," pouted Tilly, with
+saucy impertinence.
+
+"Oh, you'll change it later, I reckon--when you see the real ones,"
+rejoined Genevieve, comfortably, as they left the dining-room.
+
+There never had been, surely, such a party. All the Happy Hexagons
+agreed to that. So, too, did all the guests. Perhaps on no one's face
+was there a look of anxious care except on Cordelia's. Possibly Mr.
+Hartley noticed this look. At all events he watched Cordelia rather
+closely, as the evening advanced, particularly after he chanced to
+overhear some of her remarks to his guests. Then he sought his daughter.
+
+"Dearie," he began in a low voice, leading her a little to one side,
+"what in the world ails that little Miss Cordelia?"
+
+"Ails her! What do you mean? Is she sick?"
+
+"No, I don't think so; but she looks as if she'd got the weight of the
+whole outfit on her shoulders, and she seems to be going 'round asking
+everybody if they knew John somebody, or Lizzie somebody else."
+
+Genevieve laughed merrily; but almost at once she frowned and shook her
+head.
+
+"No, I don't know, Father, what is the matter. But Cordelia is capable
+of--anything, if once her conscience is stirred. Why don't you ask her
+yourself?"
+
+"I believe I will, dearie," he asserted at last.
+
+Five minutes later he chanced to find Cordelia without a partner.
+
+"Miss Cordelia, will you accept an old man for this dance?" he asked
+genially. "And shall we sit it out, perhaps?"
+
+"Oh, thank you! I'd love to," cried Cordelia in a relieved voice. "And I
+shall be so glad to rest!"
+
+"Tired--dancing?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, no, not dancing; that is--well--" She stopped, and colored
+painfully.
+
+Mr. Hartley waited a moment, then observed with a smile:
+
+"You seem to be looking for some one to-night, Miss Cordelia. Didn't I
+hear you asking Mr. Boynton and Joe Wetherby if they knew John somebody
+or other?"
+
+Again a pink flush spread over Cordelia's face, "Yes, sir; I am looking
+for somebody--four somebodies."
+
+"You don't say! Found them yet?"
+
+She shook her head. To the man's surprise and distress, her eyes filled
+with tears.
+
+"No, Mr. Hartley, and that's what's the trouble. That's why I'm trying
+so hard to-night to ask all these people--there's such a little time
+left!"
+
+"Time--left?"
+
+"Yes. I'd like to tell you about it, please. I think I may tell you. Of
+course I haven't said a word to the girls, because the people--back in
+Sunbridge--didn't want me to talk about it. I'm looking for John
+Sanborn, Lester Goodwin, James Hunt, and Mrs. Lizzie Higgins. They're
+all Sunbridge people who came to Texas years ago, and are lost."
+
+Mr. Hartley gave a sudden exclamation.
+
+"Did you say--Lester Goodwin was one?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Who wants him, and what for?"
+
+Patiently Cordelia told him. She wore a hopeless air. She had ceased,
+evidently, to expect anything that was good.
+
+Mr. Hartley gave a low whistle. For a moment he was silent, then he
+chuckled unexpectedly.
+
+"Well, Miss Cordelia, if you hadn't looked so far away for your pony you
+might have seen his tracks nearer home, perhaps. As it happens, Lester
+Goodwin is right here on the ranch."
+
+"Here? Lester Goodwin?" gasped Cordelia.
+
+"Yes. Oh, he isn't known by that name--he preferred not to be. He came
+to me fourteen years ago, and he's been here ever since. He said he
+wanted to be a cowboy; that he'd always wanted to be one ever since
+when, as a little boy, he used to rope his rocking-horse with his
+mother's clothes-line. His uncle had wanted him to be a teacher, but he
+hated the sight of books; so when his uncle died, he ran away and came
+here. He said there wasn't anybody to care where he was, or what he did;
+so I let him stay."
+
+"And to think he's here now!"
+
+"He certainly is. You see he came here because he knew me once a little
+when I was in Sunbridge visiting relatives, years ago, and he knew I had
+become a ranchman in Texas. He begged so hard that I should keep his
+secret that I've always kept it. Besides, there was nothing to keep.
+Nobody ever asked me, or suspected he was here."
+
+"Why, how strange!" breathed Cordelia, with shining eyes. "And only
+think how I've asked everybody but you--and now I've found one of them
+right here!"
+
+"Yes--though we mustn't be too sure, of course. We'll tell him; but
+maybe he won't want to go back, even now. I reckon, however, that when
+he hears of the money, Reddy won't mind his real name being known."
+
+"Reddy!" cried Cordelia.
+
+"Oh!--I didn't tell you, did I?" smiled Mr. Hartley. "Yes, Reddy is
+Lester Goodwin."
+
+"Why, Mr. Hartley! And I never thought of such a thing as asking _him_!
+I only looked for the cowboys who were called 'John' or 'James' or
+'Lester'--and there weren't many of those. And so it's Reddy--why, I
+just can't believe it's true!"
+
+"I reckon Reddy can't, either," laughed Mr. Hartley. "And now we'll let
+you go back to your dancing, my dear. I've already encountered at least
+four pairs of glowering eyes unpleasantly pointed in my direction. I'll
+go and find Reddy--or rather, Mr. Lester Goodwin," he finished
+impressively, as he rose to his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE ALAMO
+
+
+Two days after the party at the ranch house, Mr. Hartley made a
+wonderful announcement at the dinner table.
+
+"What do you say, young ladies, to a visit to San Antonio?" he began.
+
+"Father, could we? Do you mean we can?" cried Genevieve.
+
+"Yes, dear, that's just what I mean. It so happens I've got business
+there, so I'm going to take you home 'round by that way. We'll have
+maybe a couple of days there, and we'll see something of the surrounding
+country, besides. You know Texas is quite a state--and you've seen
+mighty little of it, as yet."
+
+"Oh, girls, we'll see the Alamo!" cried Genevieve. "Did you realize
+that?"
+
+"Will we, truly?" chorused several rapturous voices.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what do you know about the Alamo, young ladies?" smiled Mr.
+Hartley.
+
+"We know everything," answered Tilly, cheerfully. "Mr. Jones's
+daughter, you know, was our Latin teacher, and she had the History
+class, too. Well, we couldn't even _think_ Bunker Hill but what she'd
+pipe up about the Alamo. Now I think Bunker Hill is pretty good!"
+
+"Oh, but we want to see the Alamo, just the same," interposed Bertha,
+anxiously.
+
+"Of course!" cried five emphatic girlish voices.
+
+"All right," laughed Mr. Hartley. "You shall see it, all of you--if the
+train will take us there; and you'll see--well, you'll see a lot of
+other things, too."
+
+Cordelia stirred uneasily. The old anxious look came back to her eyes.
+When dinner was over she stole to Mr. Hartley's side.
+
+"Mr. Hartley, please, shall we see an oil well?" she asked, in a low
+voice.
+
+"Bless you, little lady, what do you know about oil wells?" smiled the
+man, good-naturedly. "You haven't got any of those to look up, have
+you?"
+
+To his dumbfounded amazement, she answered simply:
+
+"Yes, sir--one."
+
+"Well, I'll be--well, just what is this proposition?" he broke off
+whimsically.
+
+"If you'll wait--just a minute--I'll get the paper," panted Cordelia.
+"Mr. Hodges wrote down the name."
+
+Very soon she had returned with the paper, and Mr. Hartley saw the name.
+His face hardened, yet his eyes were curiously tender.
+
+"I'm afraid, little girl, that this won't come out quite so well as the
+Reddy affair--by the way, Reddy left an extra good-by for you this
+morning. He went away before you were up, you know. He feels pretty
+grateful to you, Miss Cordelia."
+
+"But I didn't do anything, Mr. Hartley. I do wish I could see Mrs.
+Granger when he gets there, though. I--I'm afraid she doesn't like
+cowboys much better than Mrs. Miller does."
+
+There was a moment's silence. Mr. Hartley was scowling at the bit of
+paper in his hand.
+
+"Did you say you _didn't_ know where that oil well was, Mr. Hartley?"
+asked Cordelia, timidly.
+
+"Yes. I don't know where it is--and I reckon there doesn't anybody else
+know, either," he answered slowly. "I know where it _claims_ to be, and
+I know it is just one big swindle from beginning to end."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," sighed the girl.
+
+"So am I, my dear. I'm sorry for Mr. Hodges, and lots of others that I
+know lost money in the same thing. But it can't be helped now."
+
+"Then there aren't any oil wells here at all in Texas?" asked Cordelia,
+tearfully.
+
+"Bless you, yes, child--heaps of them! You'll see them, too, probably,
+before you leave the state. But--you won't see this one."
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," mourned Cordelia, again, as sadly she took the bit
+of paper back to her room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not many days before the Happy Hexagons said good-by to the
+ranch--a most reluctant good-by. It was a question, however, which felt
+the worst: Mammy Lindy, weeping on the gallery steps, Mr. Tim and the
+boys, waving a noisy good-by from their saddles, or Mrs. Kennedy and the
+Happy Hexagons--the latter tearfully giving their Texas yell with "THE
+RANCH" for the final word to-day.
+
+"I think I never had such a good time in all my life," breathed
+Cordelia.
+
+"I know I never did," choked Tilly. "Genevieve, we can't ever begin to
+thank you for it all!"
+
+"I--I don't want you to," wailed Genevieve, dabbing her eyes with her
+handkerchief. "I reckon you haven't had any better time than I have!"
+
+Quentina was at the Bolo station; so, too, was Susie Billings.
+
+"O Happy Hexagons, Happy Hexagons, I just had to come," chanted
+Quentina, standing some distance away, and extending two restraining
+hands, palms outward. "Don't kiss me--don't come near me! I don't think
+I've got any whooping germs about me, but we want to be on the safe
+side."
+
+"But, Quentina, how are you? How are all of you?" cried Genevieve,
+plainly distressed. "I think it's just horrid--staying off at arm's
+length like this!"
+
+"But you must, dear," almost sobbed Quentina. "I wouldn't have you go
+through what we are going through with at home for anything. Such a
+whoop--whoop--whooping time!"
+
+"Couldn't you make a poem on it?" bantered Tilly. "I should think
+'twould make a splendid subject--you could use such sonorous, resounding
+words."
+
+Quentina shook her head dismally.
+
+"I couldn't. I tried it once or twice; but all I could think of was
+'Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound'; then somebody would cough, and I
+just couldn't get any further." Her voice was tragic in spite of its
+drawl.
+
+"You poor thing," sympathized Genevieve. "But we--we're glad to _see_
+you, even for this little, and even if we can't _feel_ you! But,
+Quentina, you'll write--sure?"
+
+"Yes, I'll write," nodded Quentina, backing sorrowfully away. "Good-by,
+Happy Hexagons, good-by!"
+
+"So that is your Quentina?" said Mr. Hartley in a low voice, as the
+girls were waving their hands and handkerchiefs. "Well, she _is_
+pretty."
+
+"Oh, but she wasn't half so pretty to-day," regretted Genevieve. "She
+looked so thin and tired. I wanted to introduce you, Father, but I
+didn't know how to--so far away."
+
+"I should say not," laughed Mr. Hartley. "'Twould have been worse than
+your high handshake back East," he added, as he turned to speak to Susie
+Billings, who had come up at that moment.
+
+Susie Billings was in her khaki suit and cowboy hat to-day, with the
+cartridge belt and holster; so, as it happened, the last glimpse the
+girls had of Bolo station was made picturesque by a vision of
+"Cordelia's cowboy" (as Tilly always called Susie) waving her
+broad-brimmed hat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trip to San Antonio was practically uneventful, though it was
+certainly one long delight to the Happy Hexagons, who never wearied of
+talking about the sights and sounds of the wonderful country through
+which they were passing.
+
+"Well, this isn't much like Bolo; is it?" cried Tilly, when at last they
+found themselves in the handsome railroad station of the city itself. "I
+shouldn't think Texas would know its own self half the time--it's so
+different from itself all the time!"
+
+[Illustration: "'THERE, NOW--LOOK!' SHE ADDED"]
+
+"That's all right, Tilly, and I think I know what you mean," laughed
+Genevieve; "but I wouldn't advise you to give that sentence to Miss Hart
+as your best example of logic."
+
+"Well, I was talking about Texas," retorted Tilly, saucily, "and there
+isn't anything logical about Texas, that I can see. There, now--look!"
+she added, as they reached the street. "Just tell me if there's anything
+logical in that scene!" she finished, with a wave of her hand toward the
+passing throng.
+
+Genevieve laughed, but her eyes, too, widened a little as she stepped
+one side with the others, for a moment, to watch the curious
+conglomeration of humanity and vehicles before them.
+
+In the street a luxurious limousine was tooting for a ramshackle prairie
+schooner to turn to one side. Behind the automobile plodded a forlorn
+mule dragging a wagon-load of empty boxes. Behind that came an army
+ambulance followed by an electric truck. A handsome soldier on a restive
+bay mare came next, and behind him a huge touring car with a pompous
+black chauffeur. On either side of the touring car rode a grinning boy
+on a mustang, plainly to the discomfort of the pompous negro and the
+delight of two pretty girls in white who were in the low phaeton that
+followed. A bicycle bell jangled sharply for a swarthy Mexican in a tall
+peaked hat to get out of the way, and farther down the street two
+solid-looking men in business suits were waiting for a pretty Mexican
+woman with a rebosa-draped head to precede them into a car. Behind them
+a huge negro woman wearing a red bandana about her head, waited her
+turn. And still behind her a severe-faced young woman in a tailored suit
+was drawing her skirts away from two almost naked pickaninnies.
+
+"Well, no; perhaps it isn't really logical," laughed Genevieve. "But
+it's awfully interesting!"
+
+"I chose one of the older hotels," said Mr. Hartley, a little later, as
+he piloted his party through the doorway of a fine old building.
+
+"You couldn't have chosen a lovelier one, I'm sure, Father," declared
+Genevieve, as she looked about her with shining eyes.
+
+Genevieve was even more convinced of this when, just before dinner, in
+response to a summons from Tilly's voice she stepped out on to the
+little balcony leading from her room. The balcony overlooked an inner
+court, and was hung with riotous moon-vines. Down in the court a silvery
+fountain played among palms and banana trees. Here and there a cactus
+plant thrust spiny arms into the air. Somewhere else queen's wreath and
+devil's ivy made a tiny bower of loveliness. While everywhere were
+electric lights and roses, matching one against the other their
+brilliant hues.
+
+"Genevieve, I--I think I'm going to c-cry," wailed Tilly's sobbing
+voice from the adjoining balcony.
+
+"Cry!--when it's all so lovely!" exclaimed Genevieve.
+
+Tilly nodded.
+
+"Yes. That's why I want to," she quavered. "Honestly, Genevieve, if I
+stay here long I shall be writing poetry like Quentina--I know I shall!"
+
+"If you do, just let me read it, that's all," retorted Genevieve,
+saucily. "Where's Cordelia?"
+
+"Off somewhere with Elsie and Bertha. She got dressed early--but I
+sha'n't get dressed at all if I don't go about it."
+
+At that moment there was the sound of a scream, then the patter of
+running feet in the court below.
+
+"Why, there they are now," cried Genevieve, leaning over the railing.
+"Girls, girls!" she called, regardless of others in the court. "Look up
+here! What's the matter?"
+
+The girls stopped, and looked up. Cordelia, only, cast an apprehensive
+glance over her shoulder.
+
+"It's an alligator in the fountain in the other court," explained Elsie.
+"Bertha said she heard there was one there, and so we went to see--and
+we found out."
+
+"I should say we did," shuddered Cordelia, still with her head turned
+backward. "I sha'n't sleep a wink to-night--I know I sha'n't!"
+
+"An alligator--really?" cried Tilly. "Then I'm going to hurry and get
+ready so I can see him before dinner," she finished, as she whisked into
+her room.
+
+Dinner that night, in the brilliantly lighted, flower-decked dining-room
+was an experience never to be forgotten by the girls.
+
+"I didn't suppose there were such bea-_u_-tiful dresses in the world,"
+sighed Elsie, looking about her.
+
+Mr. Hartley smiled.
+
+"I reckon you'd think so, Miss Elsie," he said, "if you could see the
+place when it's in full swing. It's too early yet for the real tourist
+season, I imagine. Anyhow, there aren't so many people here as I've
+always seen before."
+
+"Well, I shouldn't ask it to be any nicer, anyway," declared Bertha; and
+the rest certainly agreed with her.
+
+Bright and early the next morning the Happy Hexagons and Mr. Hartley
+started out sight-seeing. Mrs. Kennedy was too tired to go, she said.
+
+"I'll let business slip for an hour or two," Mr. Hartley remarked as
+they left the hotel; "at all events, until I get you young people
+started."
+
+"Hm-m; you mean, to--the Alamo?" hinted Genevieve, with merry eyes.
+
+"Sure, dearie! The Alamo it shall be," smiled her father. "Then
+to-morrow I'll take you to Fort Sam Houston where there are _live_
+soldiers."
+
+"Oh, is there an army post here, truly?" cried Tilly.
+
+"Only the largest in the country," answered the Texan, proudly.
+
+"Really? Oh, how splendid! I just love soldiers!"
+
+"Really?" mimicked Mr. Hartley, mischievously. "They'll be pleased to
+know it, I'm sure, Miss Tilly."
+
+The others laughed. Tilly blushed and shrugged her shoulders; but she
+asked no more questions about Fort Sam Houston for at least five
+minutes.
+
+"Now where's the place--the really, truly place?" demanded Cordelia, in
+an awed voice, when the party had reached the Alamo Plaza.
+
+"The place--the real place, Miss Cordelia," replied Mr. Hartley, "where
+the fight occurred, was in a court over there; and the walls were pulled
+down years ago. But this little chapel was part of it, and this is what
+everybody always looks at and talks about. The relics are inside. We'll
+go in and see them, if you like."
+
+"If we like!" cried Genevieve, fervently. "Just as if we didn't want to
+see everything--every single thing there is to see!" she finished, as
+her father led the way into the dim interior under the watchful eyes of
+the caretaker.
+
+Even Tilly, for a moment, was silenced in the hush and somberness of
+the place. Genevieve stole to her father's side. Mr. Hartley, with bared
+head, was wearing a look of grave reverence.
+
+"You appreciate it, don't you, Father?" she said softly. "You have
+always talked such a lot about it."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I don't see how any one can help appreciating it," he rejoined, after a
+moment, looking up at the narrow, iron-barred windows. "Why, Genevieve,
+this is our Bunker Hill, you know."
+
+"I know," she said soberly. "How many was it? I've forgotten."
+
+"About one hundred and eighty on the inside--here; and all the way from
+two to six thousand on the outside--accounts differ. But it was
+thousands, anyway, against one hundred and eighty--and it lasted ten
+days or more."
+
+Genevieve shuddered.
+
+"And they all--died?"
+
+"Every one--of the soldiers. There was a woman and a young child and a
+negro servant left to tell the tale."
+
+"That's what it means on the monument, isn't it?" murmured Genevieve.
+"'Thermopylae had its messenger of defeat: the Alamo had none.'"
+
+"Yes," said her father. "I've always wondered what Davy Crockett would
+have said to that. You know he was here."
+
+"Wasn't he the one who said, 'Be sure you are right, then go ahead'?"
+
+"Yes. And he went ahead--straight to his death, here."
+
+Genevieve's eyes brimmed with tears.
+
+"Oh, it does make one want to be good and brave and true, doesn't it,
+Father?"
+
+"I reckon it ought to, little girl," he smiled gently.
+
+"It does," breathed Genevieve. A moment later she crossed to Tilly's
+side.
+
+Tilly welcomed her with subdued joyousness.
+
+"Genevieve, please, _please_ mayn't we get out of this?" she begged.
+"Honestly, I feel as if I were besieged myself in this horrid tomb-like
+place. And--and I like live soldiers so much better!"
+
+Genevieve gave her a reproachful glance, but in a moment she suggested
+that perhaps they had better go.
+
+"Oh, but that was lovely," she sighed, as they came out into the bright
+sunshine. "The caretaker told me they call it the 'Cradle of Liberty,'
+here; and I don't wonder."
+
+Tilly uptilted her chin--already the sunshine had brought back her usual
+gayety of spirits.
+
+"Dear me! what a lot of cradles Liberty must have had! You know Faneuil
+Hall in Boston is _one_. Only think how far the poor thing must have
+traveled between naps if she tried to sleep in all her cradles!"
+
+Even Genevieve laughed--but she sighed reproachfully, too.
+
+"Oh, Tilly, how you can turn poetry into prose--sometimes!" Then she
+added wistfully: "How I wish I could see this Plaza on San Jacinto Day!"
+
+"What is that?" demanded Tilly.
+
+"The twenty-third of April. They have the Battle of the Flowers in the
+Plaza here, in front of the Alamo. I've always wanted to see that."
+
+"Hm-m; well, I might not mind that kind of a battle myself," laughed
+Tilly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+TILLY CROSSES BRIDGES
+
+
+In the afternoon the young people again started out to explore the town.
+This time Mr. Hartley was not with them.
+
+"But are you quite sure you won't get lost?" Mrs. Kennedy demurred
+anxiously, as Genevieve was putting on her hat.
+
+"No, ma'am," returned Genevieve, with calm truthfulness and a merry
+smile. "But, dearie, it's daylight and there are six of us. What if we
+do get lost? We've got tongues in our heads, and we know the name of our
+hotel and of the street it's on."
+
+"Very well," sighed Mrs. Kennedy. Then, with sudden spirit she added:
+"Dear me, Genevieve! I shall be glad if ever we get back to Sunbridge
+and I have you to myself all quiet again. I'm afraid you'll never, never
+settle down to just plain living after these irresponsible weeks of one
+long playday."
+
+It was Genevieve's turn now to sigh.
+
+"I know, Aunt Julia. It will be hard, won't it?" she admitted. Then,
+with a quick change of manner, she observed airily: "As if anything
+could be nicer than learning to cook, and keeping my stockings mended!
+Why, Aunt Julia!" The next moment, with a breezy kiss, she was gone.
+
+It was a delightful afternoon that the girls spent rambling about the
+curiously interesting old town, which--Cordelia impressively informed
+them--was the third oldest in the United States. They tried to see it
+all, but they did not succeed in this, of course. They did stand in
+delighted wonder before the San Fernando Cathedral with its square,
+cross-tipped towers; and they did wander for an entrancing hour in the
+old Mexican Quarter, with its picturesque houses and people, its
+fascinating chili and tamale stands, and its narrow, twisting streets,
+which Genevieve declared were almost as bad as Boston.
+
+"Boston!" bridled Tilly, instantly. "Why, Boston's tiniest, crookedest
+streets are great wide boulevards compared to these! Besides, when we
+are in Boston we don't have to cross a river every time we turn around."
+
+"I don't know about that," retorted Genevieve, warmly. "Just try to go
+over to Cambridge or Charlestown and see. I'm sure I think Boston's got
+lots of bridges."
+
+Tilly sniffed her disdain.
+
+"Pooh! You're _leaving_ Boston when you cross those bridges, Genevieve
+Hartley, and you know it. But just look at them here! We haven't
+stirred once out of San Antonio, and I think I've crossed five bridges
+in the last seven minutes. I can imagine those old fellows who built
+this town getting tired of building houses, and saying: 'And now let's
+stop and build a bridge for the fun of it!'"
+
+Genevieve laughed heartily.
+
+"You've won, Tilly. I'll give up," she chuckled. "I hadn't meant to tell
+you; but there _are_ thirteen miles of river twisting in and out through
+the city, and--there _are_ seventeen bridges."
+
+"Where did you find out all that?" demanded Tilly, suspiciously.
+
+"In a guidebook that I saw last night at the hotel. It's the same one, I
+reckon, that Cordelia's been giving all her information from," said
+Genevieve.
+
+"Hm-m;" commented Tilly. "Now I _know_ I've crossed five bridges in the
+last seven minutes!"
+
+"Well, I wouldn't care if there were forty miles of river and fifty
+bridges," retorted Genevieve, "if they'd all have such lovely green
+banks and dear little boats!"
+
+"Nor I," agreed two or three emphatic voices.
+
+Everywhere and at every turn the girls found something of interest,
+something to marvel at. When tired of walking they boarded a car; and
+when tired of riding, they got off and walked.
+
+"Well, anyhow, folks seem to have a choice of houses to live in,"
+observed Tilly, her eyes on a quaint little white bungalow surrounded by
+heuisach and mesquite trees.
+
+"Yes, they do," laughed Genevieve--Genevieve was looking at the next one
+to it: an old-fashioned colonial mansion set far back from the street,
+with a huge pecan tree standing guard on each side.
+
+"Well, seems to me just now a hotel would look the nicest of anything,"
+moaned Cordelia, wearily. "Girls, I just can't go another step--unless
+it's toward home," she finished despairingly.
+
+"Me, too," declared Tilly. "I'm just plum locoed, I'm that tired! Say we
+hit the trail for the hotel right now. Come on; I'm ready!"
+
+Genevieve laughed, but she eyed Tilly a little curiously.
+
+"What do you suppose Sunbridge will say to your new expressions a la the
+wild and woolly West?" she queried.
+
+"Just exactly what they said to you, Miss Genevieve," bantered Tilly.
+
+"Oh, but Genevieve's were _natural_," cut in Bertha, with meaning
+emphasis.
+
+"All the more reason why mine should be more interesting, then,"
+retorted Tilly, imperturbably. And with a laugh Bertha and Genevieve
+gave it up, as with tired but happy faces, they set out for the hotel.
+
+At breakfast the next morning, Mr. Hartley announced cheerily:
+
+"We'll do the parks, to-day, and the Hot Sulphur Well and Hotel; and
+finish with dress parade at Fort Sam Houston."
+
+"But--what about your business?" asked Genevieve.
+
+Mr. Hartley laughed.
+
+"Oh, that's all--done," he answered; then, as the puzzled questioning
+still remained in her eyes, he added, a little shamefacedly: "You see,
+there wasn't much business, to tell the truth, dearie. I reckon my real
+business was to show off the state of Texas to our young Easterners
+here."
+
+"You darling!" cried Genevieve, rapturously, while all the rest of the
+Happy Hexagons stumbled and stuttered over their vain attempts at
+thanking him.
+
+"I declare! I wish we could give him our Texas yell, right here,"
+chuckled Tilly, turning longing eyes about the dining-room. "We would
+end with 'Mr. Hartley,' of course."
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia, in open horror.
+
+"What is the Hot Sulphur Well, Mr. Hartley, please?" asked Elsie, who
+had not heard Tilly's remark.
+
+"You'll have to ask some one who's been cured by it," laughed the man.
+"They say there are plenty that have been."
+
+"Do you suppose it looks any like an oil well?" ventured Cordelia.
+
+"Sounds a bit hot, seems to me, for to-day," giggled Tilly. "I think I
+shall like the parks better."
+
+"All right; we'll let you do the parks--_all_ of them," cooed Genevieve,
+wickedly. "There are only twenty-one, you know, my dear."
+
+"Genevieve Hartley, if you remember your lessons next year one half as
+well as you have that abominable guidebook, you'll be at the head of
+your class!" remarked Tilly, severely, as the others rose from the
+table, with a laugh.
+
+It was another long, happy day. The parks, as Tilly had predicted,
+proved to be cooler than the Hot Sulphur Well, and they certainly were
+more enjoyable, even though only two of Genevieve's announced twenty-one
+were visited--Brackenridge Park, and San Pedro Park. It was the former
+that Cordelia enjoyed the most, perhaps, for it was there that she saw
+her much-longed-for buffalo. Tired, but still enthusiastic, they reached
+the hotel in time to dress for the visit to Fort Sam Houston, upon which
+Mrs. Kennedy was to accompany them.
+
+Getting dressed was, however, a grand flurry of excitement, for time and
+space were limited; and there was not one of the Happy Hexagons who did
+not feel that on this occasion, at least, every curl and ribbon and
+shoe-tie must display a neatness that was military in its precision.
+
+Perhaps only Elsie of all the girls wept over the matter. Her eyes were
+red when she knocked at Genevieve's door.
+
+"Why, Elsie!"
+
+"Genevieve, I've come to say--I can't go," choked Elsie.
+
+"Why, Elsie, are you sick?"
+
+"Oh, no; it's--clothes. Genevieve, I simply haven't anything to wear."
+
+"Nonsense, dear, of course you have! We don't have to dress much for
+this thing. Where's your white linen or your tan or your blue?"
+
+"The white is too soiled, and the other two have worn places that show."
+
+"But there's your chambray--that isn't worn."
+
+Elsie shook her head.
+
+"But I can't--that, truly, Genevieve. It's got worse and worse every
+day, until now _anybody_ can tell Cora and Clara apart!"
+
+Genevieve choked back a laugh. She was frowning prodigiously when Elsie
+looked up.
+
+"I'll tell you, Elsie, I've got just the thing," she cried. "Wear my
+white linen--it's perfectly fresh, and 'twill fit you, I'm sure."
+
+Elsie's face turned scarlet.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve! I wouldn't--I couldn't! I'd never, never do such an
+awful thing," she gasped. "Why, what _would_ Aunt Kate say?--my wearing
+your clothes like that! Oh, I never thought of your taking it that way!
+Never mind--I'll fix something," she choked, as she turned and fled down
+the hall, leaving a distressed and almost an angry Genevieve behind her.
+
+For some minutes Genevieve busied herself with her own toilet, jerking
+hooks and ribbons into place with unnecessary force; then she turned
+despairingly to Mrs. Kennedy, whose room she was sharing.
+
+"Aunt Julia, what's the use of having anything to give, if folks won't
+take it when you give it?" she demanded, irritably.
+
+"Not having followed your thoughts for the last five minutes, my dear, I
+fear I'm unable to give you a very helpful answer," smiled Mrs. Kennedy,
+serenely. And Genevieve, remembering Elsie's shamed, red face, decided
+suddenly that Elsie's secret was not hers to tell.
+
+Half an hour later Mr. Hartley marshaled his party for the start.
+
+"You're a brave sight," he declared, smiling into the bright faces about
+him. "You're a mighty brave sight; and I'll leave it to anybody if even
+the boys in line to-day will make a finer show!"
+
+The Happy Hexagons laughed and blushed and courtesied prettily; and only
+Genevieve knew that the smile on Elsie's face was a little forced--Elsie
+was wearing the green chambray.
+
+There was an awed "Oh-h!" of wonder and admiration when Mr. Hartley's
+party came in sight of the great parade grounds at Fort Sam Houston.
+There was a still deeper, longer, louder "Oh-h-h!" when, sitting at one
+end of the grounds, the girls heard the first stirring notes of the
+band.
+
+To the Hexagon Club it was a most wonderful sight--those long lines of
+men moving with such perfect precision. Fresh from the Alamo as the
+girls were, with the story of that dreadful slaughter in their ears--to
+them it almost seemed that there before them marched the brave men who
+years ago had given up their lives so heroically in the little chapel.
+
+It was Tilly who broke the silence.
+
+"Oh, I do just love soldiers," she cried, with a hurried glance sideways
+to make sure that Mr. Hartley in the next carriage could not hear her.
+"Don't you, Genevieve?" But Genevieve was too absorbed to answer.
+
+A little later the band played "The Star-spangled Banner," and there
+sounded the signal gun for the lowering of the colors. In the glorious
+excitement of all this, even Tilly herself forgot to talk.
+
+After dress parade a certain Major Drew, who knew Mr. Hartley, came up
+and was duly presented to the ladies. He in turn presented the officer
+of the day, who looked, to the Happy Hexagons, very handsome and
+imposing in sword and spurs. After this, at Major Drew's invitation,
+there was a visit to the officers' quarters, and on the Major's broad
+gallery there was a cooling refreshment of lemonade and root beer before
+the drive back to the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+"BERTHA'S ACCIDENT"
+
+
+It had been decided that the party would go to New Orleans from San
+Antonio, and then from there by boat to New York.
+
+"It'll make a change from car-riding, and a very pleasant one, I'm
+thinking," Mr. Hartley had said; and the others had enthusiastically
+agreed with him.
+
+It was on the five-hundred-and-seventy-two mile journey from San Antonio
+to New Orleans that something happened. In the Chronicles of the Hexagon
+Club it fell to Genevieve to tell the story; and this is what she wrote:
+
+"It seems so strange to me that we should have traveled so many
+thousands of miles on the railroad without anything happening; and then,
+just on the last five hundred (we are going to take the boat at New
+Orleans)--to have it happen.
+
+"We have had all sorts of amusing experiences, of course, losing trains,
+and missing connections; but nothing like this. Even when we had to take
+that little bumpy accommodation for a few hours, and it was so
+accommodating it stopped every few minutes 'to water the horses,' as
+dear Tilly said, nothing happened--though, to be sure, we almost did get
+left that time we all (except Aunt Julia) got off and went to pick
+flowers while our train waited for a freight to go by. But we didn't get
+quite left, and we did catch it. (Dear Tilly says we could have caught
+it, anyway, even if it had started, and that we shouldn't have had to
+walk very fast, at that! Tilly does make heaps of fun of all our trains
+except the fast ones on the main lines. And I don't know as I wonder,
+only I'd never tell her that, of course--that is, I _wouldn't_ have told
+her before, perhaps.)
+
+"Well, where was I? Oh, I know--on the sidetrack. (I had to laugh here,
+for it occurred to me that that was just where I was in the story--on a
+sidetrack! I'm not telling what I started out to tell at all. It's lucky
+we can each take all the room we want, though, in these Chronicles.)
+
+"Well, I'll tell it now, really, though I'm still so shaky and excited
+my hand trembles awfully. It was in the night, a little past twelve
+o'clock that it happened. I was lying in my berth above Elsie's, and was
+wide-awake. I had been thinking about Father. He has been such a dear
+all the way. I was thinking what a big, big dear he was, when IT
+happened.
+
+"Yes, I put IT in capitals on purpose, and I reckon you would, if
+suddenly the car you were riding in began to sway horribly and bump up
+and down, and then stop right off short with a bang that flung you into
+the middle of the aisle! And that's what ours did.
+
+"For a minute, of course, I was too dazed to know what had happened. But
+the next moment I heard a scared voice wail right in my ear:
+
+"'Girls, it's an accident--I know it's an accident! I told you we should
+have an accident--and to think I took off my shoes to-night for the very
+first time!'
+
+"I knew then. It was Bertha, and it was an accident. And, do you know?
+I'm ashamed to tell it, but the first thing I did right there and then
+was to laugh--it seemed so funny about Bertha's shoes, and to hear her
+say her usual 'I told you so!' But the next minute I began to realize
+what it all really meant, and I didn't laugh any more.
+
+"All around me, by that time, were frightened cries and shouts, and I
+was so worried for Father and all the rest. I struggled, and tried to
+get up; and then I heard Father's voice call: 'Genevieve, Genevieve,
+where are you? Are you all right?' Oh, nobody will ever know how good
+that dear voice sounded to me!
+
+"We called for Aunt Julia, then, and for the girls; but it was ever so
+long before we could find them. We weren't all together, anyway, and the
+crash had separated us more than ever. Besides, everybody everywhere
+all over the car was crying out by that time, and trying to find folks,
+all in the dark.
+
+"We found Aunt Julia. She was almost under the berth near me; but she
+was so faint and dazed she could not answer when we first called. I was
+all right, and so were Cordelia and Bertha, only Bertha bumped her head
+pretty hard afterwards, looking for her shoes. Elsie Martin and Alma
+Lane were a little bruised and bumped, too; but they declared they could
+move all their legs and arms.
+
+"We hadn't any of us found Tilly up to that time; but when Elsie said
+that (about being able to move all her legs and arms), I heard a little
+faint voice say 'You talk as if you were a centipede, Elsie Martin!'
+
+"'Tilly!' I cried then. 'Where are you?' The others called, too, until
+we were all shouting frantically for Tilly. We knew it must be Tilly for
+nobody but Tilly Mack could have made that speech!
+
+"At last we found her. She was wedged in under a broken seat almost at
+our feet. It was at the forward end of the car--the only part that
+seemed to be really smashed. She could not crawl out, and we could not
+pull her out. She gave a moaning little cry when Father tried to.
+
+"'I guess--some of my legs and arms don't go,' she called out to us
+with a little sob in her voice.
+
+"We were crazy then, of course--all of us; and we all talked at once,
+and tried to find out just where she was hurt. The trainmen had come by
+this time with lanterns, and were helping every one out of the car. Then
+they came to us and Tilly.
+
+"And we were so proud of Tilly--she was so brave and cheery! I never
+found out before what her nonsense was for, but I did find it out then.
+It was the only thing that kept us all from going just wild. She said
+such queer little things when they were trying to get her out, and she
+told them if there was any one hurt worse than she to get them out
+first. She told Father that she knew now just how Reddy felt when his
+broncho went see-saw up in the air, because that was what her berth did.
+
+"Well, they got the poor dear out at last, and a doctor from the rear
+car examined her at once. Her left arm was broken, and she had two or
+three painful bruises. Of course that was bad--but not anywhere near so
+bad as it might have been, and we were all so relieved. The doctor did
+what he could for her, then we all made ourselves as comfortable as
+possible while we waited for the relief train.
+
+"We found out then about the wreck, and the chief thing we could find
+out anywhere was what a 'fortunate' wreck it was! The engine and six
+cars went off the track on a curve. Just ahead was a steep bank with a
+river below it, and of course it _was_ fortunate that we did not go down
+that. No one was killed, and only a few much injured. The car ahead and
+ours were the only ones that were smashed any. Yes, I suppose it was a
+'fortunate wreck'--but I never want to see an unfortunate one. Certainly
+we all felt pretty thankful that we had come out of it as well as we
+did.
+
+"The relief train came at last, and took us to the next city, and to-day
+we are started on our journey once again. We expect to reach New Orleans
+to-night, and take the boat for New York Saturday. We all feel a little
+stiff and sore, but of course dear Tilly feels the worst. But she tries
+to be just as bright and smiling as ever. She looks pretty white,
+though, and what the storybooks call 'wan,' I reckon. She says, anyhow,
+she wishes she _were_ a centipede--in _arms_--because perhaps then she
+wouldn't miss her left one so much, if she had plenty more of them.
+There seems to be such a lot of things she wants her left arm to do. The
+doctor says it wasn't a _bad_ break--as if any break could be _good_!
+
+"And here endeth my record of 'Bertha's accident'--as Tilly insists upon
+calling it, until she's made Bertha almost ready to cry over it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Owing to the delay of the accident, Mr. Hartley and his party had only
+one day in New Orleans before the boat sailed; but they made the most
+of that, for they wanted to see what they could of the quaint,
+picturesque city.
+
+"We'll take carriages, dearie. We won't walk anywhere," said Mr. Hartley
+to Genevieve that morning. "In the first place, Mrs. Kennedy and Miss
+Tilly couldn't, and the rest of us don't want to. We can see more, too,
+in the short space of time we have."
+
+So in carriages, bright and early Friday morning, the party started out
+to "do" New Orleans, as Genevieve termed it. Leaving the "American
+portion," where were situated their hotel and most of the other big
+hotels and business houses of American type, they trailed happily along
+through Prytania Street and St. Charles Avenue to the beautiful "Garden
+District" which they had been warned not to miss. They found, indeed,
+much to delight them in the stately, palatial homes set in the midst of
+exquisitely kept lawns and wonderful groves of magnolia and oak. Quite
+as interesting to them all, however, was the old French or Latin Quarter
+below Canal Street, where were the Creole homes and business houses.
+Here they ate their luncheon, too, in one of the curious French
+restaurants, famous the world over for its delicious dishes.
+
+With the disappearance of the last mouthful on her plate, Tilly drew a
+long breath.
+
+"I've always heard Creoles were awfully interesting," she sighed. "Do
+you know--I don't think I'd mind much being a Creole myself!"
+
+"You look so much like one, too," laughed Genevieve, affectionately,
+patting the soft, fluffy red hair above the piquant, freckled little
+face.
+
+At five o'clock that afternoon a tired but happy party reached the hotel
+in time to rest and dress for dinner.
+
+"Well," sighed Genevieve, "I'd have liked a week here, but a day has
+been pretty good. We've seen enough 'Quarters' to make a 'whole,' and
+the Cathedral, and dozens of other churches, and we've driven along
+those lovely lakes with the unpronounceable names; and now I'm ready for
+dinner."
+
+"And we saw a statue--the Margaret Statue," cut in Cordelia, anxiously.
+"You know it's the _first_ statue ever erected to a woman's memory in
+the United States. We wouldn't want to forget that!"
+
+"Well, I should like to," retorted Genevieve, perversely. "It's only so
+much the worse for the United States--that it wasn't done before!"
+
+"I think Genevieve is going to be a suffragette," observed Tilly,
+cheerfully, as they trooped into the hotel together.
+
+It was from New Orleans that Cordelia Wilson wrote a letter to Mr.
+William Hodges. She had decided that it would be easier to write her bad
+news than to tell it. Then, too, she disliked to keep the old man any
+longer in suspense. She made her letter as comforting as she could.
+
+          "MR. WILLIAM HODGES, SIR:--" she wrote. "I am very
+          sorry to have to tell you that I have looked, but
+          cannot find your oil well anywhere. I did find a
+          man who had heard about it, but he said there
+          wasn't any well at all like what the Boston man
+          told you there was. He said it was a bad swindle
+          and he knew many others who had lost their money,
+          too, which I thought would please you. O dear, no,
+          I don't mean that, of course. I only mean that you
+          might like to know that others besides you hadn't
+          known any more than to put money in it, too. (That
+          doesn't sound quite right yet, but perhaps you
+          know what I mean.)
+
+          "I hope you won't feel too bad about it, Mr.
+          Hodges. I saw some oil wells when we came through
+          Beaumont, and I am quite sure you would not like
+          them at all. They are not one bit like Bertha's
+          aunt's well on her farm, with the bucket. In fact,
+          they don't look like wells at all, and I never
+          should have known what they were if Mr. Hartley
+          had not told me. They are tall towers _standing
+          up_ out of the ground instead of stone holes sunk
+          down in the ground. (It is just as if you should
+          call the cupola on your house your cellar--and you
+          know how queer that would be!) I saw a lot of
+          them--oil wells, not cupolas, I mean--and they
+          looked more like a whole lot of little Eiffel
+          Towers than anything else I can think of. (If you
+          will get your grandson, Tony, to show you the
+          Eiffel Tower in his geography, you will see what I
+          mean.) Mr. Hartley says they _do_ bore for
+          them--wells, I mean, not Eiffel Towers--and so I
+          suppose they do go down before they go up.
+
+          "I saw the wells on the way between San Antonio
+          and New Orleans. One was on fire. (Just think of a
+          well being on fire!) Of course we were riding
+          through a most wonderful country, anyway. We saw a
+          great many things growing besides oil wells, too,
+          as you must know--rice, and cotton, and tobacco,
+          and sugar cane, and onions, and quantities of
+          other things. I picked some cotton bolls. (I spelt
+          that right. This kind isn't b-a-ll.) I am sending
+          you a few in a little box. It takes 75,000 of them
+          to make one bale of cotton, so I'm afraid you
+          couldn't make even a handkerchief out of these.
+
+          "I am so sorry about the oil well, but I did the
+          best that I could to find it.
+
+                             "Respectfully yours,
+                                       "CORDELIA WILSON."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE GOLDEN HOURS
+
+
+Long before ten o'clock Saturday morning--the hour for sailing--Mr.
+Hartley and his party were on board the big steamship which was to take
+them to New York. Here, again, new sensations and new experiences
+awaited the Happy Hexagons, not one of whom had ever been on so large a
+boat.
+
+"I declare, I do just feel as if I was going abroad," breathed Cordelia,
+in an awestruck voice, as she crossed the gangplank.
+
+"Well, I'm sure we _are_, almost," exulted Genevieve. "We're going to
+have a hundred hours of it. You know that little pamphlet that told
+about it called it 'a hundred golden hours at sea.' Oh, Cordelia, only
+think--one hundred golden hours!"
+
+"You'll think it's a thousand, if you happen to be seasick," groaned
+Tilly. (Tilly was looking rather white to-day.) "And they won't be
+golden ones, either--they'll be _lead_ ones. I know because I've been to
+Portland when it's rough."
+
+"Well, we aren't going to be seasick," retorted Genevieve, with
+conviction. "We're just going to have the best time ever. See if we
+don't!"
+
+"Now, dearie," said Mr. Hartley, hurrying up at that moment, "I engaged
+one of the suites for Mrs. Kennedy, and I think Miss Tilly had better be
+with her. The bed will be much more comfortable for her poor arm than a
+berth would be, and Mrs. Kennedy can look after her better, too, in that
+way. The little parlor of the suite will give us all a cozy place to
+meet together. There are two berths there which they turn into a lounge
+in the daytime. I thought perhaps you and Miss Cordelia could sleep
+there. Then I have staterooms for the rest of us--I engaged them all a
+week ago, of course. Now if you'll come with me I reckon we can set up
+housekeeping right away," he finished with a smile.
+
+"Setting up housekeeping" proved to be an absorbing task, indeed. It
+included not only bestowing their belongings in the chosen places, but
+interviewing purser and stewards in regard to rugs, steamer chairs, and
+other delightfully exciting matters. Then there was the joy of exploring
+the great ship that was to be their home for so many days. The luxurious
+Ladies' Parlor, the Library with its alluring books and magazines, the
+Dining Saloon with its prettily-laid tables and its revolving chairs
+(like piano stools, Tilly said), the decks with their long, airy
+promenades, all came in for delighted exclamations of satisfaction which
+increased to a chorus of oh's and ah's when the trip really began, and
+the stately ship was wending its way down the Great River to the Gulf of
+Mexico.
+
+First there was to be seen the city itself, nestled beyond its barricade
+of levees.
+
+"Dear me!" shuddered Cordelia. "I don't believe I'd have slept a wink
+last night if I'd realized how _much_ below the river we were. Only
+fancy if one of those levees had sprung a leak!"
+
+"Why, they'd have sent for the plumber, of course," observed Tilly,
+gravely.
+
+"Of course! Still--they don't look very leaky, to me," laughed
+Genevieve.
+
+"Was it here, or somewhere else, that a man (or was it a child?) put his
+arm (or was it a finger?) in a little hole in the wall and stopped the
+leak, and so saved the town?" mused Bertha aloud dreamily.
+
+"Of course it was," answered Tilly with grave emphasis; and not until
+the others laughed did Bertha wake up enough to turn her back with a
+shrug.
+
+"Well, it was somewhere, anyhow," she pouted.
+
+"As if we could doubt that--after what you said," murmured Tilly.
+
+"But they have had floods here, haven't they?" questioned Alma Lane.
+
+Genevieve gave a sudden laugh. At the others' surprised look she
+explained:
+
+"Oh, I'm not laughing at the real floods, the _water_ floods they've
+had, of course. It's just that I happened to think of something I read
+some time ago. They had one flood here of--molasses."
+
+"Mo--lass--es!" chorused several voices.
+
+"Yes. A big tank that the city used to have for a reservoir had been
+bought by a sugar company and turned into a storage for molasses. Well,
+it burst one day, and a little matter of a million gallons of molasses
+went exploring through the streets. They say some poor mortals had
+actually to wade to dry land."
+
+"Genevieve! what a story," cried Elsie.
+
+"But it's true," declared Genevieve. "A whole half-mile square of the
+city was flooded, honestly. At least, the newspapers said it was."
+
+"How the pickaninnies must have gloried in it," giggled Tilly, "--if
+they liked 'bread and perlashes' as well as I used to. Only think of
+having such a _big_ saucerful to dip your bread into!"
+
+"Tilly!" groaned Genevieve.
+
+They were at Port Chalmette, now. The Crescent City lay behind them, and
+beyond lay the shining river-roadway, with its fertile,
+highly-cultivated plantations bordering each side, green and beautiful.
+
+"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!" cried Elsie. "And I'm not sick one
+bit."
+
+"Naturally not--yet," laughed Tilly. "But you just wait. We don't sail
+the Mississippi all the way to New York, you know."
+
+"I wish we did," said Genevieve, her eyes dreamily following the shore
+line. "But we're only on it for a hundred miles."
+
+"I don't," disagreed Elsie. "I want to see the Gulf Stream. They say
+it's a deep indigo blue, and that you can see it plainly. I think a blue
+river in a green sea must be lovely--like a blue ribbon trailing down a
+light green gown, you know."
+
+"Well, I want to see the real ocean, 'way out--out. I want to see
+nothing but water, water everywhere," declared Alma Lane.
+
+"'And not a drop to drink,'" quoted Tilly. "Well, young lady, you may
+see the time when you'd give your eyes for a bit of land--and just any
+old land would do, too, so long as it _stayed put_!"
+
+"What does it feel like to be seasick?" asked Cordelia, interestedly.
+
+"It feels as if the bottom had dropped out of everything, and you didn't
+much care, only you wished you'd gone with it," laughed Tilly.
+
+"Who was it?--wasn't it Mark Twain who said that the first half-hour you
+were awfully afraid you would die, and the next you were awfully afraid
+you wouldn't?" questioned Elsie.
+
+"I don't know; but whoever said it knew what he was talking about,"
+declared Tilly. "You just wait!"
+
+"We're waiting," murmured Genevieve, demurely.
+
+"You young ladies don't want to forget your exercise," said Mr. Hartley
+smilingly, coming up at that moment with Mrs. Kennedy. "We've just been
+five times around the deck."
+
+"It's eleven laps to the mile," supplemented Mrs. Kennedy with a smile.
+
+"What's a lap?" asked Cordelia.
+
+"Sounds like a kitten on a wager with a saucer of milk," laughed Tilly,
+frowning a little as she tried to adjust her sling more comfortably.
+
+"Well, young ladies, we'll show you just what a lap is, if you'll come
+with us," promised Mr. Hartley; and with alacrity the girls expressed
+themselves as being quite ready to be shown.
+
+On and on, mile after mile, down the great river swept the great ship
+until Forts Jackson and St. Philip were reached and left behind; then on
+and on for other miles to the narrow South Pass where on either side the
+Eads Jetties called forth exclamations of wonder.
+
+"Well, you'd better 'ah' and 'um,'" laughed Genevieve. "They happen to
+be one of the greatest engineering feats in the world; that's all."
+
+"How do you know that?" demanded Bertha.
+
+"Don't worry her," cut in Tilly, with mock sympathy. "Poor thing! it's
+only a case of another guidebook, of course."
+
+"Well, all is, just keep your weather eye open," laughed Genevieve, "for
+when we make the South Pass Lightship, then ho! for the--"
+
+"Broad Atlantic," interposed Tilly.
+
+"Well, not until you've passed through the little matter of the Gulf of
+Mexico," rejoined Genevieve; while a chorus of laughing voices jeered:
+
+"Why, Tilly Mack, where's your geography?"
+
+"Don't know, I'm sure," returned Tilly, imperturbably. "Haven't seen it
+since I studied up Texas," she finished as she turned away.
+
+The first night aboard ship was another experience never to be forgotten
+by the Happy Hexagons. In the parlor of the suite Genevieve and Cordelia
+kept up such an incessant buzz of husky whispering and tittering that
+Mrs. Kennedy came out from the bedroom to remonstrate.
+
+"My dears, you mean to be quiet, I know; but I'm sure you don't realize
+how it sounds from our room. Tilly is nervous and feverish to-night--the
+day has been very exciting for her."
+
+"And she has tried so hard to keep up, and seem as usual, too," cried
+Genevieve, contritely. "Of course we'll keep still! Cordelia, I'm
+ashamed of you," she finished severely. Then, at Cordelia's amazed look
+of shocked distress, she hugged her spasmodically. "As if it wasn't all
+my fault," she chuckled.
+
+In other parts of the boat the rest of the party explored their strange
+quarters to the last corner; then made themselves ready to be "laid on
+the shelf," as Elsie termed going to bed in the narrow berth.
+
+"I shall take off my shoes to-night," announced Bertha with dignity,
+after a long moment of silence. "If anything happens here we'll get into
+the water, of course, and I think shoes would only be a nuisance."
+
+For a moment Elsie did not answer; then, almost hopefully she asked,
+
+"I suppose if anything did happen we'd lose our clothes--even if we
+ourselves were saved, wouldn't we?"
+
+"Why, I--I suppose so."
+
+"Yes, that's what I thought," nodded Elsie, happily. Elsie, at the
+moment, was engaged in taking off a somewhat unevenly faded green
+chambray frock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on the second day of the trip that Cordelia took from her
+suit-case a sheet of paper, worn with much folding and refolding, and
+marked plainly, "Things to do in Texas."
+
+"I suppose I might as well finish this up now," she sighed. "I'm out of
+Texas, and what is done is done; and what is undone can't ever be done,
+now." And carefully she spread the paper out and reached into her bag
+for her pencil.
+
+When she had finished her work, the paper read as follows:
+
+See the blue bonnet--the Texas state flower. Find out if it really is
+shaped like a bonnet. Didn't.
+
+Bring home a piece of prairie grass. Did.
+
+See a real buffalo. Did. (But it was in a park.)
+
+Find Hermit Joe Sanborn's son, John, who ran away to Texas twenty years
+ago. Didn't.
+
+See an Osage orange hedge. Did.
+
+See a broncho bursted (obviously changed over from "busted"). Did.
+
+Find out for Mrs. Miller if cowboys do shoot at sight, and yell always
+without just and due provocation. Did. They do not. Cowboys are good,
+kind gentlemen; but they are noisy, and some rough-looking.
+
+See a mesquite tree. Did.
+
+Inquire if any one has seen Mrs. Snow's daughter, Lizzie, who ran away
+with a Texas man named Higgins. Did. (But could not find any one who
+had.)
+
+Pick a fig. Didn't.
+
+See a rice canal. Did.
+
+Find out what has become of Mrs. Granger's cousin, Lester Goodwin, who
+went to Texas fourteen years ago. Did.
+
+See cotton growing, and pick a cotton boll, called "Texas Roses." Did.
+
+See peanuts growing. Did.
+
+Inquire for James Hunt, brother of Miss Sally Hunt. Did. (But could not
+find him.)
+
+See a real Indian. Did.
+
+Look at oil well for Mr. Hodges, and see if there is any there. Did.
+(But there wasn't any there like the one he wanted.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The paper completed, Cordelia looked at it with troubled eyes.
+
+"It doesn't sound quite right," she thought. "Somehow, the things _I_
+wanted to do are 'most all done, but I didn't find but just one of those
+people, and seems as if I ought to have done better than that. Besides,
+I'm not at all sure Mrs. Granger will be satisfied with what I did find
+for her--a cowboy, so!" And she sighed as she put the paper away.
+
+The trip across the Gulf of Mexico to Dry Tortugas Light was nothing but
+a rest and a joy to everybody. It was still delightful and wonderfully
+interesting all the way around the City of Key West and up by the
+southeastern coast of Florida with its many lights and coral reefs.
+
+Here Genevieve's guidebook came again into prominence.
+
+"The Sand Key Light 'way back there is our most southern possession, and
+only fifty-seven miles from the line of the Tropics," she announced
+glibly one day. "We're coming to the American Shoals Light, the
+Sombrero Light, Alligator Light, Carysfort Light and Fowey Rock Light."
+
+"Mercy! Didn't you sleep _any_ last night?" inquired Tilly,
+sympathetically.
+
+"I suppose you mean you think it must have taken all night to learn all
+that," laughed Genevieve. "But it didn't."
+
+"Maybe you know some more, now," hazarded Tilly.
+
+"Certainly. After we strike Jupiter Light, we veer off into the Atlantic
+out of sight of land."
+
+"I thought lighthouses were put up so you wouldn't 'strike' them,"
+observed Tilly, with smooth politeness; "but then, of course if you do
+strike them, it is quite to be expected that you veer off into the
+Atlantic, and never see land again. Besides, I found all those
+lighthouses and things on a paper last night, but it was the southern
+trip that did all that. Maybe we, going north, don't do the same things
+at all. I sha'n't swallow all you say, anyhow, till I know for sure."
+
+"Children, stop your quarreling," commanded Bertha Brown, sternly. "Now
+I've been learning something worth while. _I_ know the saloon deck from
+the promenade deck, and I can rattle off 'fore' and 'aft' and 'port' and
+'starboard' as if I'd been born on shipboard!"
+
+"Pooh! You wait," teased Tilly. "There'll come a time when you won't
+think you're born on shipboard, and you won't know or care which is
+fore or aft--any of you. And it will come soon, too. Those were
+porpoises playing this morning--when Cordelia thought she saw the sea
+serpent, you know. I heard a man say he thought it meant a storm was
+coming. And if it does--you just wait," she finished laughingly.
+
+"Oh, I'm waiting," retorted Bertha. "I like waiting. Besides, I don't
+think it's coming, anyhow!"
+
+But it did come. Off the coast of South Carolina they ran into a heavy
+storm, and the great ship creaked and groaned as it buffeted wind and
+wave.
+
+In the little parlor of the suite the entire party, banished from wet,
+slippery decks, made merry together, and declared it was all fun,
+anyway. But gradually the ranks thinned. First Mrs. Kennedy asked to be
+excused, and went into the bedroom. Alma Lane went away next. She said
+she wanted a drink of water--but she did not return, and very soon Elsie
+Martin, looking suspiciously white about the lips, said she guessed she
+would go and find Alma. She, too, did not return.
+
+Tilly went next. Tilly, naturally, had not been her usual self since the
+accident, in spite of her brave attempts to hide her suffering. She
+slipped away now without a word; though just before she had made them
+all laugh by saying a little shakily:
+
+"I declare, I wish Reddy were here! He'd think he was riding his
+broncho, sure."
+
+Just when Mr. Hartley disappeared, no one seemed to know. One moment he
+had been singing lustily "Pull for the Shore"; the next moment he was
+gone. There was left then only Bertha with Genevieve and Cordelia in the
+little parlor; and certainly the last two were anything but sorry when
+Bertha rose a little precipitately to go, too, saying:
+
+"I--I think, Genevieve, if you don't mind, I'll go and take off my
+shoes. They sort of--hurt me."
+
+"Honestly, Cordelia," moaned Genevieve, when they had the room to
+themselves, "I reckon we're not caring just now, whether we're fore or
+aft!"
+
+It was not really a serious storm, after all, and not any of the party
+was seriously ill. They were all on deck again, indeed, smiling and
+happy, even if a little white-faced, long before the journey was ended.
+
+It was during the very last of the "golden hours" that Tilly, her eyes
+on Bartholdi's wonderful Statue of Liberty just ahead of them, in the
+New York Bay, choked:
+
+"I declare, I'd just like to give that lady our Texas yell. Only think,
+girls, our Texas trip is almost over!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+HERMIT JOE
+
+
+There was not quite so large a crowd at the Sunbridge station to welcome
+the Texas travelers as there had been to see them off; but it was fully
+large enough to give a merry cheer of greeting, as the train pulled into
+the little station.
+
+"They're all here, with their 'sisters and their cousins and their
+aunts,'" laughed Tilly, stooping to look through the window as she
+passed down the narrow aisle behind Genevieve.
+
+"I should say they were," answered Genevieve a little wistfully. "We
+haven't got any one, I'm afraid, though. Miss Jane's been 'down in
+Maine,' as you call it, visiting, and she doesn't come till next week."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have," chuckled Tilly, as she caught sight of an eager
+face in the crowd. "There's Harold Day."
+
+"Pooh! He didn't come to welcome me any more than he did the rest of
+you," retorted Genevieve severely, as she neared the door.
+
+And what a confusion and chatter it all was, when "their sisters and
+their cousins and their aunts"--to say nothing of their fathers and
+mothers and brothers--all talked and laughed at once, each trying to be
+first to kiss and hug the _one_ returning traveler, before bestowing
+almost as cordial a welcome on all the others. At last, however, in
+little family groups, afoot or in carriages, the crowd began to leave
+the station, and Genevieve found herself with Mrs. Kennedy in the family
+carriage with the old coachman sitting sedately up in front. Mr. Hartley
+had left the party in New York, after seeing them safely aboard their
+Boston train.
+
+"Well, it's all over," sighed Genevieve, happily, "and hasn't it been
+just lovely--with nothing but poor Tilly's arm to regret!"
+
+"Yes, it certainly has been a beautiful trip, my dear, and I know every
+one has enjoyed it very much. And now comes--school."
+
+Genevieve made a wry face; then, meeting Mrs. Kennedy's reproving eye,
+she colored.
+
+"There, forgive me, Aunt Julia, please. That wasn't nice of me, of
+course, when you're so good as to let me come another year. But school
+is so tiresome!"
+
+"Tiresome! Oh, my dear!"
+
+"Well, it is, Aunt Julia," sighed the girl.
+
+"But I thought you liked it now, dear. You took hold of it so bravely at
+the last." Mrs. Kennedy's eyes were wistful.
+
+"Oh, of course I wanted to pass and go on with the rest of the girls,
+Aunt Julia. I couldn't help wanting that. But as for really _liking_
+it--I couldn't like it, you know; just study, study, study all day in
+hot, poky rooms, when it's so much nicer out of doors!"
+
+Mrs. Kennedy shook her head. Her eyes were troubled.
+
+"I'm afraid, my dear, that this trip _hasn't_ helped any. I was fearful
+that it wouldn't be easy for you to settle down after such a prolonged
+playday."
+
+"Oh, but I shall settle, Aunt Julia, I shall settle," promised Genevieve
+with a merry smile. "I know I've got to settle--but I can't say yet I
+shall like it," she finished, as the carriage turned in at the broad
+driveway, and Nancy and Bridget were seen to be waiting in respectful
+excitement to welcome them.
+
+There would be five days to "get used to it"--as Genevieve expressed
+it--before school began; but long before noon of the first of those five
+days, Genevieve had planned in her mind enough delightful things to
+occupy twice that number of days. Immediately after dinner, too, came
+something quite unexpected in the shape of a call from Cordelia.
+
+Cordelia looked worried.
+
+"Genevieve, I've come to ask a favor, please. I'm sure I don't know as
+you'll want to do it, but--but I want you to go with me to see Hermit
+Joe."
+
+"To see--_Hermit Joe_!"
+
+"O dear, I knew you'd exclaim out," sighed Cordelia; "but it's just got
+to be done. I suppose I ought not to have told you, anyway, but I
+couldn't bear to go up to that dismal place alone," she finished,
+tearfully.
+
+"Why, of course not, dear; and I'm sure you did just right to tell me,"
+soothed Genevieve, in quick response to the tears in Cordelia's eyes.
+"Now wait while I get my hat and ask Aunt Julia. She'll let me go, I
+know;--she'd let me go to--to London, with _you_."
+
+"Just please say it's an errand--an important one," begged Cordelia,
+nervously, as Genevieve darted into the house.
+
+In two minutes the girl had returned, hat in hand.
+
+"Now tell me all about it," she commanded, "and don't look so
+frightened. Hermit Joe isn't cross. He's only solemn and queer. He won't
+hurt us."
+
+"Oh, no, he won't hurt us," sighed the other. "He'll only look more
+solemn and queer."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because of what I've got to tell him. I--I suppose I ought to have
+written it, but I just couldn't. Besides, I hadn't found out anything,
+and so I didn't want to write until I was sure I couldn't find anything.
+Now it's done, and I haven't found out anything. So I've got to tell
+him."
+
+"Tell him what, Cordelia?" demanded Genevieve, a little impatiently.
+"How do you suppose I can make anything out of that kind of talk?"
+
+"O dear! you can't, of course," sighed Cordelia; "and, of course, if
+I've told you so much I must tell the rest. It's Hermit Joe's son. I
+can't find him."
+
+"His son! I didn't know he had a son."
+
+"He has. His name is John. He ran away to Texas twenty years ago."
+
+"And you've been hunting for _him_, too--besides that Lester Goodwin who
+turned out to be Reddy?"
+
+Cordelia nodded. She did not speak.
+
+Genevieve laughed unexpectedly.
+
+"Of all the funny things I ever heard of! Pray, how many more lost
+people have you been looking for in the little state of Texas?"
+
+Cordelia moved her shoulders uneasily.
+
+"I--I'd rather not tell that, please, Genevieve," she stammered, with a
+painful blush.
+
+Genevieve stared dumbly. She had not supposed for a moment that Cordelia
+had been looking for any more lost people. She had asked the question
+merely as an absurdity. To have it taken now in this literal fashion,
+and evidently with good reason--Genevieve could scarcely believe the
+evidence of her senses. Another laugh was almost on her lips, but the
+real distress in Cordelia's face stopped it in time.
+
+"You poor dear little thing," she cried sympathetically. "What a shame
+to bother you so! I wonder you had any fun at all on the trip."
+
+"Oh, but I did, Genevieve! You don't know how beautiful it all was to
+me--only of course I felt sorry to be such a failure in what folks
+wanted me to do. You see, Reddy was the only one I found, and I'm very
+much worried for fear he won't be satisfactory."
+
+Genevieve did laugh this time.
+
+"Well, if he isn't, I don't see how that can be your fault," she
+retorted. "Come, now let's forget all this, and just talk Texas
+instead."
+
+"Aunt Mary says I do do that--all the time," rejoined Cordelia, with a
+wistful smile. "Aunt Sophronia is there, too, and _she_ says I do.
+Still, she likes to hear it, I verily believe, else she wouldn't ask me
+so many questions," concluded Cordelia, lifting her chin a little.
+
+"I'd like to take Miss Jane there sometime," observed Genevieve, with a
+gravity that was a little unnatural.
+
+"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Cordelia--then she stopped short with a hot
+blush. "I--I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Genevieve," she went on
+stammeringly. "I ought not to have spoken that way, of course. I was
+only thinking of Miss Jane and--and the cowboys that day they welcomed
+us."
+
+"Yes, I know," rejoined Genevieve, her lips puckered into a curious
+little smile.
+
+"I don't believe I'm doing any more talking, anyway, than Tilly is,"
+remarked Cordelia, after a moment's silence. "Of course, Tilly, with her
+poor arm, would make a lot of questions, anyway; but she _is_ talking a
+great deal."
+
+"I suppose she is," chuckled Genevieve, "and we all know what _she'll_
+say."
+
+"But she says such absurd things, Genevieve. Why, Charlie Brown--you
+know he calls us the 'Happy _Tex_agons' now--well, he told me that
+Tilly'd been bragging so terribly about Texas, and all the fine things
+there were there, that he asked her this morning real soberly--you know
+how Charlie Brown _can_ ask questions, sometimes--"
+
+"I know," nodded Genevieve.
+
+"Well, he asked her, solemn as a judge, 'Do these wondrous tamales of
+yours grow on trees down there?'
+
+"'Oh, yes,' Tilly assured him serenely. And when Charlie, of course,
+declared that couldn't be, she just shrugged her shoulders and answered:
+'Well, of course, Charlie, I'll own I didn't _see_ tamales growing on
+trees, but Texas is a very large state, and while I didn't, of course,
+see anywhere near all of it, yet I saw so much, and it was all so
+different from each other, that I'm sure I shouldn't want to say that I
+_knew_ they didn't have tamale trees somewhere in Texas!' And then she
+marched off in that stately way of hers, and Charlie declared he began
+to feel as if tamale trees did grow in Texas, and that he ought to go
+around telling folks so."
+
+"What a girl she is!" laughed Genevieve. "But, Cordelia, she isn't all
+nonsense. We found that out that dreadful night of the accident."
+
+"Indeed we did," agreed Cordelia, loyally; then, with a profound sigh
+she added: "O dear! for a minute I'd actually forgotten--Hermit Joe."
+
+Hermit Joe lived far up the hillside in a little hut surrounded by thick
+woods. A tiny path led to his door, but it was seldom trodden by the
+foot of anybody but of Hermit Joe himself--Hermit Joe did not encourage
+visitors, and visitors certainly were not attracted by Hermit Joe's
+stern reticence on all matters concerning himself and every one else.
+
+To-day, as the girls entered the path at the edge of the woods, the sun
+went behind a passing cloud, and the gloom was even more noticeable than
+usual.
+
+"Mercy! I'm glad Hermit Joe _isn't_ dangerous and _doesn't_ bite,"
+whispered Genevieve, peering into the woods on either side. "Aunt Julia
+says he is really a very estimable man--Cordelia, if I was a man I just
+wouldn't be an 'estimable' one."
+
+"Genevieve!" gasped the shocked Cordelia.
+
+Genevieve laughed.
+
+"Oh, I'd _be_ it, of course, my dear, only I wouldn't want to be
+_called_ it. It's the word--it always makes me think of side whiskers
+and stupidity."
+
+"Oh, Genevieve!" cried Cordelia, again.
+
+"Well, as I was saying, Aunt Julia told me that Hermit Joe was really a
+very nice man. She used to know him well before a great sorrow drove him
+into the woods to live all by himself."
+
+Cordelia nodded sadly.
+
+"That was his son that ran away. Aunt Mary told me that long ago. She
+told us children never to tease him, or worry him, but that we needn't
+be afraid of him, either. He wouldn't hurt us. I heard once that he was
+always stern and sober, and that that was why his son ran away. But that
+it 'most killed him--the father--when he did go. And now I couldn't find
+him! Isn't it terrible, Genevieve?" Cordelia's eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Yes," sighed Genevieve. "But you aren't to blame, dear."
+
+It was very beautiful in the hushed green light of the woods, with now
+and then a bird-call, or the swift scampering of a squirrel's feet to
+break the silence. But the girls were not noticing birds or squirrels
+to-day, and they became more and more silent as they neared the end of
+their journey. The little cabin was almost in sight when Genevieve
+caught Cordelia's arm convulsively.
+
+"Cordelia, sh-h-h! Isn't that some one--talking?" she whispered.
+
+Cordelia held her right foot suspended in the air for a brief half
+minute.
+
+"Yes. That's Hermit Joe's voice. He _is_ talking to some one."
+
+"Then there must be somebody there with him."
+
+"Yes. Genevieve, I--I _guess_ I won't tell him to-day," faltered
+Cordelia. "Let's go back. I'll come again to-morrow."
+
+"Nonsense! Go back, and have you worrying about this thing another
+twenty-four hours? No, indeed! Come, Cordelia, we must tell him now. I
+think we ought to do it, really."
+
+"All right," sighed the other despairingly. "Come, then." The next
+minute she gave a sharp cry. "Why, Mr. _Edwards_!" she breathed.
+
+They had come to the turn which brought the cabin into plain sight; and
+on the stone step with Hermit Joe sat the man Cordelia had last seen
+driving away from the Six Star Ranch in Texas.
+
+Both men rose abruptly. The younger stepped forward. There was a
+whimsical smile on his lips, but his eyes were wonderfully tender.
+
+"Yes, 'Mr. Edwards,' Miss Cordelia--but Mr. 'Jonathan Edwards
+_Sanborn_.' You see, you didn't know all my name, perhaps."
+
+To every one's surprise and consternation Cordelia sat down exactly
+where she was, and began to cry softly.
+
+"Why, Cordelia!"
+
+Genevieve was at her friend's side at once. Hermit Joe looked plainly
+distressed. Mr. Jonathan Edwards Sanborn hurried forward in frightened
+dismay.
+
+"Oh, but Miss Cordelia, don't, please don't--I beg of you! Don't you
+understand? I am John Sanborn, Hermit Joe's son; and 'twas all through
+you that I came home again."
+
+Cordelia only sobbed the harder.
+
+Genevieve dropped on her knees at the girl's side, and put her arms
+about her.
+
+"Cordelia, Cordelia, dear--don't you see?--it's all come out right. You
+did find him, after all! Why are you crying so?"
+
+"T-that's why," stuttered Cordelia, smiling through tear-wet eyes. "It's
+because I d-did find him, and I'm so glad, and everything!"
+
+"But, if you're glad, why cry?" began Hermit Joe's son, in puzzled
+wonder, but Genevieve patted Cordelia's back, and smiled cheerily.
+
+"That's all right, Cordelia," she declared. "I know just how you feel.
+_Now_ you know what was the matter with me when you girls gave me the
+Texas yell at the station. Just cry all you like!"
+
+As if permission, only, were all she wanted, Cordelia wiped her eyes and
+smiled shyly into Mr. Jonathan Edwards Sanborn's face.
+
+"It is really you, isn't it?" she murmured.
+
+"It certainly is, Miss Cordelia."
+
+"And you wouldn't have come if it hadn't been for what I said?"
+
+"No. You set me to thinking, and when I got to thinking I couldn't stop.
+And, of course, when I couldn't stop thinking I had to come; that's
+all."
+
+"I'm so glad," sighed Cordelia; then, interestedly: "How long have you
+been here?"
+
+"Only since day before yesterday. No one in the village knows I'm here,
+I suspect. We've been talking over our plans--father and I. I want him
+to come West with me."
+
+Cordelia got up from the ground.
+
+"I'm so glad," she said again, simply. "Genevieve, I think we ought to
+be going."
+
+As she turned toward the path, Hermit Joe advanced so that he
+intercepted her.
+
+"Miss Cordelia, I would like to tell how--but I can't. Still--I wish you
+could know how happy you've made me."
+
+Hermit Joe spoke with evident difficulty. His lips, so long unused to
+speaking, stumbled over the words; but his eyes glowed as with hidden
+fires, and his whole face was alight with joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE NEW BOY
+
+
+The first day of school, for Genevieve, was not a success. Before two
+hours of it had passed, indeed, she declared to herself that Miss Hart,
+her new teacher, was not at all promising, and that she did not like her
+nearly so well as she had liked Miss Palmer the year before. Making the
+final arrangements as to her studies and recitations, too, Genevieve
+privately voted a bore; and more than once her eyes turned longingly to
+the beautiful September sunshine out of doors.
+
+At recess time the Happy Hexagons met in the corridor and held what
+proved to be an indignation meeting.
+
+"Well, I for one don't like her a bit," declared Tilly, perking up the
+bow ends of the black sling that hung about her neck.
+
+"Nor I," echoed Genevieve.
+
+"Not much like Miss Palmer last year, nor Miss Jones," said Bertha. "I
+told you we wouldn't get such a good one this term."
+
+"But, girls, I think we ought to try to like her," ventured Cordelia, in
+a voice that told very plainly how she expected her remark to be
+received.
+
+"Of course," sniffed Tilly, disdainfully.
+
+"Oh, but I'm sure she won't be half bad when we come to know her," cried
+Alma Lane. "She was so nervous this morning, and I think acted troubled
+over something."
+
+Tilly tossed her head.
+
+"Troubled! I should think we were the ones that were troubled. Did you
+ever see such a lot of rules and regulations about what not to do? She's
+scarcely left a thing we _can_ do."
+
+"Oh, yes, she has," groaned Genevieve. "We can sit still and look
+pleasant, and study, study, study! I reckon I shall have to, all right,
+too, this term, at the rate my studies and recitation hours are piling
+up," she finished, as the bell rang for them to go to their seats.
+
+All days--even the worst of them--come to an end sometime; and at last
+Genevieve was free to go home. Half-way to the Kennedy house a soft
+whistle of the Happy Hexagons' Club song sounded behind her; and a
+moment later Harold Day caught up with her.
+
+"Well?" he queried.
+
+"But it isn't 'well' at all," wailed Genevieve, with a shake of her
+head.
+
+"So I judged from your face."
+
+"But--have _you_ ever had Miss Hart for a teacher?"
+
+"No; she's new this year. We had Miss Holbrook in her place last year,
+and she was fine; but she got married, you know. She herself recommended
+Miss Hart for the position, I believe."
+
+"Did she?" sighed Genevieve.
+
+"What a lugubrious face!" laughed Harold. "Suppose you tell me what is
+the matter with Miss Hart, eh?"
+
+"I can't. It's just an intangible, indefinable 'don't-like-her' feeling.
+She doesn't sit still a minute, and she's awful on rules. Tilly calls
+her 'Miss Hartless.'"
+
+Harold laughed.
+
+"Trust Tilly to call her something!" he rejoined. "But I don't believe
+the lady will be half bad when you get used to her."
+
+"That's what your cousin Alma says."
+
+"Well, I believe she's right," declared Harold. "It sounds to me as if
+Miss Hart were nervous and afraid."
+
+Genevieve opened her eyes.
+
+"Afraid! A _teacher afraid_!"
+
+"Wouldn't you be afraid if you had to follow where you know there had
+been such favorites as Miss Holbrook and Miss Palmer were?"
+
+"Why, I never thought of it that way," frowned Genevieve. "I didn't
+suppose teachers ever had--er--feelings like that."
+
+"Well, I suppose teachers are--folks, like the rest of us," hazarded the
+youth, as he stopped a minute at the foot of the Kennedys' front walk.
+
+Genevieve shook her head mischievously.
+
+"I don't," she protested. "They always seem to me like things you buy
+for school, just like you do the books and chalk, and that they come in
+boxes all graded and sorted--primary, grammar, high school, French,
+German, and all that," she flashed over her shoulder, as she skipped up
+the walk toward the house.
+
+"There!" sighed Genevieve, bounding up on to the veranda, and dropping
+her books into a chair. "I'm going for a ride with Tilly, Aunt Julia,
+please, if you don't mind."
+
+"Very well, dear; but don't stay too long. There's your practicing, you
+know."
+
+Genevieve scowled, and made an impatient gesture--neither of which Mrs.
+Kennedy seemed to notice.
+
+"You have your watch, I see," she went on serenely; "so I don't think
+you'll forget."
+
+Genevieve bit her lip. She threw a hurried glance into Mrs. Kennedy's
+face; but that, too, Mrs. Kennedy did not appear to notice.
+
+"No, Aunt Julia," said Genevieve, a little constrainedly, as she went to
+saddle her horse, "I sha'n't--forget."
+
+When quite by herself around the corner of the house, she drew a long
+breath.
+
+"Sometimes," she muttered fiercely behind her teeth, "sometimes I--I
+just wish folks _weren't_ so good to me! Seems to me I just _can't_
+waste a whole hour of this tiny little bit of glorious day that is left,
+practising a stupid old 'one, two--one, two--one, two!'" Then, with
+apparent irrelevance, she patted her blue-and-gold chatelaine watch
+remorsefully--and it may be noted right here that she came back in ample
+time for her hour of practising before supper.
+
+There was a new boy at school the next morning. This fact in itself did
+not particularly interest the Happy Hexagons until they learned his
+name. It was "O. B. J. Holmes." When the initials did not seem quite to
+satisfy Miss Hart, he hesitated visibly, then said, with a very painful
+blush, that the "O" might be put down "Oliver." It was plainly on the
+teacher's tongue to ask about the other letters; but, after a moment's
+hesitation, she passed over the matter, and turned to something else.
+
+As usual the Happy Hexagons found themselves together at recess time,
+and as was natural, perhaps, the subject of the new boy came up for
+discussion.
+
+"I don't believe 'Oliver' is ever his name," declared Tilly, stoutly.
+"No sane youth in his right mind would blush so beautifully over just
+'Oliver.' Besides, he didn't _say_ it was Oliver."
+
+[Illustration: "'HOW DO YOU DO, MR. OLIVER HOLMES,' SHE BEGAN"]
+
+"I saw Miss Hart talking to him as I came out just now," announced
+Bertha, "and his face was even redder than ever. Hers was getting red,
+too."
+
+"Then there _is_ something," cried Genevieve, excitedly, "and it's a
+mystery. I love mysteries! 'O. B. J.'--what a really funny set of
+letters!"
+
+"Must be 'Oliver Ben Johnson,'" laughed Bertha.
+
+"Sounds to me like 'O Be Joyful,'" giggled Tilly.
+
+"Sh-h!--Tilly!" warned Cordelia, in a horrified whisper. "He's coming.
+He'll hear you!"
+
+But Tilly was not to be silenced. Tilly, for some reason, felt
+recklessly mischievous that morning.
+
+"Why, of course his, name is 'O Be Joyful,'" she cried in gay, shrill
+tones that carried the words straight to the ears of a rather
+awkward-appearing boy coming toward them. "How could it be anything
+else?"
+
+The boy blushed hotly. For a moment it seemed as if he would stop and
+speak; but the next minute he had turned away his face, and was passing
+them hurriedly.
+
+It was then that the unexpected happened. With a quick little impulsive
+movement, Genevieve stepped to the new boy's side, and held out a
+frankly cordial hand.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Oliver Holmes," she began breathlessly, but with
+hurried determination. "I am Genevieve Hartley, and I'd like to welcome
+you to our school. These are my friends: Cordelia Wilson, Alma Lane,
+Bertha Brown, Elsie Martin, and Tilly Mack. We hope you'll soon get
+acquainted and feel at home here," she finished, her face almost as
+painful a red as was the boy's.
+
+O. B. J. Holmes clutched Genevieve's hand, stammered a confused
+something in response to the introductions, and flung a terrifiedly
+uncertain bow in the direction of the wide-eyed girls; then he turned
+and fled precipitately.
+
+Behind him he left, for one brief minute, a dazed silence before Tilly
+lifted her chin disagreeably and spoke.
+
+"Well, dear me! For so _marked_ a bid for his favor, seems to me our
+young friend doesn't show proper appreciation--to run away like that!"
+
+Genevieve colored angrily.
+
+"That was no bid for his favor, and you know it, Tilly Mack!"
+
+"No?" teased Tilly, hatefully. "Well, I'm sure I should have thought it
+was if a perfect stranger flung herself in my way like that."
+
+"Tilly, Tilly--don't!" begged Cordelia, almost tearfully.
+
+It was Genevieve's turn to lift a disdainful chin. She eyed Tilly
+scornfully.
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't--not if some other perfect stranger had just
+called out a particularly hateful, horrid joke about something you were
+not in the least to blame for! If you hadn't said what you did, I
+shouldn't have said what I did, Tilly Mack. As it was, I--I just
+couldn't help it; I was so sorry for him!"
+
+"Oh, it was just being sorry, then! Oh, excuse me; I didn't know," cooed
+Tilly, smoothly. "You see, it looked so--different!"
+
+"Tilly!" gasped Cordelia. "Genevieve, don't you mind one bit what she
+says!" But Genevieve, without a word, had turned and was walking swiftly
+away.
+
+"Well, Tilly Mack," chorused several indignant voices; and Elsie Martin
+added severely: "I've got my opinion of _you_--after all Genevieve has
+just done for us! I'm sure, I think it was lovely of her to speak to
+that boy like that!"
+
+Tilly flushed uncomfortably. Her tongue had gone much farther than she
+had intended it to go. She did not like to think, either, of that Texas
+trip just then. But the very shame that she felt made her only the more
+determined not to show it--then.
+
+"Pooh! there wasn't a thing I said that anybody need to make such a fuss
+about," she declared loftily; then, as she spied Harold Day coming
+toward them, she called in a merry voice: "Seen the new boy, Harold? His
+name is 'O. B. J. Holmes.' _I_ say his name is 'O Be Joyful,' and the
+girls are shocked at my disrespect."
+
+"Is that so?" laughed Harold. "Well, I'm not sure I'd like that name
+myself very well--even if 'tis a cheerful one! Where's Genevieve? One
+doesn't often see one of you without all of you."
+
+"Oh, she was here, but she's gone. She was the most shocked of all,"
+answered Tilly, with mock humility. "Probably she's gone to tell him so.
+You see, she shook hands with him and introduced us all around, and said
+she'd like to welcome him and that she hoped he'd enjoy it here."
+
+"Oh, Tilly!" remonstrated Cordelia.
+
+"Why, Cordelia, didn't she?" asked Tilly, in a particularly innocent
+tone of voice.
+
+"Y-yes," admitted Cordelia, reluctantly, "only--" The bell rang and the
+group broke up, with Cordelia's sentence still unfinished.
+
+The rest of the day for the Happy Hexagons was not an easy one. Tilly
+looked rebellious--and ashamed. Cordelia looked ready to cry. Genevieve
+kept her eyes on her books and seemed unaware that there was such a
+thing in the world as a girls' club, of which she was a prominent
+member. Bertha, Elsie, and Alma divided their time between scowling at
+Tilly and trying to attract Genevieve's attention.
+
+It was during the Latin recitation, which came just before closing time
+at noon, that Cordelia's perturbation culminated in a blunder that sent
+most of the class into convulsive giggles, and even brought a twitching
+smile to Genevieve's tense lips.
+
+Cordelia, rising to translate in her turn, hurried blindly through a
+paragraph until she came to the words "sub jugum". Now Cordelia very
+well knew what "sub jugum" meant; but her eyes, at the moment, were
+divided between her book and Genevieve's flushed cheeks, and so saw,
+apparently, but half of the word "jugum". At all events, the next moment
+the class were amazed to learn from Cordelia's lips that Caesar sent the
+army--not "under the yoke" as was expected--but "under the jug."
+
+Cordelia knew, before the titters of the class told her, what she had
+said; and with hot blushes she made a hasty correction. But to Cordelia,
+usually so conscientiously accurate and circumspect, the thing was a
+tragedy, and, as such, would not soon be forgotten by her. She knew,
+too, that the class would not let her forget it even could she herself
+do so. If she had doubted this, she did not doubt it longer, after
+school was dismissed, for she was assailed on all sides by a merry
+bombardment of gibes and questions as to just what sort of jug it was,
+anyhow, under which Caesar sent his army.
+
+Genevieve, only, had nothing to say. She did not, indeed, even glance
+toward Cordelia. With averted face she hurried through the corridor and
+out the street door alone. In the yard a quick step behind her overtook
+her, and she found herself looking into the flushed, agitated face of
+the new boy.
+
+O. B. J. Holmes would not, at first sight, be called a good-looking
+youth. His face was freckled, and his nose was rather large. But his
+mouth was well-shaped, and his eyes were large and expressive. They
+looked into Genevieve's now with a gaze that was clear and honest and
+manly.
+
+"Miss Genevieve, may I walk with you a little way, please?" he asked
+with disarming directness. "I want to speak to you."
+
+"Why, of--of course," stammered Genevieve. Then she colored painfully:
+behind her she heard Tilly's laughing voice, followed by Alma's lower
+one, and Harold's.
+
+"I wanted to thank you for what you did this morning," began O. B. J.
+Holmes, falling into step with her.
+
+"Oh, that wasn't--wasn't anything," stammered Genevieve, nervously,
+still acutely conscious of the eyes that she knew were behind her.
+
+The boy smiled a little wistfully.
+
+"Perhaps not, to you," he answered; "but if you'd been named 'O Be
+Joyful' and had had to suffer for it as I have, you'd think it was
+something."
+
+"You don't mean to say your name _is_ 'O Be Joyful'!" gasped Genevieve.
+
+He nodded, his face showing a deeper red.
+
+"Yes, that's what I wanted to tell you. I didn't feel square not to have
+you know it, after you stood up so bravely for 'Oliver'. Of course, if
+you like, you may tell the rest. I suppose I was foolish to try to keep
+it to myself, anyway," he sighed moodily.
+
+"Tell it! Of course I sha'n't tell it," declared Genevieve, warmly. She
+had forgotten all about those watching eyes behind her, now.
+
+"Thank you," smiled the boy again, a little wistfully. "Miss Hart knows
+it, of course. I told her at recess; and the principal, Mr. Jackson,
+knows it. He agreed to letting me be called 'Oliver,' and so does Miss
+Hart. Still, I don't suppose I can keep it, and it will get out. I--I
+supposed it had got out when I heard your friend this morning."
+
+"Well, it isn't out, and nobody knows it--but me," declared Genevieve,
+with more warmth than grammar. "That was only some of Tilly Mack's
+nonsense; and when you know her better, you'll know that nobody pays any
+attention to what Tilly says." Genevieve stopped abruptly, and bit her
+lip. She was thinking that not so very long before, she herself _had_
+paid attention to something Tilly Mack said.
+
+"I don't think mother ever realized just what such a name would be for a
+fellow to carry through life," said the boy, after a moment's silence.
+"There were five of us children, and she gave us all queer names--names
+that expressed something that had just been happening in the family, you
+understand. For instance, my oldest brother was born in a year when the
+crops failed, and they called him 'Tribulation.' Crops were good, you
+see, when I came," he added, with a rueful smile.
+
+"Why, how--how funny and--and terrible," breathed Genevieve.
+
+"Yes, it was terrible--but mother never thought of it that way, I'm
+sure. I'm glad she can't know--now--just how hard it's been for me. When
+I came here, I knew I was a perfect stranger and I determined folks
+shouldn't know. I'd be 'Oliver B. J. Holmes.'"
+
+"And you shall be 'Oliver B. J. Holmes,'" averred Genevieve, lifting her
+chin. "Oh, of course Tilly will call you the other, and maybe some of
+the rest will, sometimes; but don't let that fret you for a moment. Just
+remember that _no one knows_--for I sha'n't tell it. And now good-by.
+This is my street," she finished, with a cheery nod.
+
+It was not easy for Genevieve to go back to the short session of school
+that afternoon; but she went--and she tried to appear as if everything
+was as usual when she met Cordelia and Elsie at the corner. Cordelia and
+Elsie were only too glad to follow her lead. Not until they met Tilly in
+the school yard--and saw her turn hastily away without speaking--did
+they show how really constrained they felt.
+
+Genevieve, apparently, saw and felt nothing of this--but she never
+looked toward Tilly that afternoon; and when school was dismissed she
+hurried cheerfully away with only a smiling nod toward Cordelia and
+Alma, whom she passed in the corridor.
+
+At home Genevieve went immediately to her practising--somewhat to Mrs.
+Kennedy's surprise. She practised, too, quite fifteen minutes over her
+hour--still more to Mrs. Kennedy's surprise. There was, also, a certain
+unsympathetic hardness in the chords and runs that puzzled the lady not
+a little; but in the face of their obvious accuracy, and of Genevieve's
+apparent faithfulness, Mrs. Kennedy did not like to find fault.
+
+Just how long Genevieve would have practised is doubtful, perhaps, had
+there not sounded an insistently repeated whistle of the Hexagon Club
+song from the garden. The girl went to the open window then.
+
+"Did you whistle, Harold?" she asked, not too graciously.
+
+"Did I whistle?" retorted the boy, testily. "Oh, no, I never whistled
+_once_--but I did four times! See here, I thought your practice-hour was
+an _hour_."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Well, you've been working fifteen minutes over-time already."
+
+"Have I?"
+
+"Yes, you have; and your constitution positively needs a walk. Come,
+it's your plain duty to your health. Will you go?"
+
+Genevieve dimpled into a laugh.
+
+"All right," she cried more naturally. "Then I'll come. I'll be out in a
+jiffy."
+
+"Let's go up through the pasture to the woods," proposed Harold, when
+Genevieve appeared, swinging her hat.
+
+"All right," nodded Genevieve, somewhat listlessly. "Anywhere."
+
+In the woods, some time later, Genevieve and Harold dropped themselves
+down to rest. It was then that Harold cleared his throat a little
+nervously.
+
+"You have a new boy in school, I hear," he said.
+
+Genevieve turned quickly. For a moment she looked almost angry. Then,
+unexpectedly, she laughed.
+
+"You've been talking with Tilly, I perceive," she remarked.
+
+"Oh, no; Tilly has only been talking with me," retorted Harold, laughing
+in his turn--though a little constrainedly.
+
+Genevieve grew suddenly sober.
+
+"I don't care; I'm glad I did it," she declared. "You know _what_ Tilly
+can be when she wants to be--and she evidently wanted to be, this
+morning. Just because a boy is new and has got freckles and a queer
+name, is no reason why he should be made fun of like that."
+
+"Of course not!" Then, still a little constrainedly, Harold asked: "How
+do you like him? I saw you talking with him afterward."
+
+Genevieve frowned thoughtfully.
+
+"Why, I don't know--I hadn't thought," she answered. "But I reckon
+perhaps I like him. He talked quite a little, and he seemed rather nice,
+I think--just frank and folksy, you know. Yes, I think I like him. I
+think we'll all like him."
+
+"Oh, of course," agreed Harold without enthusiasm, getting suddenly to
+his feet. "Well, I suppose we must be going."
+
+"Yes, of course," sighed Genevieve, glancing down at her little
+blue-enamel watch; "but it _is_ nice here!"
+
+The homeward walk was somewhat of a silent one. Harold was unusually
+quiet, and Genevieve was wondering just how and when peace and happiness
+were to reign once more in the Hexagon Club. She was wondering, too, if
+ever she could be just the same to Tilly--unless Tilly had first
+something to say to her.
+
+As it happened, Genevieve's questions were answered, in a way, before
+she slept; for, after she had gone up to bed that night, there came a
+ring at the doorbell, followed, a moment later, by a tap at her door.
+
+"It do be a note for you, Miss Genevieve," explained Nancy.
+
+"A note--for me?"
+
+"Yes, Miss; from Miss Tilly, I think. She's down at the door with her
+brother."
+
+Genevieve did not answer. Her eyes were devouring the note.
+
+          "DEAR GENEVIEVE:--" Tilly had written. "I'm so
+          ashamed I just can't live till you tell me you
+          forgive me. I have begged Howard to take me down
+          there. I know I never, never can sleep till I've
+          asked your pardon for being so perfectly horrid
+          this morning. Will you ever, ever forgive and love
+          me again?
+
+                         "Your miserable, remorseful
+                                                  "TILLY.
+
+          "P. S. I think what you did was just the bravest,
+          loveliest thing I ever saw a girl do.
+
+                                                   "T. M.
+
+          "P. S. again. I'm so late I'm afraid you've gone
+          to bed; but if you haven't, and if you do forgive
+          me, come to your window and wave to me. I shall
+          watch with what Quentina would call soulful,
+          hungry eyes.
+
+                                                    "T."
+
+"That's all right; thank you, Nancy. There isn't any answer," smiled
+Genevieve as she closed the door. The next moment she darted across the
+room, plucked a great pink aster from the vase on the table, hurried to
+the window and threw up the screen.
+
+Below she saw the automobile and the two figures therein. Faintly
+visible, too, was the upturned face of the girl, containing, presumably,
+the "hungry, soulful eyes."
+
+The next moment, plump into Tilly's lap, fell a huge pink aster.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+GENEVIEVE LEARNS SOMETHING NOT IN BOOKS
+
+
+School, in an amazingly short time, fell into its customary routine.
+Genevieve, it is true, did not cease to pine for long, free hours out of
+doors; but with as good grace as she could muster she submitted to the
+inevitable.
+
+Miss Hart was still not a favorite in the school, and no one seemed to
+realize this more keenly than did Miss Hart herself. At all events, as
+the days passed, she grew thinner and paler looking, and more nervous
+and worried in her manner. While none of the Happy Hexagons deliberately
+set herself to making trouble, certainly none of them tried to cause
+matters to be any easier for her. The girls themselves had long since
+forgotten their brief day of unpleasantness regarding O. B. J. Holmes,
+and were more devoted than ever, after this, their first quarrel.
+
+In the Kennedy home, too, matters had settled into their usual routine.
+Miss Jane had returned, and the days, for Genevieve, were full of study,
+practice, and the usual number of lessons in cooking and sewing.
+
+As the crisp October days came, every pleasant Saturday afternoon found
+the Hexagon Club off for a long walk or ride, sometimes by themselves,
+sometimes with Harold, Charlie, O. B. J. Holmes, or some of the other
+boys and girls as invited guests.
+
+O. B. J. Holmes had long since ceased to be the "new boy." He was not,
+indeed, exactly a favorite with some of the young people, but he was
+included frequently in their merrymakings--chiefly because Genevieve
+declared openly that she thought he ought to be. He was not called
+"Oliver" except in the classroom. Outside he was known usually as "O. B.
+J." slurred into "Obejay." Sometimes, it is true, Tilly's old "O Be
+Joyful" was heard, but not often--perhaps because the lad appeared not
+to care if they did call him that, specially if Genevieve were near to
+join in the good-natured laugh with which he greeted it.
+
+Undeniably, this frank friendliness of the most popular girl in school
+had much to do with the way the others regarded him; though they were at
+a loss, sometimes, to account for a certain quality in that friendship,
+which they could not fathom.
+
+"It's for all the world as if you'd known each other before," Harold
+explained it a little aggrievedly one day to Genevieve, when O. B. J.
+Holmes had just thrown her one of his merry glances at a sudden revival
+of Tilly's "O Be Joyful" name. "Say, _have_ you known him before?"
+
+Genevieve laughed--but she shook her head.
+
+"No; but maybe I do know him now--a little better than you do," she
+answered demurely, thinking of the name that Harold did not even
+suspect.
+
+School this year, for Genevieve, was meaning two new experiences. One
+was that for the first time class officers were elected; the other, that
+a school magazine was started. In both of these she bore a prominent
+part. In the one she was unanimously elected president; in the other she
+was appointed correspondent for her class by the Editor-in-Chief. By
+each, however, she was quite overwhelmed.
+
+"But I don't think I can do them--not either of them," she declared to
+Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Jane Chick when she had brought home the news. "To
+be Class President you have to be awfully dignified and conduct meetings
+and know parliamentary law, and all that."
+
+"I'm not afraid of anything _there_ hurting you," smiled Miss Jane. "In
+fact, it strikes me that it will do you a great deal of good."
+
+"Y-yes, I suppose you would think so," smiled Genevieve, a little
+dubiously.
+
+"And I'm sure it's an honor," Mrs. Kennedy reminded her.
+
+Genevieve flushed.
+
+"I _am_ glad they wanted me," she admitted frankly.
+
+"And what is this magazine affair?" asked Miss Jane.
+
+"Yes, and that's another thing," sighed Genevieve. "I can't write
+things. If it were only Quentina, now--she could do it!"
+
+"But you have written for the Chronicles, my dear," observed Mrs.
+Kennedy. "Have you given those up?"
+
+"Oh, no; we still keep them, only we have entries once a week now
+instead of every day. There isn't so much doing here as there was in
+Texas, you know."
+
+"Then you do write for that," said Miss Jane.
+
+"Oh, but _that's_ just for us," argued Genevieve. "I don't mind that.
+But this has got to be printed, Miss Jane--printed right out for
+everybody to read! If it were only Quentina, now--she'd glory in it.
+And--oh, Miss Jane, how I wish you could see Quentina," broke off
+Genevieve, suddenly. "Dear me! wouldn't she just hit on your name,
+though! She'd be rhyming it in no time, and have 'Miss Jane at the
+window-pane,' before you could turn around!"
+
+"Quite an inducement for me to know her, I'm sure," observed Miss Jane,
+dryly.
+
+Genevieve laughed, but she sighed again, too.
+
+"Well, anyhow, she would do it lovely--this correspondence business; but
+I can't, I'm sure."
+
+"What are you supposed to do?"
+
+"Why, just hand in things--anything that's of interest in my class; but
+I don't know _what_ to say."
+
+"Perhaps the others can help you," suggested Aunt Julia.
+
+Genevieve gave a sudden laugh.
+
+"They'd like to--some of them. Tilly's tried already. She gave me two
+items this noon, all written down. One was that O. B. J. had a new
+freckle on the left side of his nose, and the other that Bertha hadn't
+said 'I told you so' to-day."
+
+"Genevieve!" protested the shocked Miss Jane. "You wouldn't--" She
+stopped helplessly.
+
+"Oh, no, Miss Jane, I wouldn't," laughed Genevieve, merrily, as she rose
+from the dinner-table.
+
+Perhaps it was her duties as president, and her new task as
+correspondent, or perhaps it was just the allurement of the beautiful
+out-of-doors that made it so hard for Genevieve to spend time on her
+lessons that autumn. Perhaps, too, her lack of enthusiasm for Miss Hart
+had something to do with it. Whatever it was, to concentrate her
+attention on Latin verbs and French nouns grew harder and harder as the
+days passed, until at last--in the frenzied rush of a study-hour one
+day--she did what she had never done before: wrote the meaning of some
+of the words under the Latin version in her book.
+
+It was, apparently, a great success. Her work in class was so unusually
+good that Miss Hart's tired eyes brightened, and her lips spoke a word
+of high praise--praise that sent to Genevieve's cheek a flush that
+Genevieve herself tried to think was all gratification. But--the next
+day she did not write any words in the book. The out-of-doors, however,
+was just as alluring, and the outside duties were just as pressing; so
+there was just as little time as ever for the Latin verbs. They
+suffered, too, in consequence. So, also, did Genevieve; for this time,
+Miss Hart, stung into irritation by this apparently unnecessary falling
+back into carelessness, said a few particularly sharp words that sent
+Genevieve out of the class with very red cheeks and very angry eyes.
+
+"I just hate Miss Hart and school, and--and everything," stormed
+Genevieve hotly, five minutes later, as she met Cordelia and Tilly in
+the corridor after school was dismissed.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve," remonstrated Cordelia, faintly.
+
+"Well, I do. I didn't have time to get that lesson--but a lot Miss Hart
+cared for that!"
+
+"Why don't you use a pony?" twittered Tilly, cheerfully.
+
+"A--pony?" Genevieve's eyes were puzzled.
+
+Tilly laughed.
+
+"Oh, it isn't one of your bronchos," she giggled, "and it's easier to
+ride than they are! It's just a nice little book that you buy--a Latin
+translation, you know, all done by somebody else--and no bother to
+you."
+
+"But--is that quite--fair?" frowned Genevieve.
+
+"Hm-m; well, I presume Miss Hartless wouldn't call it--good form," she
+shrugged.
+
+"Why, Tilly Mack! of course it isn't fair, and you know it," cried
+Cordelia. "It's worse than cribbing."
+
+"What's cribbing?" demanded Genevieve.
+
+"It's the only way out when you haven't got your lesson," answered
+Tilly, promptly.
+
+"It's writing the translation under the words in the book," explained
+Elsie Martin, who, coming up at the moment, had heard Genevieve's
+question.
+
+"It's just plain cheating--and it's horrid," declared Cordelia, with
+emphasis.
+
+Genevieve's face turned a sudden, painful red, for some unapparent
+reason.
+
+"Y-yes, it must be," she murmured faintly, as she turned to go.
+
+On the walk home that noon, Harold, as was frequently the case, overtook
+her.
+
+"Well, what part of the world would you like changed to-day?" he asked,
+with a smiling glance at her frowning face.
+
+"Chiefly, I reckon I'd like no school," sighed Genevieve; "but if I
+can't have that, I'd like another box of teachers opened so we could
+have a new one."
+
+"What's the trouble now?"
+
+"Oh, I reckon the trouble is with me," admitted Genevieve, ruefully.
+"Anyhow, Miss Jane would say it was. I flunked in Caesar--but that's no
+reason why Miss Hart should have been so disagreeable! But then, I
+suppose she has to be. She came out of that kind of a box, you know."
+
+Harold laughed, though a little gravely.
+
+"You still think they come all boxed, sorted, and labeled, do you?" he
+said. "And that they aren't 'just folks' at all?"
+
+"Yes, I still think so. They never seem a bit like 'folks' to me. It's
+their business to sit up there stiff and solemn and stern, and see that
+you behave and learn your lessons. I never saw one that I liked, except
+Miss Palmer and Miss Jones--but then, they came out of a jolly box,
+anyhow."
+
+"Lucky ladies!"
+
+Genevieve laughed rebelliously.
+
+"Oh, I know I'm horrid," she admitted; "but--well, I went off for a ride
+with Tilly yesterday after school, instead of paying attention to his
+Imperial Highness, Caesar; and that's what was the trouble. But, Harold,
+it was so perfectly glorious out I had to--I just had to! I tell you,
+every bit of me was tingling to go! Now what do you suppose Miss Hart
+knows of a feeling like that? She simply couldn't understand it."
+
+"But--Miss Hart doesn't look very old--to me."
+
+Genevieve stopped short, and turned half around.
+
+"Old! Why, she's a _teacher_, Harold!"
+
+Harold chuckled, as they started forward again.
+
+"I should like to see some teachers' faces if they could hear you say
+'teacher' in that tone of voice, young lady!"
+
+"Pooh! I reckon it would take considerable to make me think of any
+teacher as _young_," retorted Genevieve, with emphasis.
+
+"All right; but--aren't you coming out, later, for a walk or--or
+something?" asked Harold, a little anxiously, as they reached the
+Kennedy driveway.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, little boy," she answered, with mock cheerfulness. "I'm going to
+practise, then I'm going to study my algebra, then I'm going to study my
+Latin, then I'm going to study my French, then I'm going to study my
+English history, then--"
+
+"_Good-by!_" laughed Harold, clapping his hands to his ears, and
+hurrying away.
+
+Unhesitating as was Genevieve's assertion of her intentions, those
+intentions were not carried out, even to the practising, first on the
+list; for, in putting down her books, Genevieve dropped some loose
+papers to the floor. The papers were some that had that day been
+returned by Miss Hart; and, as the girl gathered them up now, a sheet of
+note paper, covered with handwriting entirely different from her own,
+attracted her attention.
+
+She recognized the writing at once as that of Miss Hart, and she
+supposed at first that the paper must contain some special suggestions
+or criticisms in regard to her own work. With a quick frown, therefore,
+she began to read it.
+
+She had not read five lines before she knew that the paper did not
+contain criticism or suggestions. But so dazed, so surprised, and so
+absorbed was she, by that time, that she quite forgot that she was
+reading something most certainly never meant for her eyes to see.
+
+The paper was evidently the second sheet of a letter. The writing--fine,
+but plain--began close to the top of the first page, in what was
+apparently the middle of a sentence.
+
+          "speak freely, I am sure.
+
+          "Things are not getting any better, but rather
+          worse. I cannot seem to win them. Of course I
+          understood that my task would be difficult,
+          following, as I did, two such popular teachers. I
+          think, perhaps, that this very fact has made me
+          nervous; and so--I have not appeared even at my
+          best. But, oh, I have tried!--you cannot know how
+          I have tried!
+
+          "I am nearly sick with terror for fear I shall
+          lose my position--and of course _that_ doesn't
+          help me to be the cool, calm, judicious person in
+          the chair I ought to be. But it means so much to
+          me--this place--and if I should lose it, there
+          would be poor Annie deprived of her comforts
+          again; for, of course, a failure here would mean
+          that not for a long time (if ever!) could I get
+          another like it.
+
+          "Forgive me for burdening you with all this, but
+          it had got to the point where I must speak to some
+          one. Then, too, I did not know but you could
+          perhaps tell me why I have failed--I have tried so
+          hard myself to understand!
+
+          "Sometimes I think I'm too lenient. Sometimes I
+          think I'm too strict. Sometimes I'm so worried for
+          fear they'll think me too young and inexperienced,
+          that I don't dare to act myself at all--then I'm
+          stiffly dignified in a way that I know must be
+          horrid.
+
+          "After all, I think the whole secret of the matter
+          is--that I'm afraid. If once I could have a
+          confident assurance that I _am_ doing well, and
+          that I _am_ winning out--I think I should win out.
+          I do, truly!
+
+          "And now I must stop and go to work. I'm in the
+          grove, back of the schoolhouse. I often bring my
+          papers here to correct. I have them with me
+          to-night; but--I've been writing to you instead of
+          working. I'll finish this later. But, really,
+          already I feel a little better. It's done me good,
+          just to say things to you. Of course, to no one
+          else could I--"
+
+There was a little more, but Genevieve stopped here. Not until she read
+that last sentence did she realize in the least what she was doing.
+Then, hurriedly, with flushed cheeks and shamed eyes, she thrust the
+letter out of sight under the papers. But there was something besides
+shame in her eyes; there was a very real, and a very tender sympathy
+for--folks.
+
+"And to think that I--read it," she breathed. Then, suddenly, she
+snatched up the papers again. "But she mustn't know--she _mustn't_
+know," choked the girl. "Maybe, if I run, I can get there in time and
+tuck it into her desk. I _must_ get there in time," she declared aloud,
+darting out of the house and up the street without once looking back
+toward an amazed Miss Jane, watching her from the window.
+
+As Genevieve hoped would be the case, the janitor had not finished his
+nightly duties. The great front door stood wide open, and Genevieve made
+short work of reaching her own room. As she opened that door, however,
+she paused in dismay.
+
+Miss Hart was in her chair. Her arms lay folded on the desk before her,
+and her face was hidden in them.
+
+The knob under Genevieve's nerveless fingers clicked sharply, and Miss
+Hart raised her head with a start.
+
+During the one brief moment that Genevieve gazed into her teacher's
+startled eyes, wild plans raced through her mind: she would run; she
+would go to her own desk and leave the papers, then destroy the fateful
+letter to-morrow; she would walk up and hand the letter to Miss Hart
+now, and confess that she had read it; she would--
+
+"Why, Genevieve!" cried Miss Hart, a little huskily. "Did you--forget
+something?"
+
+"No, Miss Hart; yes--well, I mean--it isn't that I _forgot_ exactly.
+I--I didn't know," she faltered, realizing more than ever the meaning of
+the letter she had just read, now that the wistful-eyed writer of it sat
+before her, bearing plain evidence of tears.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" Miss Hart asked.
+
+Genevieve went, then, straight to the desk. The papers--with the
+letter--were rolled tightly in one hand.
+
+"No, Miss Hart, thank you; but--isn't there something that--that I can
+do for--you?" she faltered.
+
+What happened next was, to Genevieve, certainly, most disconcerting.
+Miss Hart gave one look into Genevieve's eyes, then dropped her face
+into her hands and burst into tears. At Genevieve's aghast exclamation,
+however, she raised her head determinedly and began to wipe her eyes.
+
+"There, there, my dear," she smiled brightly, winking off the tears.
+"That was very foolish and very silly of me, and you must forget all
+about it. I was a little homesick, I'm afraid, and perhaps a bit blue;
+and your eyes looked into mine so frankly and honestly, and with such a
+courageous 'I'll-try-to-help-you' look, that--that--well, you know what
+I did. But come--let us talk no more of this, my dear! Let us get out of
+this stifling room, and into the blessed out-of-doors. We'll go into the
+grove for a little walk. These four walls have been just smothering me
+all day!"
+
+Genevieve opened wide her eyes.
+
+"Why, do _you_ feel that way--too?" she asked incredulously.
+
+Miss Hart colored a little.
+
+"I'm afraid I do, my dear--though probably I ought not to have said just
+that--to you," she sighed constrainedly. "But--to tell the truth, I've
+never been able quite to see what houses were made for, I suspect, since
+I used to ask that question as a little girl. I imagine 'twas in summer,
+however, not winter, when I asked it," she finished a little
+tremulously, as they passed through the hall to the outer door.
+
+Once again Genevieve opened wide her eyes.
+
+"Did you ask that--really? Why, Father says that was one of _my_
+questions, too," she breathed rapturously. "Why, you are--you are just
+like--" with a little cough Genevieve choked off the "folks" before it
+was spoken. The word was "me" when it finally left her lips.
+
+It was a wonderful half-hour that Genevieve spent then in the grove.
+Over in the west the sun was low, and the shadows were long under the
+trees. The air was crisp, but not too crisp, if one were walking--and
+she and Miss Hart were walking. They were talking, too.
+
+They talked of birds and beasts and flowers. They talked of school and
+study, and Latin lessons that were so hard to learn when the
+out-of-doors called. They talked of the days and lessons to come; and
+they spoke--at least, Miss Hart did--of what fine work Genevieve was
+sure to do before the year was through. They did not talk, however, of
+Miss Hart's tears in the classroom, nor of Miss Hart's letter still
+tightly clutched in Genevieve's hand.
+
+Genevieve, however, had not forgotten the letter; and when she walked
+alone toward home, a little later, she wondered what she should do with
+it. To give it openly back to Miss Hart, she felt was not to be thought
+of; at the same time she doubted if in any other way she could return it
+to her now. The letter certainly had already accomplished two things:
+never again would she so misjudge Miss Hart; never again, too, would she
+let the others so misjudge her, if she could help it--and she believed
+she could help it. She should try, certainly. As for the letter--
+
+"Well, Miss," broke in Harold's slightly aggrieved voice behind her, "is
+_this_ the way you practise, and study your Latin and your French and
+your algebra and your English history?"
+
+Genevieve was too absorbed even to notice the taunt, much less to reply
+to it.
+
+"Harold," she sighed, "I wish you'd tell me something."
+
+"Certainly! You have only to command me," bowed the lad, with mock
+pomposity, as he fell into step with her.
+
+Genevieve was frowning. She did not even smile.
+
+"Harold, if you had something that belonged to somebody else, and they
+didn't know you had it and would feel dreadfully if they found out you
+had it, do you think you ought to give it back to them, and so let them
+know you had it, when all the time if they _didn't_ know you had it,
+they wouldn't care at all?"
+
+"W-w-well!" whistled Harold. "Do you mind--er--giving me that again,
+now--say, in pieces a foot long this time? If I were Cordelia I might
+give you my answer right off the handle, but--I'm not Cordelia, you
+see."
+
+Genevieve laughed a little ruefully.
+
+"There wouldn't anybody know, of course, unless I told the rest; and I
+can't tell the rest."
+
+"Maybe not," smiled Harold, oddly; "but I'll wager you'll have to be
+telling something to Miss Jane pretty quick now. I saw you when you flew
+out of the yard an hour ago, and I fancy Miss Jane must have seen you,
+too. At any rate, she's been to the door three times since, to my
+knowledge, to look for you."
+
+Genevieve clapped her hand to her lips.
+
+"Mercy! I never thought to tell them a word. I just ran."
+
+"Yes, I noticed you--ran," observed Harold, dryly.
+
+"And they always want to know just where I am," sighed Genevieve. "O
+dear! if you do something bad in order to do something good, which is
+it--bad or good?"
+
+Harold shook his head.
+
+"That's not in mine, either," he retorted whimsically. "Really, Miss,
+your questions on ethics this afternoon do you credit--but they're too
+much for me."
+
+"Well, I reckon this one is for me," sighed Genevieve again, as she came
+in sight of the house and saw Miss Jane Chick at the window. "But the
+other one--I know the answer to that. I shall burn it up," she said
+decisively, clutching even more tightly the roll of papers in her hand,
+as she turned in at the Kennedys' front walk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A TEXAS "MISSIONARY"
+
+
+October passed and November came. School was decidedly more bearable
+now, in the opinion of Genevieve, perhaps because it was a rainy month;
+but Genevieve preferred to think it was because of Miss Hart. It was
+strange, really, how much Miss Hart had improved as a teacher!--all the
+school agreed to that. Even Tilly ceased to call her "Hartless."
+
+"Maybe she came in a jolly box, after all," Harold said one day to
+Genevieve; but Genevieve tossed her head.
+
+"Pooh! She wasn't in any box at all, Harold. She's--_folks_!" And Harold
+saw that, in spite of the lightness of her words, there were almost
+tears in Genevieve's eyes.
+
+Presidential duties, too, were easier for Genevieve now. They proved to
+be, in fact, very far from arduous; and, as Tilly declared, they were,
+indeed, "dreadfully honorable."
+
+As correspondent for the school magazine Genevieve did not feel herself
+to be a success. She wrote few items, and sent in even fewer.
+
+Those she did write represented hours of labor, however; for she felt
+that the weight of nations lay on every word, and she wrote and rewrote
+the poor little sentences until every vestige of naturalness and of
+spontaneity were taken out of them. Such information as she could gather
+seemed always, in her eyes, either too frivolous to be worth notice, or
+too serious to be of interest. And ever before her frightened eyes
+loomed the bugbear of PRINT.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was during the short vacation of three days at Thanksgiving time that
+Nancy, the second girl at the Kennedys', came to the parlor door one
+afternoon and interrupted Genevieve's practising.
+
+"Miss Genevieve, I do be hatin' ter tell ye," she began indignantly,
+"but there's a man at the side door on horseback what is insistin' on
+seein' of ye; and Mis' Kennedy and Miss Jane ain't home from town yet."
+
+"Why, Nancy, who is the man?"
+
+"I ain't sayin' that I know, Miss, but I do say that he is powerful
+rough-lookin' to come to the likes o' this house a-claimin' he's Mis'
+Granger's cousin, as he does."
+
+"Reddy! Why, of course I'll see Reddy," cried Genevieve, springing to
+her feet.
+
+A minute later, to Nancy's vast displeasure, Genevieve was ushering into
+the sitting room a sandy-haired man in full cowboy costume from
+broad-brimmed hat and flannel shirt to chaparejos and high-heeled boots.
+
+Reddy evidently saw the surprise in Genevieve's face.
+
+"Yes, I know," he smiled sheepishly, as Nancy left the room with slow
+reluctance, "I reckon you're surprised to see me in this rig, and I'll
+own I hain't wore 'em much since I came; but to-day, to come to see you,
+I just had to. You see, Miss Genevieve, it's what this 'ere rig stands
+for that I want to see you about, anyhow."
+
+"About--this--rig?"
+
+"Well, yes--in a way. It's about the West."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's Martha--Mis' Granger, my cousin. I want her to go back with me.
+She's all alone, and so am I. And she'd come in a minute, but
+she's--afraid."
+
+"What of?"
+
+Reddy's lips twitched.
+
+"Indians and prairie fires and bucking bronchos and buffaloes. She
+thinks all of 'em run 'round loose all the time--in Texas."
+
+Genevieve laughed merrily.
+
+"The idea! Haven't you told her they don't?"
+
+"Oh, yes; and I've come to see if _you_ won't tell her."
+
+"I!"
+
+"Yes. She thinks I'm a man and rough anyhow, so I don't count. _Would_
+you be willing to come and talk Texas to her?"
+
+"Why, of course I will," cried Genevieve. "I'll come right away to-day,
+after I've finished my hour."
+
+"Thank you," sighed Reddy, rising to his feet. "Now I'll hit the trail
+for Texas inside of a month--you see if I don't! What _you_ say will
+go."
+
+"Oh, but don't be too sure of that, Reddy," frowned Genevieve,
+anxiously.
+
+"I ain't. I'm just _sure_--and that's all right," retorted Reddy,
+cheerfully. "And mighty glad I shall be to get there, too! I'd be plum
+locoed here in another month. You see, I've got some money now, and I
+know a nice little place I can buy cheap, to start in for myself.
+Martha'll take Jim Small's girl, 'Mandy, for company and to help. You
+see we've got her already roped."
+
+"She wants to go, then?"
+
+"Dyin' to. It all depends on you now, Miss Genevieve."
+
+"All right; I'll be there," promised the girl, laughingly, as Reddy,
+watched by Nancy's disapproving eyes from the kitchen window, swung
+himself into the saddle and galloped down the driveway.
+
+A little later Genevieve met Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick at the foot of
+the front walk.
+
+"I've taken my music lesson and done my hour, and I'm off on missionary
+work now," she beamed brightly. "I knew you'd let me go, so I didn't
+wait till you came home."
+
+"Missionary work?" frowned Miss Chick.
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" questioned Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+Genevieve chuckled.
+
+"It's to teach Mrs. Granger that Texas has something besides bucking
+bronchos and prairie fires. You see, Reddy wants to take her West, and
+she's afraid. She thinks those things, and Indians and buffaloes, are
+all that grow there. So I'm going to tell her a thing or two," she
+finished with a nod and a smile.
+
+Just how successful Genevieve was with her missionary work perhaps she
+herself did not realize until nearly a fortnight later, when Cordelia
+Wilson overtook her on the way to school one morning.
+
+"Genevieve, Genevieve, please," panted Cordelia. "I want you to do some
+missionary work for me! Will you?"
+
+Genevieve turned in surprise.
+
+"'Missionary work!' What _do_ you mean?"
+
+Cordelia laughed and colored.
+
+"Well, it's what you did for Mrs. Granger. Reddy told me. He said you
+called it missionary work--and that _'twas_ missionary work, too. You
+know they're to start next week, and they're all so happy over it!"
+
+"Yes, I know," nodded Genevieve; "and I'm so glad!"
+
+"So am I," sighed the other, fervently. "You see, Reddy being my find,
+so, I felt responsible; and of course I ought to feel that way, too.
+Just think--what if they weren't happy over it!"
+
+"But they are," smiled Genevieve. "What's the use of 'if-ing' a thing
+when it just _is_ already?"
+
+"What?" Cordelia's eyes were slightly puzzled. "Oh, I see," she laughed.
+"What a funny way you do have of putting things, Genevieve Hartley! Why
+don't you say such things as that in your notes for the magazine?"
+
+"In the magazine?--mercy! Why, Cordelia, they're _printed_!"
+
+"Well, what of it?" maintained Cordelia.
+
+"What of what?" chirped a new voice; and Tilly Mack hurried up from
+behind them.
+
+Cordelia looked plainly disappointed; but Genevieve turned with a light
+laugh.
+
+"My magazine notes, Tilly. Cordelia doesn't like them," she explained.
+
+"Oh, but Genevieve, it's only that I want you to write as you talk,"
+supplemented Cordelia, in distress.
+
+"Well, I don't know. I'm sure--aren't they true?" bridled Genevieve.
+
+"True!" giggled Tilly, suddenly. "Oh, yes, they're true, just as 'c-a-t
+spells cat' is true--and they sound just about like that, too, Genevieve
+Hartley, and you know it."
+
+"Humph! I like that," bridled Genevieve, again.
+
+"Oh, Tilly, she writes lovely notes--you know she does," championed
+Cordelia, almost tearfully.
+
+"No, I don't write lovely notes," disputed Genevieve, with unexpected
+frankness. "They're just like Tilly says they are, and they're horrid. I
+_do_ say 'c-a-t spells cat' every time--but I simply can't seem to say
+anything else!"
+
+"But why don't you write as you talk?" argued Tilly.
+
+"Or as you do in the Chronicles?" added Cordelia. "You write just
+beautifully there."
+
+"But, Cordelia, that isn't _printed_," cried Genevieve, again, as they
+came in sight of the school building and saw Elsie Martin coming to meet
+them.
+
+At the doorway of the classroom Cordelia whispered to Genevieve:
+
+"Please wait after school for me. I'll tell you then--about the
+missionary work, you know." And Genevieve nodded assent.
+
+Once or twice during the day, Genevieve wondered what Cordelia's
+missionary work could be; but for the most part study and recitation
+filled her thoughts and time. Mid-year examinations were approaching,
+and, in spite of the fact that she had been doing much better work for
+the last month, she felt by no means sure of herself for the dreaded
+ordeal. It was of this she was thinking when she met Cordelia according
+to agreement at the close of the short afternoon session.
+
+"Here I am, dear," she sighed; "but, really, I reckon _I'm_ the one that
+needs the missionary work if any one does--with those horrid exams
+looming up before me."
+
+"Oh, but you've been doing such splendid work--lately!" cried Cordelia.
+
+"Thank you," retorted Genevieve, wrinkling up her nose saucily at the
+pause before the "lately." "I perceive you still know how to tell the
+truth, Miss!"
+
+"Genevieve!" protested Cordelia.
+
+"Oh, then you mean it wasn't the truth," bantered her friend.
+
+"Genevieve!" groaned Cordelia, hopelessly.
+
+"There, there, never mind," laughed the other. "Come, we must be running
+along; then you shall tell me all about this wonderful missionary work
+of yours. What is it?"
+
+"Well, it--it's about another of my--my finds."
+
+"Oh, your lost people?"
+
+"Yes. It's John Sanborn, Hermit Joe's son, you know. He wants to go West
+and take his father."
+
+"Well, can't he? Or doesn't his father want to? Maybe you want me to go
+and tell Hermit Joe not to be afraid of bronchos and buffaloes," laughed
+Genevieve.
+
+A swift color stole into Cordelia's face.
+
+"No; Hermit Joe wants to go."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+Cordelia laughed shyly.
+
+"Well, it--it's a lady, Genevieve."
+
+"A lady! Why, Hermit Joe and his son haven't any--any women or cousins,
+have they?"
+
+"No; but--but they want one," admitted Cordelia, a little breathlessly.
+
+Genevieve stopped short.
+
+"Cordelia, what _are_ you talking about?" she demanded.
+
+Cordelia laughed softly, but she grew suddenly very pink indeed, and she
+clasped her hands rapturously.
+
+"I'll tell you, Genevieve. I've been just longing to tell you, every
+minute. It's the loveliest thing--just like a book! It seems Hermit
+Joe's son, years ago, before he ran away, had a sweetheart, Miss Sally
+Hunt."
+
+"That little old maid on Hunt's Hill? She's a dear, I think!"
+
+"Yes; but she wasn't old then, you know. She was young, and so pretty!
+She showed me her picture, once--how she looked then."
+
+"Yes, yes--go on!"
+
+"Well, they were sweethearts, but they had a quarrel or something,
+and--anyhow, Mr. John Sanborn ran away."
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+"Twenty years; and now he's back, and they've made everything all up
+lovely, and he wants to marry her and take her West."
+
+"Oh-h!" breathed Genevieve. "It _is_ just like a story; isn't it? And
+didn't it turn out lovely!"
+
+"Y-yes, only it hasn't turned out yet."
+
+"What's the matter? I thought you said they'd made it all up!"
+
+"They have. She'll marry him; but she--she's afraid of Texas, too, just
+as Mrs. Granger was, I guess."
+
+"Oh, I see," cried Genevieve. "Pooh! We'll fix that in no time,"
+finished the Texas "missionary," with confidence.
+
+"There, I knew you would," sighed her friend, blissfully. "You see, I
+specially wanted Miss Sally to be happy, because I couldn't find--"
+Cordelia caught herself up in time. She must not, of course, tell
+Genevieve about Sally Hunt's lost brother whom she had failed to find.
+"Well, you know, anyway, Sally Hunt is very poor," she explained
+hastily; "and everybody said, when we went to Texas last summer, that
+she'd have to go to the Poor Farm soon, if something wasn't done. So
+I'm specially glad to have her happy, and--" Cordelia stopped, and
+turned to Genevieve with a new look in her eyes.
+
+"Genevieve, I've just remembered," she cried. "At the ranch last summer,
+when I was talking to Mr. Jonathan Edwards and didn't know his name was
+'Sanborn'--I've just remembered that I told him about Miss Sally, and
+how she'd have to go to the Poor Farm. Genevieve, I'm sure--I just know
+that's one reason why he came home!"
+
+"Of course it was," agreed Genevieve, excitedly; "and we'll go straight
+up there now, if Aunt Julia'll let us; only--" her face fell--"Cordelia,
+when _shall_ I get in my studying?"
+
+"To-night, Genevieve; you must study to-night," answered Cordelia,
+firmly. "You mustn't sacrifice your studies, even for missionary work.
+Uncle always says it isn't right to send money to the heathen when your
+own child is hungry; and I'm sure this is the same thing. Maybe we can
+go Saturday morning, though," she finished hopefully.
+
+"I'm sure we can," declared Genevieve; "and I'm just as excited as I can
+be. I just love missionary work," she exulted, as she waved her hand in
+farewell, at her street corner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GENEVIEVE GOES TO BOSTON
+
+
+December was a busy month, indeed. To Genevieve it seemed actually to be
+one whirl of study, lessons, practice, and examinations, leaving oh, so
+little time for Christmas gifts and plans.
+
+A big box was to go to the Six Star Ranch, and a smaller one to
+Quentina. But, better than all, Mr. Jones was to have a letter from Mrs.
+Kennedy which would--Genevieve was sure--carry a wonderful happiness to
+Quentina. Mrs. Kennedy was to ask Mr. Jones to let Quentina come to
+Sunbridge to school the next winter, and share Genevieve's room, as Mrs.
+Kennedy's guest. All other expenses, railroad fare, school supplies, and
+any special instruction, were to be met by Mr. Hartley through Genevieve
+herself.
+
+All this, of course, Genevieve had not brought about without many
+letters to Mr. Hartley, and many talks with Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Chick,
+wherein all sorts of pleadings and promises had a part. But it had been
+done at last, and the letter was to go in the Christmas box--but of all
+this the Happy Hexagons were not to know until the answer from Mr.
+Jones came. Naturally, however, Genevieve could not keep all her
+attention on her studies that month, in spite of the coming
+examinations.
+
+There was, too, more than one visit to the gentle spinster on Hunt's
+Hill before Genevieve quite succeeded in convincing Miss Sally that
+there _were_ places in Texas where wild Indians did not prowl, nor wild
+horses race neck and neck across vast deserts of loneliness. At last,
+however, she had the satisfaction of hearing from John Sanborn's own
+grateful lips that everything was all right, and that the wedding day
+was set for April the tenth.
+
+In the midst of all this came the dreaded examinations, then the fearful
+waiting till the last day of school when the decision would be
+announced. The winter before, at these mid-year examinations, Genevieve
+had not passed. She had not forgotten the mortification of that tragedy,
+nor the weary weeks of study that had been necessary to enable her to go
+on with her class. So she, of all the girls now, was awaiting the
+verdict with special anxiety. Meanwhile, all the Happy Hexagons were
+spending every available minute on Christmas gifts.
+
+It was just a week before Christmas Day that Genevieve was surprised to
+receive a hurried after-school call from Cordelia.
+
+"Genevieve--quick!" panted Cordelia, dropping herself into the first
+chair she came to. "Can't we do something? We _must_ do something!"
+
+"Of course we can," laughed Genevieve, promptly; "but--what about?"
+
+Cordelia gave a faint smile.
+
+"Yes, I know; I wasn't very explicit," she sighed. "But, listen. You
+know--or maybe you didn't know--but the Missionary Society have been
+packing a barrel to go West. They're at the church this afternoon,
+packing it; but they didn't have half enough, and they sent down to the
+parsonage to know if Aunt Mary hadn't something more--some old clothes
+of the children's, or old magazines, or anything. Auntie's sick to-day
+with an awful cold, but she went up attic and hunted up all she could;
+then after I got home from school she asked me to take them down to the
+church."
+
+"Yes, go on," prompted Genevieve, as Cordelia paused for breath.
+
+"Well, I took them; and, Genevieve, what do you think?"--Cordelia's
+voice was tragic--"that missionary barrel was going to the Rev. Luke
+Jones, Bolo, Texas. _Our_ Mr. Jones,--Quentina!"
+
+"Cordelia! Really?"
+
+"Yes. You know they told us they got them from our church sometimes.
+And, Genevieve, it was awful--that barrel! It looked just like the other
+one, the one they got while we were there that day--old shoes and
+dolls, and _homely_ things!"
+
+"Oh, Cordelia! What did you do?"
+
+Cordelia drew in her breath with a little gasp.
+
+"I don't know. I talked. I said things--awful things. I know they were
+awful things from the looks of some of their faces. And at the last Mrs.
+Johnson--you _know_ how she can be sometimes!--she--she just snapped
+out: 'Very well, Miss Cordelia, if you are not satisfied with what we
+have been able to procure after weeks of hard work, suppose you go out
+yourself and solicit gifts for your friends!' And, Genevieve, I said I
+would. And I turned 'round and marched out. And now--now--what _shall_
+we do?"
+
+Genevieve sprang to her feet.
+
+"Do? Why, we'll do it, of course," she cried.
+
+"But, Genevieve, I'm so scared. What if folks won't give--anything?
+Those women worked weeks--they said they did--for what they've got!"
+
+"But folks _will_ give," declared Genevieve, with prompt confidence.
+"Now wait. I'll have to tell Aunt Julia where I'm going, then I'll be
+back ready to start," she finished, as she whisked out of the room.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve, you're always so comfortingly _sure_," sighed Cordelia
+to the door through which her friend had just sped.
+
+During the next two hours Sunbridge, as represented by many of its most
+staid and stately homes, received the surprise of its life--a surprise
+that sent hitherto complacently contented women scurrying into attics
+and closets, and stirred reputedly miserly men into thrusting hands into
+inside pockets for spare bills.
+
+Perhaps it was the sight of the eager young faces, alight with generous
+enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the pathos of the story of one missionary
+barrel as told by girlish lips trembling with feeling. Perhaps it was
+just the novelty of receiving so direct, and so confident an appeal for
+"something you'd like to have given to you, you know." Perhaps it was a
+little of all three that worked the miracle. At all events, in the
+church parlor some time later, a little band of excited, marveling women
+worked until far into the evening packing a missionary barrel for the
+Rev. Luke Jones. And when it left their hands, there was in it the
+pretty dress for the minister's wife, the unworn underclothing for the
+minister's boys, the fresh hair-ribbons for the minister's daughter, and
+the serviceable coat for the minister himself, to say nothing of
+uncounted books, games, and household articles of a worth and
+desirability likely to make a missionary minister's family exclaim with
+surprise and delight--until they found the generous roll of bills in the
+minister's coat pocket, when they would be dumb with a great wave of
+reverent gratitude to a God who could make human hearts so kind.
+
+"There!" sighed Genevieve, when she and Cordelia had left their last
+parcels at the church door. "I reckon we've got something different for
+that barrel now--but we'll never let Quentina know, _never_--that we had
+a thing to do with packing it."
+
+"No; but I guess she'll suspect it, though," returned Cordelia, with a
+teary smile. "But, oh, Genevieve, didn't they give just splendidly!"
+
+"I knew they would," declared Genevieve, "if they just understood."
+
+"Well, then, I wish they'd--understand oftener," sighed Cordelia, as she
+turned down her street.
+
+Two days later the Happy Hexagons were holding a hurried meeting at the
+parsonage after school. It was the night before the last day of the
+term, and they were all trying to work at once on the sofa pillow they
+had planned to give Miss Hart. Cordelia was making the tassel for one
+corner, and Alma Lane one for another. The other two tassels were being
+sewed on by Elsie and Bertha. Tilly was writing the card to go with it,
+and Genevieve was holding the paper and ribbon with which to do it up.
+
+"I'm going to do as Miss Jane does, next year," sighed Genevieve, at
+last.
+
+"And what does Miss Jane do?" asked Tilly.
+
+"Begins in January to get ready for Christmas. Now I've got exactly
+seventy-nine and one things to do before next Tuesday--and to-day is
+Thursday."
+
+"You must have spent part of your valuable time counting them," teased
+Tilly, "to have figured them down so fine as that."
+
+"Seventy-nine and one are eighty," observed Cordelia, with a little
+frown. "Why didn't you say eighty to begin with, Genevieve?"
+
+"Because she wanted to give your brain something to do, too," explained
+Tilly, wearing an exaggeratedly innocent air.
+
+"Tilly!" scolded Genevieve. But Tilly only laughed, and Cordelia forgot
+her question with the last stitch she put into her tassel.
+
+The pillow was given to Miss Hart the next day, and, apparently, made
+the lady very happy. Nor was Miss Hart the only one that was made happy
+that day. Genevieve, and in fact, all the Happy Hexagons, together with
+O. B. J. Holmes and nearly all the rest of the class, knew before night
+that they had "passed"--which is no small thing to know, when for days
+you have worried and for nights you have dreamed about the dreadful
+alternative of a contrary verdict.
+
+With Miss Jane Chick, Genevieve went to Boston shopping, Saturday,
+coming back tired, but happy, and all aglow with the holiday rush and
+color of the crowded streets and stores. On Sunday came the beautiful
+Christmas service, which Mr. Wilson made very impressive. Certainly it
+touched Genevieve's heart deeply, as she sat by Mrs. Kennedy's side and
+listened to it. It seemed so easy to Genevieve, at that moment, always
+to be good and brave and true--always to be thoughtful of others'
+wishes--never to be heedless, careless, or impulsively reckless of
+consequences!
+
+It was snowing when she left the church, and it snowed hard all the
+afternoon and until far into the night. Genevieve awoke to look out on a
+spotlessly white, crystal-pure world, with every ugly line and dreary
+prospect changed into fairylike beauty.
+
+"Oh--oh--oh, isn't it lovely!" she exclaimed, as she came into the
+dining-room that morning. "Don't I wish Quentina were here to see
+it--and to talk about it!"
+
+"We'll hope she will be some day," smiled Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"Anyhow, 'Here's Miss Jane at the window-pane' all ready for her,"
+chanted Genevieve, merrily, her eyes on the tall figure in the bay
+window.
+
+Miss Jane turned with a sigh.
+
+"Yes, it's very lovely, of course, Genevieve--but I must confess it
+isn't lovely to me this morning."
+
+"Why, Miss Jane!"
+
+"I had planned to go to Boston. In fact it seems as if I must go. But I
+have waked up with a sore throat and every evidence of a bad cold; and
+I'm afraid I don't dare to go--not with all this new snow on the ground
+and dampness in the air."
+
+"Couldn't I go, Miss Jane? I was going to ask to go, anyway. I find
+there are three more things I want to get, and I know I can't find them
+here."
+
+"But you have never been to Boston alone, my dear."
+
+"I suppose everybody has to have a first time," laughed Genevieve; "and
+I'm not a mite afraid. Besides, I know the way perfectly, all through
+the shopping district; and all I have to do then is just to take the car
+for the North Station and the train home. I reckon I know how to do
+_that_ all right!"
+
+Miss Jane frowned and shook her head slowly.
+
+"I know; but--I hate to let you do it, Genevieve, only I--it seems as if
+I _must_ go myself!"
+
+Mrs. Kennedy looked up reassuringly.
+
+"Indeed, Jane, I am inclined to think Genevieve can go all right," she
+smiled. "She has been to Boston now many times, you know."
+
+"There, Miss Jane!" crowed Genevieve, triumphantly. "You see! Please,
+now," she begged.
+
+Miss Jane still frowned--but a look of almost reluctant relief came to
+her eyes.
+
+"Very well," she conceded slowly. "Perhaps, my dear, I will let you go
+for me, then."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Miss Jane--besides, there are several things I want for
+myself."
+
+"Very well, dear. I have three things that must be changed, and there
+are two that I want you to buy. It seems so absurd--when I began last
+January--that there should be anything to be done to-day; but,
+unfortunately, some of my plans had to be changed at the last moment.
+You may get ready at once after breakfast, please, then come to my room.
+I'll have the list all made out for you. You'll have to bring everything
+home, of course, but they are not very heavy, and you can carry them all
+in the large hand bag, I think. You'd better take the nine-four train."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not quite half-past ten when Genevieve arrived in the great
+Boston station that morning. She glanced importantly at her pretty
+little watch, took a firmer hold on the large leather bag she carried,
+and stepped briskly off toward her car.
+
+It was delightful--this independent feeling of freedom. Even to pay her
+fare and to signal the conductor to stop were Events. Shopping, all by
+herself, was even more delightful; so she dallied over every purchase
+and every exchange as long as she could--and it was not hard to dally,
+with the crowds, the long waits, and the delays for change.
+
+At one o'clock, when in state she ate her luncheon at a pretty white
+table in a large department-store dining-room, she had not half
+finished her task. She was so glad there was still so much to do! But at
+four o'clock, when she did finish, she looked at her watch with faintly
+troubled eyes. She had not, indeed, realized that it was quite so late.
+She remembered, too, suddenly, for the first time, that Miss Chick had
+told her to come back early. She wondered--could she catch the
+four-twenty train?
+
+Stores and sidewalks were a mass of surging, thronging humanity now, and
+progress was slow and uncertain. When, at ten minutes past four, she had
+not succeeded even in reaching her car for the station, she gave up the
+four-twenty train. Well, there was one at five-fifteen, she comforted
+herself. She could surely get that.
+
+The streets were darkening fast, and lights were beginning to flash here
+and there, finding a brilliant response in tinsel stars and crystal
+pendants. With the Christmas red and green, and the thronging crowds, it
+made a pretty sight; and Genevieve stopped more than once just to look
+about her with a deep breath of delight. It was at such a time that she
+saw the small ragged boy, and the still smaller, still more ragged girl
+wistfully gazing into the fairyland of a toyshop window.
+
+"I choose the fire engine, the big red one," she heard a shrill voice
+pipe; and she looked down to see that it was the boy's blue lips that
+had uttered the words.
+
+"I d-druther have that d-doll," chattered the mite of a girl; "an' that
+teeny little bedstead an' the chair what rocks, an' the baby trunk, an'
+the doll with curly hair, an'--"
+
+"Gee! look at the autymobile," cut in the boy, excitedly. "Say, if I had
+that--"
+
+"Well, you shall have it, you poor little mite,--or one just like it,"
+cried Genevieve impulsively, sweeping the astonished children into the
+circle of her arm, and hurrying them into the store.
+
+They did not get the "autymobile" nor yet the engine nor the big doll.
+Genevieve selected them, to be sure, with blithe promptness; but when
+she took out her purse, she found she had not half money enough to pay
+for them, which mortified and disappointed her greatly.
+
+"Dear, dear!" she laughed, blushing painfully. "I'm afraid I can't
+manage it, after all, chickabiddies. That horrid money of mine has given
+out! I bought more things than I meant to, anyhow. Never mind, we'll get
+all we can," she cried, emptying her little purse on the counter, even
+shaking it to make sure no lurking penny stayed behind. "There, you'll
+have to make that do," she said to the amazed clerk behind the counter.
+"Just please give them whatever you can for that." And the clerk,
+counting out one dollar and eighty-three cents, obeyed her literally.
+
+A few minutes later, two dazed, but blissfully happy children clasping
+in their arms a motley array of toys, and a laughing, bright-faced girl
+with a tan leather bag, joined the hurrying throng on the street.
+
+"Good-by, chickabiddies, and good luck to you," called Genevieve, waving
+her hand in farewell to the children, as she spied her car in the
+distance.
+
+"Poor little midgets!" thought Genevieve, as she stepped on to the car;
+"I don't think now they really believe they've got those things. But I
+do wish I could have bought all those first things they selected!" A
+moment later she took out her purse to pay her fare.
+
+The conductor, coming toward her just then, saw her face turn red, then
+white. The next minute she was on her feet, hurrying toward him.
+
+"Fare, please," he said mechanically, holding out his hand.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I--I don't want this car," she stammered faintly. "If you'll--stop,
+please." A moment later she rushed blindly through the door and down the
+steps to the street.
+
+Genevieve was thoroughly angry, and very much ashamed.
+
+"Now I reckon I've done it," she muttered half aloud. "No wonder they
+say I never stop to think! Seems to me I might have thought to save a
+nickel for my car-fare, though! Never mind, I'll walk it. Serves me
+right, anyhow, I reckon!" And determinedly she turned toward a woman
+near her and asked the way to the North Station.
+
+It would be something of a walk, the woman said, as she gave directions;
+but Genevieve declared she did not mind that. Very courageously,
+therefore, she turned a corner and began to thread her way among the
+crowd.
+
+She was laughing now. This thing was something of a joke, after all.
+Still, she was rather sorry it had happened--on Miss Jane's errand. She
+would be late home, too. (She pulled aside the lapel of her coat and
+glanced at her watch.) Five o'clock, already! It would be late, indeed,
+if she could not catch the five-fifteen! Still, there must be other
+trains, of course, and it took only an hour and twenty minutes to go--
+
+Genevieve stopped with a little cry of dismay. She remembered now that
+she had used the last of the commutation tickets. Miss Jane had told her
+to get a single-fare ticket for the return trip. And now--pray, how was
+one to buy any sort of fare without any money?
+
+A hurrying man jostled her, and Genevieve stepped into a doorway to
+think. Across the street a blue-bell-sign caught her attention, and sent
+a swift light to her eye.
+
+[Illustration: "IT WOULD BE SOMETHING OF A WALK, THE WOMAN SAID, AS SHE
+GAVE DIRECTIONS"]
+
+Why, of course! She would telephone for Aunt Julia to send Nancy or
+somebody in with some money. Why had she not thought of it before?
+
+She had pushed her way half across the crowded street when it occurred
+to her that she needed money to pay the telephone toll.
+
+"I never saw such a place! It takes money to do everything! I just hate
+cities," she stormed hotly--then jumped just in time to escape the
+wheels of a swiftly-moving automobile.
+
+Safely back in the doorway, she tried to think once more. Then, slowly,
+she began to retrace her steps toward the corner from which she had
+started.
+
+The crowds were just as gay, the Christmas reds and greens just as
+brilliant, and the tinsel stars and crystal pendants were just as
+sparkling; but Genevieve did not even look at them now. She was tired,
+ashamed, and thoroughly frightened. The bag, too, began to seem woefully
+full, and her stomach correspondingly empty.
+
+Curiously enough, after a time, the Christmas service of the day before
+rang in her ears. It seemed so far away now. And yet--it was only
+yesterday that she had been promising herself never again to be
+thoughtless, heedless, or impulsively reckless of consequences. And
+now--
+
+Suddenly she almost smiled. She was thinking of her question to Harold:
+
+"If you do something bad to do something good, which is it, good or
+bad?"
+
+One by one the minutes passed. It grew darker and colder. At times
+Genevieve walked on aimlessly. At others, she stood one side, watching
+the crowds, hoping to find some man or woman whom she could dare to ask
+for money. But her cheeks burned at the thought, and she never saw the
+man or woman whom she wanted to ask--for money. That the blue-coated man
+at the street-crossing might help her, never occurred to Genevieve.
+Genevieve knew policemen only as vaguely dreadful creatures connected
+with jails and arrests.
+
+In time it came to be quite dark. Genevieve wondered what would become
+of her--by midnight. People did not starve or die, she supposed, in
+Boston streets--not when the streets were as bright as these. But she
+_must_ get to Sunbridge. _Sunbridge!_ How worried they must be about her
+now in Sunbridge, and how she wished she were there! She would be glad
+to see even Miss Jane's severest frown--if she could see Miss Jane, too!
+
+It was six o'clock when Genevieve suddenly remembered Mr. and Mrs.
+Thomas Butterfield. She wondered then how it was possible that she had
+forgotten them so long.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield were two friends of Mrs. Kennedy's not
+very far from sixty years old. They lived in a quaint old house on Mt.
+Vernon Street, on top of Beacon Hill--Genevieve thought she remembered
+the number. She remembered the house very well, for she had called
+there twice with Mrs. Kennedy the winter before.
+
+It was with a glad little cry that Genevieve now turned to the first
+woman she met and asked the way to Mt. Vernon Street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the somber Butterfield dining-room on Mt. Vernon Street, Mr. and Mrs.
+Thomas Butterfield had almost finished dinner, when their pompous,
+plainly scandalized butler, standing beneath the severest of the severe
+Butterfield portraits, announced stiffly:
+
+"There's a young person at the door, ma'am, with a bag. She says she
+knows you, if you'll see her, please."
+
+One minute later, the astonished Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Butterfield caught
+in their arms a white-faced, almost fainting girl, who had sobbed out:
+
+"Please, won't you give me a little money and some supper, and telephone
+to Aunt Julia!"
+
+Seven minutes later Mr. Thomas Butterfield had Mrs. Kennedy at the other
+end of the wire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A BROWN DRESS FOR ELSIE
+
+
+Christmas, for Genevieve, was not a happy time that year; and when the
+day was over she tried to forget it as soon as possible.
+
+She had stayed all night with the Butterfields--which had not been
+unalloyed joy; for, though they obviously tried to be kind to her, yet
+they could not help showing that they regarded her sudden appearance
+among them, dinnerless and moneyless, as most extraordinary, and
+certainly very upsetting to the equanimity of a well-ordered household.
+
+In the morning she went back to Sunbridge. At the house she found Miss
+Chick ill. Her cold, and her fright over Genevieve, had sent her into a
+high fever; and Mrs. Kennedy was scarcely less ill herself.
+
+Certainly it was not exactly a cheerful Christmas Day for the one whose
+heedlessness had brought it all about. But Genevieve mourned so
+bitterly, and blamed herself so strongly, that at last, out of sheer
+pity, Mrs. Kennedy, and even Miss Jane Chick, had to turn comforter;
+for--as Mrs. Kennedy reminded her sister--it was, after all, aside from
+her thoughtless lack of haste, only Genevieve's unselfish forgetfulness
+of her own possible wants that led to the whole thing. Then, and not
+until then, did Genevieve bestow some attention upon her Christmas
+presents, of which there were a generous number.
+
+Fortunately no one outside the house had known of Genevieve's
+nonappearance that Christmas Eve, so she was spared any curious
+questions and interested comments from others of the Happy Hexagons.
+
+The short Christmas vacation sped rapidly. The young people spent much
+of it on the river, skating, when the ice was good. Genevieve, it is
+true, was not often seen there. Genevieve was playing nurse these days,
+and so devotedly attentive to Miss Jane Chick was she, that both the
+ladies had almost to scold her, in order to make her take needed
+exercise. Even Harold Day reproached her one morning, when he met her
+coming from the post-office.
+
+"You don't let any of us see anything of you--not anything," he
+complained. "And you look as if you were doing penance, or
+something--you've got such a superior expression!"
+
+Genevieve dimpled into a sudden laugh.
+
+"Maybe I am," she retorted. "Maybe I did something bad so I could do
+something good; and now I'm trying to do enough good to take out all the
+taste of the bad."
+
+"Well, what do you mean by that, Miss Mystery?"
+
+She would not tell him. She only shook her head saucily, and ran into
+the house.
+
+By New Year's Day Miss Jane seemed almost like her old self, and
+Genevieve was specially happy, for on that night Harold Day gave the
+first dance of the season; and, with Miss Jane better, and her own heart
+lighter once more, she could give herself up to full enjoyment of the
+music, fun, and laughter.
+
+All the Happy Hexagons were there, together with O. B. J. Holmes,
+Charlie Brown, and many other of the young people, including even Tilly
+Mack's big brother, Howard, who--though quite twenty-one--was a prime
+favorite with the Happy Hexagons.
+
+Genevieve was wonderfully happy that evening. Never had the music
+sounded so entrancing; never had her own feet felt so light. With Harold
+she "opened the ball," as Tilly airily termed it; then Charlie and O. B.
+J. had their turn.
+
+"Oh, Genevieve, you do look just too sweet for anything in that pale
+pink," panted Elsie, stopping at her side between dances.
+
+"Not any sweeter than you do in that white," tossed back Genevieve,
+affectionately.
+
+Elsie sighed.
+
+"I love this white, too, but it's got kind of frazzled now. Aunt Kate
+says she is going to make over Fannie's brown silk for Miss Sally's
+wedding," she went on, sighing again.
+
+"I'm sure that will be nice," rejoined Genevieve, with hasty politeness.
+
+"Y-yes," admitted Elsie; "only brown sounds kind of hot for April.
+Still, I suppose I ought not to mind. Just one girl wore it, anyhow, so
+it'll be faded even, and I sha'n't look like two folks in it," she
+finished wistfully, as Howard Mack came up to claim his dance with
+Genevieve.
+
+It was three days after the party that there came a letter from Mr.
+Jones in reply to Mrs. Kennedy's Christmas note. It was a very grateful
+letter, but it was a disappointing one. It said that Mr. Jones did not
+see how he could let Quentina accept the kind invitation of Mrs. Kennedy
+and Genevieve. All the way through it, very plainly was shown the
+longing of a man who desires advantages for his daughter, and the pride
+of one who cannot bear that outsiders should give them to her.
+
+Mrs. Kennedy saw this--and wrote another letter. In due time came the
+answer; and again Genevieve almost cried with disappointment. But Mrs.
+Kennedy smiled and comforted her.
+
+"Yes, he says 'no,' I'll admit, Genevieve; but I don't think it's quite
+so strong a 'no' as it was before. One of these days I think I'll write
+Mr. Jones another letter, my dear--but not just now. We'll let him
+think a little--of how good it would have been for Quentina if he'd said
+'yes.'"
+
+Genevieve gave Mrs. Kennedy a big hug.
+
+"Aunt Julia, you're a dear, and a veritable Solomon for wisdom. I'm
+going to write at once to the President, too. Your place is in the
+diplomatic service, I'm sure," she finished, as she danced from the
+room.
+
+As January passed and February came, a new subject came uppermost in the
+thoughts of the Hexagon Club. For the first time in years there was to
+be a prize contest in the Sunbridge High School. The principal, Mr.
+Jackson, was to give a five-dollar gold piece to the writer of the best
+essay, subject to be chosen by the author.
+
+"Well, I sha'n't try for it," announced Tilly on a Saturday afternoon
+late in February, as the Hexagon Club were holding their regular meeting
+at the parsonage.
+
+"Why not?" asked Elsie.
+
+"Because I don't like defeat well enough," retorted Tilly. "Imagine _me_
+winning a prize contest!"
+
+"Oh, I shall try," almost groaned Cordelia. "I shall always try for
+things, I suppose, till I die. I think I ought to; but of course I
+sha'n't win it. Dear me! How I would love to, though," she cried, almost
+under her breath.
+
+Genevieve, looking at her momentarily illumined face, was conscious of
+a sudden fierce wish that Cordelia might win that prize.
+
+"Genevieve, of course, will try," she heard Tilly's teasing voice say,
+then. "Genevieve loves to write, so!"
+
+Genevieve turned with a laugh, and an uptilted chin.
+
+"I take it, Miss Mack, that your very complimentary remarks refer to my
+magazine notes; but just let me assure you that this prize essay is
+quite another matter. _That_ isn't _printed_!"
+
+"Then you _are_ going to try?--of course you are," interposed Bertha.
+
+Genevieve laughed lightly as she reached for a piece of fudge.
+
+"I suppose so. I'm afraid everybody will expect me to. Aunt Julia has
+already expressed her opinion of the matter."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+February passed, and March came. A new topic of conversation now arose,
+specially of interest to the Hexagon Club. Miss Sally was to be married
+early in April, and the Happy Hexagons were to be bridesmaids.
+Naturally, even the new prize contest had to step one side for that
+month, in the minds of the six joyously excited girls.
+
+It was on a particularly windy Saturday toward the end of the month,
+that Cordelia literally blew up to the Kennedys' front door and rang the
+bell.
+
+Genevieve herself, passing through the hall, opened the door.
+
+"Br-r-r!" she laughed, as she banged the door shut after admitting the
+whirling draperies from which Cordelia's anxious little face finally
+emerged. "Why, Cordelia!"
+
+"Yes, I know; I'm going to be at the club this afternoon, of course,"
+panted Cordelia; "but this is for something I wanted to say to you--and
+I knew there wouldn't be a chance this afternoon. It--it's private,
+Genevieve."
+
+"Good! I love secrets. Come into the sitting room. There's no one there
+this morning. Now, what is it?" she demanded, as soon as Cordelia's coat
+was off, and they were comfortably seated.
+
+"It--I suppose you might call it missionary work, Genevieve," smiled
+Cordelia, wistfully.
+
+"_More_ missionary work? Who in the world wants to go to Texas now?"
+laughed Genevieve.
+
+"Nobody. It isn't Texas at all. It's--Elsie."
+
+"Elsie!"
+
+"Yes. Of course, dear, I don't know as you can do anything; but you've
+done so many things, and I'm sure if you could, it _would_ be missionary
+work of the very nicest kind."
+
+"What _are_ you talking about?"
+
+Cordelia drew a long sigh.
+
+"I'll tell you. You know the rest of us bridesmaids are all going to
+wear white, but--but Elsie's got to wear Fannie's brown silk."
+
+"I know," nodded Genevieve. "Elsie told me."
+
+"But, Genevieve, just think--brown silk for a bridesmaid at a wedding,
+when all the rest of us wear white! Besides, Elsie says brown is so
+hot-looking for April. She feels awfully about it."
+
+"Can't she do something? I should think she'd tell her aunt."
+
+"She has. But her aunt doesn't seem to understand. She says that the
+brown silk is whole and good, and far too valuable to throw away; and
+that it's all just Elsie's notion that she'd rather wear white."
+
+"Oh, but if she'd only understand!"
+
+"But that's just it--she doesn't understand. And it isn't as if they
+were poor," argued Cordelia, earnestly. "Now auntie has to make over
+things, of course, for me and for Edith and Rachel, and we expect it,
+and don't mind. We're all glad to be economical and help out, for we
+know it's necessary. But it's different with Elsie. She _says_ she
+wouldn't mind so, if they were poor and had to. But the Gales are real
+well off--Fannie and the twins have lots of new clothes. Poor Elsie says
+sometimes it seems as if her aunt actually bought things for them, so
+she _could_ make them over for her. Elsie says she's never so happy as
+when she's doing it, and that she makes a regular game of it--cutting
+them out and putting them together--like picture puzzles, you know."
+
+Genevieve laughed, though she frowned, too.
+
+"But what can I do?" she demanded. "I tried, once, to--to lend Elsie a
+dress; but she was horrified."
+
+"Mercy! Of course she was," shuddered Cordelia. "I don't know _what_
+Mrs. Gale would do if she knew that! They're fearfully--er--er--proud, I
+suppose you call it," hesitated the conscientious Cordelia.
+
+"But what _can_ I do?"
+
+"I don't know; but don't you suppose you could--could say something,
+somehow, to Mrs. Gale that--that would make her understand?"
+
+"Why, Cordelia Wilson, of course I couldn't," gasped Genevieve,
+indignantly. "A pretty picture I'd make going to Mrs. Gale and saying:
+'Madam, why don't you give your niece a new dress when you know she
+wants one?'"
+
+"N-no, I suppose you couldn't do that, of course," sighed the other.
+"Very likely you couldn't do anything, anyway. It's only that I
+thought--well, I knew you were going home with Elsie after school Monday
+night to study; and I didn't know but you'd get a chance to say
+something. But I suppose, after all, there won't be anything you could
+say."
+
+"No, I suppose there won't," echoed Genevieve, still plainly appalled
+at the task Cordelia had set for her.
+
+"Well, it's only that I was so sorry for Elsie," sighed Cordelia, as she
+rose to go.
+
+"Of course! I reckon we're all sorry for Elsie," sighed Genevieve in her
+turn.
+
+And she was sorry. All the rest of the morning she kept thinking how
+very sorry she was; and when afternoon came, and when she saw Elsie's
+lips quiver and her eyes fill with tears, as the others happily
+discussed whether they would wear colored sashes or white belts with
+their white dresses, Genevieve's heart quite overflowed with sympathy
+for Elsie. And she wondered if, after all, it were possible to make
+Elsie's aunt--understand. Determinedly, then, she declared to herself
+that, regardless of consequences, she would try--if she had the
+opportunity.
+
+Genevieve's opportunity came very soon after she arrived at Elsie's home
+Monday afternoon. Even Genevieve herself had to admit that she could not
+have had a better one. But so frightened was she that she wished--for a
+moment--that there were none. Then before her rose a vision of Elsie's
+tear-dimmed eyes and quivering lips--and with a quick-drawn breath
+Genevieve rose and followed Mrs. Gale to the sewing-room.
+
+"Come with me," Mrs. Gale had said to Genevieve--Genevieve had picked up
+a scrap of brown silk from the floor. "That's a piece of the dress I'm
+making for Elsie to wear to the wedding. The silly child has got a
+notion she wants white, but you'll think this is pretty, I'm sure." And
+it was then that Genevieve knew her opportunity had come.
+
+In the sewing-room Mrs. Gale proudly spread the silk dress over a
+chair-back.
+
+"There! What do you think of that?" she demanded.
+
+Genevieve's heart beat so loudly she thought Mrs. Gale must hear it.
+
+"It--it's very pretty, isn't it?" she stammered, wetting her dry lips
+and wondering what good it did to say that.
+
+"Pretty? Of course it is. It's silk, and a fine piece--I thought when I
+got it how splendidly it would make over. I'm sure any girl ought to be
+proud to wear it!"
+
+Genevieve caught her breath sharply. "Proud"--Mrs. Gale had said
+"proud"; and Cordelia had said, that morning, that Mrs. Gale herself was
+very proud, and that she would be very angry if she knew that Genevieve
+had offered Elsie a dress to wear. In a flash of inspiration, then, came
+a wild plan to Genevieve's mind. If only she had the audacity to carry
+it out!
+
+She wet her lips again, and took desperate hold of her courage. Even as
+she did so, she almost smiled--she was thinking: was this another case
+when she was doing something bad to do something good? Never mind; she
+must go through with it now. She _must_!
+
+"Yes, it is a very pretty dress, indeed," she stammered; "and it was
+Fannie's, too, wasn't it?"
+
+Mrs. Gale beamed.
+
+"Yes!--and didn't I get it out finely? You know sleeves are smaller, so
+that helped, and the breadths were so full last year! I think I never
+got a dress out better," she finished proudly.
+
+Genevieve touched the folds lightly.
+
+"And this isn't faded at all, is it?" she murmured pleasantly.
+
+"What?" Mrs. Gale's voice was a little sharp.
+
+Genevieve wet her lips twice this time before she could speak.
+
+"I say, isn't it nice that this one isn't faded? You know Elsie had such
+a time with that chambray last summer!"
+
+"What do you mean, please?" There was no doubt now about the sharpness
+in Mrs. Gale's voice.
+
+Genevieve managed a laugh--but it was not a very mirthful one.
+
+"Why, 'twas so funny, you know; it was made from the twins' dresses, and
+they weren't faded alike. It was just as Elsie said--she didn't know
+whether to turn Cora or Clara toward folks. It _was_ funny; only, of
+course it did plague poor Elsie awfully, and I felt so sorry for her."
+
+"You felt sorry--_sorry_ for _my niece_?" The voice was so very angry
+this time that Genevieve trembled. She was sure now that it was
+bad--this thing she was doing--that good might come. But she kept
+bravely on.
+
+"Why, yes, of course; all of us girls were sorry for her. You know Elsie
+does so love new dresses, and of course she doesn't have them very
+often. Last summer, when she was feeling so bad over her chambray, I--I
+offered her one of mine, but--"
+
+"You--you offered my niece one of _your_ dresses?" gasped Mrs. Gale.
+
+"Yes, but she wouldn't take it; and, of course, _that_ wasn't _new_,
+either," finished Genevieve, with what she hoped would pass for a light
+laugh as she turned away.
+
+Behind her, for a moment, there was an ominous silence. Then a very
+quiet voice said:
+
+"Thank you; but I hardly think my niece needs one of your dresses--yet,
+Miss Genevieve."
+
+Genevieve fled then, ashamed, and very near to crying.
+
+"I wouldn't have said it, of course," she whispered to herself as she
+stumbled back to the sitting-room; "I wouldn't have said it if the Gales
+had been poor and _couldn't_ have given Elsie new things to wear once in
+a while!"
+
+In the Chronicles of the Hexagon Club a fortnight later, it was Elsie
+Martin who wrote the account of Miss Sally's wedding. She wrote as
+follows:
+
+"I had a beautiful white dress for Miss Sally's wedding--a brand-new
+one. All of us girls wore white and looked so pretty--I mean, the rest
+looked pretty, of course. Miss Sally was married the tenth of April. It
+was quite a warm day, and I was so glad I did not have to wear my brown
+silk. Aunt Kate says I needn't wear it anywhere if I don't want to--and
+after all her work, too! I don't know what has got into Aunt Kate,
+anyway, lately. She doesn't seem half so interested in making over
+things, and I have three other brand-new dresses, a pink-sprigged
+muslin, and--but, dear me! This isn't telling about Miss Sally's wedding
+one bit.
+
+"She was married at four o'clock, and looked too sweet for anything in
+light gray silk with a pink carnation in her hair. Everybody went, and
+wore their best things and looked very nice. We had sandwiches and
+chicken salad and olives and three kinds of cake and ice cream for
+refreshments. The ice cream was the brick kind, different colors, like
+lovely striped ribbon.
+
+"At six o'clock they started for Boston to begin their journey West, and
+we all stood on the steps and gave them a lovely send-off with rice and
+old shoes. Just at the last minute Tilly says, 'Let's give her our
+Texas yell, and end with "Miss Sally,"' and we did. And everybody
+laughed and clapped. But not until the carriage drove off did we
+suddenly remember that she wasn't 'Miss Sally' at all any more, and we
+felt ashamed.
+
+"And that's all--except that Miss Sally's going-away gown was gray,
+too."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+"WHEN SUNBRIDGE WENT TO TEXAS"
+
+
+By the first of May many of the papers for the new prize contest had
+been turned in. Genevieve's, however, had not. Genevieve was working
+very hard on her essay now. For some time she had not found a subject
+that suited her. Good subjects were not very plentiful, she decided. At
+last she had thought of the Texas trip, and had wondered if she could
+not compare Sunbridge with Texas. Aunt Julia and Miss Jane had thought
+decidedly that she could. So for some days now, she had been hard at
+work upon the paper, and was getting enthusiastically interested.
+
+All papers must be in by the sixteenth. It was on the tenth that
+Cordelia, during a recess meeting of the Hexagon Club, drew a long
+breath and turned upon her fellow members a beaming countenance.
+
+"Girls, I can't keep it a minute longer. I've got to tell you!"
+
+"Tell us what?" asked Tilly. "It must be something pretty fine to bring
+that look to your face!"
+
+Cordelia laughed and blushed; but she sighed, too.
+
+"Oh, it isn't 'fine,' Tilly, at all. I wish it were, though--but really,
+I do think it's the best thing I ever did, anyway."
+
+"What are you talking about, Cordelia Wilson?" demanded Genevieve.
+
+"Mercy! It must be pretty good if it's the _best_ thing Cordelia ever
+did," teased Bertha.
+
+"Girls, stop," begged Cordelia, in real distress. "I--I hate to tell you
+now; it sounds so foolish. It's only--my prize paper. It's all done. I'm
+going to hand it in Monday, and--and I was so pleased with the subject!"
+
+"Oh, Cordelia, what is it? You know what mine is," cried Elsie.
+
+"It's--'When Sunbridge went to Texas,'" announced Cordelia,
+breathlessly.
+
+"When--what?" cried Genevieve, almost sharply.
+
+Cordelia turned a happy face.
+
+"I knew _you'd_ like it, Genevieve," she nodded. "It's our trip, you
+know. I've told all about it--comparing things here to things there, you
+see."
+
+"Why--but, Cordelia, that's--" Genevieve paused abruptly. The pause in
+her sentence was not noticed. The girls were all talking now, begging
+Cordelia to tell them if they were "in it."
+
+"When--when did you choose your subject, Cordelia?" asked Genevieve,
+very quietly, when she could be heard.
+
+"Not until the first of May. I just couldn't seem to get anything. Then
+this came all of a sudden, and--and it just seemed to write itself, it
+was done so quickly. You see I didn't have to look up this subject."
+
+Genevieve's face cleared. It was all right, after all. _She_ had
+selected the subject a whole week before Cordelia--and of course
+Cordelia would understand.
+
+"Oh, but Cordelia, that isn't quite fair," she began impulsively; but
+for once Cordelia forgot her politeness and interrupted.
+
+"Don't you worry, Genevieve," she laughed gayly. "I've said lovely
+things of Texas. You'd know I'd do that, Genevieve, even if I do love
+Sunbridge. I did worry at first for fear somebody else had taken the
+same subject--some of you girls--you know we can't have two about the
+same thing."
+
+"But--" The bell rang for the close of recess, and again one of
+Genevieve's sentences remained unfinished.
+
+Genevieve did not stop even to speak to any of the girls after school
+that day. She went home at once. Even Harold Day, who overtook her,
+found her so absorbed in her own thoughts that she was anything but her
+usual talkative self.
+
+Once in the house, Genevieve went straight to Mrs. Kennedy.
+
+"Aunt Julia, if you get a prize subject first, it's yours, isn't it?"
+she asked tremulously.
+
+"Why, y-yes, dear; I should think so."
+
+"Well, Aunt Julia, something perfectly awful has happened. Cordelia has
+got my subject."
+
+"Oh, Genevieve, I'm so sorry!" Mrs. Kennedy's face showed more than
+ordinary distress--Mrs. Kennedy had had high hopes of this prize paper.
+"Why, how did it happen?"
+
+"I don't know. I suppose it was just in the air. But _I_ got it first.
+She says she didn't think of it till May first. So of course it's--it's
+mine, Aunt Julia."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy looked very grave.
+
+"I think the rules of the contest would give it to you, Genevieve," she
+said.
+
+The girl stirred restlessly.
+
+"Of course I'm awfully sorry. She--she was going to hand it in Monday."
+
+"Oh, that is too bad!"
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"I suppose I--I'll have to tell her," murmured Genevieve, at last. "The
+club have a ride to-morrow. There'll be time--then."
+
+"Yes--if you decide to do it."
+
+Genevieve turned quickly.
+
+"But, Aunt Julia, I'll have to," she cried. "Just think of all my work!
+Mine's all done but copying, you know. And I _was_ the first to get it.
+There's no time to get another now."
+
+"No, there's no time to get another--now." Aunt Julia looked even more
+sorrowful than Genevieve just then--Aunt Julia _had_ wanted Genevieve to
+take that prize.
+
+"I'm sure that Cordelia--when she knows--" Genevieve did not finish her
+sentence.
+
+"No, indeed! Of course, if Cordelia should know--" Aunt Julia did not
+finish _her_ sentence.
+
+"But, Aunt Julia, she'll have to know," almost sobbed Genevieve.
+
+There was a long silence. Genevieve's eyes were out the window. Mrs.
+Kennedy, watching her, suddenly spoke up with careless briskness:
+
+"Of course you'll tell Cordelia that 'twas _your_ subject, that _you_
+got it first, and that _you_ want it. Very likely she won't care much,
+anyway."
+
+"Why, Aunt Julia, she will! If you could have seen her face when she
+talked of it--" Genevieve stopped abruptly. Genevieve _did_ suddenly see
+Cordelia's face as it had been that afternoon, all aglow with happiness.
+She heard her eager voice say, too: "I think it's the best thing I ever
+did!"
+
+"Oh, well, but maybe she doesn't care for the prize," observed Mrs.
+Kennedy, still carelessly.
+
+"But, Aunt Julia, she does; she--" Again Genevieve stopped abruptly. She
+was remembering now how Cordelia's face had looked that February
+afternoon at the parsonage when she had said: "Of course I sha'n't win
+it--dear me, how I would love to, though!"
+
+"But she'll understand, of course, when you tell her it's _your_ subject
+and that _you_ want it," went on Mrs. Kennedy, smoothly. Genevieve did
+not see the keen, almost fearful glances, that Mrs. Kennedy was giving
+her between the light words.
+
+"I know; but that sounds so--so--" There was a long pause; then
+Genevieve, with a quivering sigh, rose slowly and left the room.
+
+Mrs. Kennedy, for some unapparent reason, smiled--but there were tears
+in her eyes.
+
+The Hexagon Club took a long ride the next day. Five of them talked
+again of Cordelia's paper, and four begged Cordelia to tell what she had
+said about them. If Genevieve, alone, was unusually silent, nobody,
+apparently, noticed it. They were riding by themselves to-day. They had
+invited none of the boys or other girls to join them.
+
+It was when the ride was over, and when Genevieve had almost reached the
+Kennedy driveway, that she said wistfully, stroking the mare's neck:
+
+"Topsy, I just couldn't. I just couldn't! It sounded so--so--And, Topsy,
+_you_ couldn't, if you'd seen how awfully happy she looked!"
+
+"What did Cordelia say?" asked Mrs. Kennedy, when Genevieve came into
+the house a little later. There was no hint in the lady's voice of the
+hope that was in her heart.
+
+"I--I didn't tell her, Aunt Julia," stammered Genevieve. Then, with a
+playful whimsicality that did not in the least deceive Aunt Julia's
+ears, she added: "Who wants that old prize, anyhow?"
+
+It was a beautiful smile, then, that illumined Aunt Julia's face, and it
+was a very tender kiss that fell on Genevieve's forehead.
+
+"That's my brave Genevieve--and I'm sure you'll never regret it, my
+dear!" she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+May passed, and June came, bringing warm, sunny days that were very
+tempting to feet that were longing to be tramping through green woods
+and fields. Examinations, however, were coming soon, and Genevieve knew
+that, tempting as was the beautiful out-of-doors, studies must come
+first. Every possible minute, however, she spent in rides, walks, and
+tennis playing--even Miss Jane insisted that she must have exercise.
+
+June brought not only alluring days, however, but a letter from
+Quentina, which sent Genevieve flying into Mrs. Kennedy's room.
+
+"Aunt Julia, did you write again to Mr. Jones?"
+
+"I did," smiled Mrs. Kennedy, "and I have a letter from him to-day."
+
+"You darling! Then you know, of course! Oh, Aunt Julia, isn't it
+lovely! I just can't wait till to-morrow to tell the girls."
+
+Genevieve did wait, however--she waited even till the morning recess.
+She wanted all the Happy Hexagons together; and when she had them
+together she told them the astounding news in one breathless rush of
+words.
+
+"Girls, Quentina's coming next year to school. She's going to room with
+me. Isn't it lovely!"
+
+There was a chorus of delighted questions and exclamations; but
+Genevieve lifted her hand.
+
+"Sh-h! Listen. I've got her letter here. You must hear it!" and she
+whipped open the letter and began to read:
+
+          "Oh--oh--It isn't true--it can't be true! But
+          father says it is, and father doesn't lie. I'm to
+          go to Sunbridge. Sunbridge! I think Sunbridge is
+          the loveliest name in the world--for a town, I
+          mean, of course.
+
+          "DEAR GENEVIEVE:--There! this is actually the
+          first minute I could bring myself to begin this
+          letter properly. Really, a thing like this can't
+          just begin, you know! And to think that I'm going
+          to see Paul Revere's grave and Bunker Hill and you
+          just next September! Oh, how can I ever thank you
+          and dear Mrs. Kennedy? I love her, love her, love
+          her--right now! And all the Happy Hexagons--I
+          love them, too. I love everybody and
+          everything--I'm going to Sunbridge!
+
+          "All day I've been saying over and over to myself
+          that song in the 'Lady of the Lake,' only I've
+          changed the words a little to fit my case; like
+          this:
+
+             "'Quentina, rest! thy longing o'er,
+                 Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking;
+               Dream of Texas schools no more,
+                 Days of longing, nights of sighing
+               For Paul Revere's enchanted land.
+                 Hands unseen thy days are planning,
+               Fairy strains of music falling
+                 Every sense is up and calling,
+               Quentina, rest! thy longing o'er,
+                 East thy steps will turn once more.'
+
+          "That 'more' is poetry, but a fib; for of course I
+          haven't been East at all yet. But that's just
+          poetic license, you know--fibs like that.
+
+          "Oh, I just can't wait for September!
+
+                                   "Your happy, happy
+                                               "QUENTINA."
+
+"My, but won't she be a picnic when she gets here?" chuckled Tilly, as
+soon as she could stop laughing long enough to find her voice.
+
+"What in the world is the matter with you girls?" demanded Charlie
+Brown, sauntering up to them, arm in arm with O. B. J. Holmes.
+
+Tilly turned merrily.
+
+"Matter! I guess you'll think something is the matter when Quentina
+Jones gets here," she laughed.
+
+"Who is Quentina Jones?"
+
+"She is a new girl who is coming to school next year," explained Elsie.
+
+"She's from Texas, and she's never been East before," chimed in Bertha.
+
+"Yes, and as for you, Mr. Obejay Holmes," teased Tilly, "just you wait!
+There's no telling what she will do with your name!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+O. B. J. spoke to Tilly, but he threw a merry glance into Genevieve's
+understanding eyes.
+
+"Nothing, only she's a regular walking rhyming dictionary, and I can
+just fancy how those mysterious initials of yours will fire her up. My
+poor little 'O Be Joyful' won't be in it, then. You'll see!"
+
+"I don't worry any," laughed O. B. J. Holmes, with another merry glance
+at Genevieve.
+
+"You don't have to," interposed Genevieve, promptly. "Quentina is
+everything that is sweet and lovely, and you'll all like her; I know you
+will," she finished, as the bell rang and the boys turned laughingly
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A GOOD-BY PARTY
+
+
+The June days sped so rapidly that Genevieve wondered where they went,
+sometimes. School was to close the twenty-third. Mr. Hartley was to
+arrive on the twentieth. Meanwhile examinations and the prize contest
+were uppermost in every one's thoughts. Graduation exercises were to
+come in the evening. The winner of the prize was to be announced at that
+time, also.
+
+"And really, you know, the announcement of the prize-winner is all we
+care about specially," Elsie said one day, in the presence of a group of
+her friends on the schoolhouse steps.
+
+"Just you wait till you graduate," laughed back Bertha's brother,
+Charlie, "and then I guess the _evening_ exercises will be of some
+consequence."
+
+"Of course--but that won't be till two years from now," cried Genevieve.
+
+"Then you girls will be thinking more of frills and furbelows than you
+will of prizes," laughed Harold Day.
+
+"I've got a new white dress for Graduation night," said Elsie in a low
+voice to Genevieve, "and I don't believe I could have a prettier one,
+even then."
+
+"Another new white dress?" demanded Tilly, who had heard the aside.
+"Why, Elsie Martin, you had one for Miss Sally's wedding!"
+
+Elsie laughed happily.
+
+"I know--but this is a muslin. Aunt Kate seemed to want me to have
+it--and of course I'd love to have it, myself!"
+
+Genevieve, for some reason, looked suddenly very happy, so much so that
+Harold, watching her, said quietly a minute later:
+
+"Well, young lady, what's gone specially right with your world to-day?"
+
+Genevieve laughed and blushed. She shook her head roguishly. Then
+suddenly she rejoined:
+
+"I reckon one of my awfully bad things has turned out all good--that's
+all!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+True to his word, Mr. Hartley came on the twentieth. He was to be Mrs.
+Kennedy's guest until the start for Texas after school had closed.
+
+"My, dearie! how fine and tall we are growing," he greeted his daughter
+affectionately. "Looks like Mr. Tim and the boys won't know you, I'm
+thinking!"
+
+"Nonsense! Of course they will--and I can't hardly wait to see them,
+either," cried Genevieve.
+
+It is doubtful if, on Graduation night, Cordelia Wilson herself listened
+to the announcement of the prize-winner any more anxiously than did
+Genevieve. It seemed as if she could not bear it--after what had
+happened--if Cordelia did not get the prize. And Cordelia got it.
+
+"'When Sunbridge went to Texas,'" read Mr. Jackson, "Cordelia Wilson."
+And it was Genevieve who clapped the loudest.
+
+Cordelia, certainly, was beatifically happy. And when Genevieve saw her
+amazed, but joyously happy face, she wondered why she should suddenly
+want to cry--for, surely, she had never felt happier in her life.
+
+Graduation day, for the Happy Hexagons, was not, after all, quite the
+last meeting together; for Mrs. Kennedy gave Genevieve a porch party the
+night before she was to start back to Texas with Mr. Hartley.
+
+A very merry crowd of boys and girls it was that sang college songs and
+told stories that night on the Kennedys' roomy, electric-lighted
+veranda.
+
+"It seems just as if I couldn't have you go away," sighed Cordelia, at
+last, to Genevieve.
+
+"But I'm coming back next year."
+
+"Mercy! We couldn't stand it if you weren't," cried Tilly.
+
+"And just think--last year we all went back with you," murmured Elsie.
+
+"I wish you were going this year," declared Genevieve.
+
+"I guess you aren't the only one that wishes that," cut in several
+longing voices.
+
+"Well, we'll take you all now--if you'll go," retorted Genevieve,
+merrily.
+
+"_All_--did you say?" challenged Harold Day.
+
+"Yes, all," nodded Genevieve, emphatically. "We'd be glad to have you,
+every one of you."
+
+"Well, I begin to think you would--now that I've seen Texas," sighed
+Tilly. "But I suppose we shall have to content ourselves till you come
+back this time."
+
+"And this wonderful little rhyming dictionary, as Miss Tilly calls
+her--does she come back with you?" asked O. B. J. Holmes.
+
+"Maybe. She comes next fall, anyway, before school begins," smiled
+Genevieve.
+
+"Well, what I want to know is, if you are going to do any more Texas
+missionary work," suggested Charlie Brown.
+
+"Pooh! She doesn't do that there--she does that here," cut in Tilly.
+
+"There isn't any more to do, anyway," declared the exact Cordelia,
+happily. "She's got everything fixed even down to Elsie's--" She stopped
+just in time, but already Genevieve had interposed hurriedly:
+
+"Oh, but it wasn't I that did anything. It was Cordelia. She found them
+to begin with, you know--Reddy, and Hermit Joe's son."
+
+Mrs. Kennedy and Miss Jane, together with Nancy appeared just then with
+great plates of ice cream and delicious cake; and after that, all too
+soon, came the time for good-nights. The good-nights were not quite
+finished, however, until at the foot of the walk, five members of the
+Hexagon Club turned, and all together gave their Texas yell with a lusty
+"Genevieve" at the end that brought the tears to the real Genevieve's
+eyes.
+
+          "Texas, Texas, Tex--Tex--Texas!
+           Texas, Texas, Rah! Rah! Rah!
+           GENEVIEVE!"
+
+"Mercy! What will the neighbors say--at this time of night!" protested
+Miss Jane Chick, feebly; but her eyes, too, were moist.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
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+IN THE DESERT OF WAITING: THE LEGEND OF CAMELBACK MOUNTAIN.
+
+THE THREE WEAVERS: A FAIRY TALE FOR FATHERS AND MOTHERS AS WELL AS FOR
+THEIR DAUGHTERS.
+
+KEEPING TRYST
+
+THE LEGEND OF THE BLEEDING HEART
+
+THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME: A FAIRY PLAY FOR OLD AND YOUNG.
+
+THE JESTER'S SWORD
+
+Each one volume, tall 16mo, cloth decorative $0.50
+
+There has been a constant demand for publication in separate form of
+these six stories which were originally included in six of the "Little
+Colonel" books.
+
+
+JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE: BY ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON. Illustrated by L.
+J. Bridgman.
+
+New illustrated edition, uniform with the Little Colonel Books, 1 vol.,
+large 12mo, cloth decorative $1.50
+
+A story of the time of Christ, which is one of the author's best-known
+books.
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL GOOD TIMES BOOK
+
+          Uniform in size with the Little Colonel Series        $1.50
+          Bound in white kid (morocco) and gold                  3.00
+
+Cover design and decorations by Peter Verberg.
+
+Published in response to many inquiries from readers of the Little
+Colonel books as to where they could obtain a "Good Times Book" such as
+Betty kept.
+
+
+THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK
+
+          Large quarto, boards                                  $1.50
+
+A series of "Little Colonel" dolls. There are many of them and each has
+several changes of costume, so that the happy group can be appropriately
+clad for the rehearsal of any scene or incident in the series.
+
+
+ASA HOLMES; OR, AT THE CROSS-ROADS. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON.
+
+With a frontispiece by Ernest Fosbery.
+
+          Large 16mo, cloth, gilt top                           $1.00
+
+"'Asa Holmes; Or, At the Cross-Roads' is the most delightful, most
+sympathetic and wholesome book that has been published in a long
+while."--_Boston Times._
+
+
+TRAVELERS FIVE: ALONG LIFE'S HIGHWAY. By ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON.
+
+With an introduction by Bliss Carman, and a frontispiece by E. H.
+Garrett.
+
+          Cloth decorative                                      $1.25
+
+"Mrs. Johnston's ... are of the character that cause the mind to grow
+gravely meditative, the eyes to shine with tender mist, and the heart
+strings to stir to strange, sweet music of human sympathy."--_Los
+Angeles Graphic._
+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF HENRY BURNS. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH.
+
+          Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated.           $1.50
+
+A story of a party of typical American lads, courageous, alert, and
+athletic, who spend a summer camping on an island off the Maine coast.
+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS AFLOAT; OR, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING. By RUEL PERLEY
+SMITH.
+
+          Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated.           $1.50
+
+This book is a continuation of the adventures of "The Rival Campers" on
+their prize yacht _Viking_.
+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS ASHORE
+
+By RUEL PERLEY SMITH.
+
+          Square 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated           $1.50
+
+"As interesting ashore as when afloat."--_The Interior._
+
+
+THE RIVAL CAMPERS AMONG THE OYSTER PIRATES; OR, JACK HARVEY'S
+ADVENTURES.
+
+          By RUEL PERLEY SMITH. Illustrated                     $1.50
+
+"Just the type of book which is most popular with lads who are in their
+early teens."--_The Philadelphia Item._
+
+
+A TEXAS BLUE BONNET
+
+By CAROLINE EMILIA JACOBS (EMILIA ELLIOTT).
+
+          12mo, illustrated                                    $1.50
+
+"The book's heroine Blue Bonnet has the very finest kind of wholesome,
+honest lively girlishness and cannot but make friends with every one who
+meets her through the book as medium."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
+
+
+BLUE BONNET'S RANCH PARTY
+
+A Sequel to "A Texas Blue Bonnet." By CAROLINE ELLIOTT JACOBS and EDITH
+ELLERBECK READ.
+
+          12mo, illustrated                                    $1.50
+
+The new story begins where the first volume leaves off and takes Blue
+Bonnet and the "We Are Seven Club" to the ranch in Texas. The tables are
+completely turned: Blue Bonnet is here in her natural element, while her
+friends from Woodford have to learn the customs and traditions of
+another world.
+
+
+THE GIRLS OF FRIENDLY TERRACE OR, PEGGY RAYMOND'S SUCCESS. By
+HARRIET LUMMIS SMITH.
+
+          12mo, illustrated                                    $1.50
+
+This is a book that will gladden the hearts of many girl readers because
+of its charming air of comradeship and reality. It is a very interesting
+group of girls who live on Friendly Terrace and their good times and
+other times are graphically related by the author, who shows a
+sympathetic knowledge of girl character.
+
+
+PEGGY RAYMOND'S VACATION; OR, FRIENDLY TERRACE TRANSPLANTED.
+
+A Sequel to "The Girls of Friendly Terrace." By HARRIET LUMMIS SMITH.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated.               $1.50
+
+Readers who made the acquaintance of Peggy Raymond and her bevy of girl
+chums in "The Girls of Friendly Terrace" will be glad to continue the
+acquaintance of these attractive young folks.
+
+Several new characters are introduced, and one at least will prove a not
+unworthy rival of the favorites among the Terrace girls.
+
+
+THE HADLEY HALL SERIES
+
+_By LOUISE M. BREITENBACH_
+
+   _Each, library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated_         $1.50
+
+
+ALMA AT HADLEY HALL
+
+"Miss Breitenbach is to be congratulated on having written such an
+appealing book for girls, and the girls are to be congratulated on
+having the privilege of reading it."--_The Detroit Free Press._
+
+
+ALMA'S SOPHOMORE YEAR
+
+"The characters are strongly drawn with a life-like realism, the
+incidents are well and progressively sequenced, and the action is so
+well timed that the interest never slackens."--_Boston Ideas._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR RANCH. By ELEANOR STUART.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated                $1.50
+
+Any girl of any age who is fond of outdoor life will appreciate this
+fascinating tale of Genevieve Hartley's summer vacation house-party on a
+Texas ranch. Genevieve and her friends are real girls, the kind that one
+would like to have in one's own home, and there are a couple of manly
+boys introduced.
+
+
+BEAUTIFUL JOE'S PARADISE; OR, THE ISLAND OF BROTHERLY LOVE. A Sequel
+to "Beautiful Joe." By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful Joe."
+
+    One vol., library 12mo, cloth illustrated                  $1.50
+
+"This book revives the spirit of 'Beautiful Joe' capitally. It is fairly
+riotous with fun, and is about as unusual as anything in the animal book
+line that has seen the light."--_Philadelphia Item._
+
+
+'TILDA JANE. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS.
+
+    One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,       $1.50
+
+"It is one of those exquisitely simple and truthful books that win and
+charm the reader, and I did not put it down until I had finished
+it--honest! And I am sure that every one, young or old, who reads will
+be proud and happy to make the acquaintance of the delicious waif.
+
+"I cannot think of any better book for children than this. I commend it
+unreservedly."--_Cyrus T. Brady._
+
+
+'TILDA JANE'S ORPHANS. A Sequel to "'Tilda Jane." By MARSHALL
+SAUNDERS.
+
+    One vol., 12mo, fully illustrated, cloth decorative,       $1.50
+
+'Tilda Jane is the same original, delightful girl, and as fond of her
+animal pets as ever.
+
+"There is so much to this story that it is almost a novel--in fact it is
+better than many novels, although written for only young people.
+Compared with much of to-day's juveniles it is quite a superior
+book."--_Chicago Tribune._
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE GRAVELYS. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "Beautiful
+Joe's Paradise," "'Tilda Jane," etc.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative. Illustrated by E. B. Barry $1.50
+
+Here we have the haps and mishaps, the trials and triumphs, of a
+delightful New England family.
+
+
+PUSSY BLACK-FACE. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS, author of "'Tilda Jane,"
+"'Tilda Jane's Orphans," etc.
+
+    Library 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated                $1.50
+
+This is a delightful little story of animal life, written in this
+author's best vein, dealing especially with Pussy Black-Face, a little
+Beacon Street (Boston) kitten, who is the narrator.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors corrected.
+
+Page 320, missing text supplied original read "jostled ..er, and
+Genevieve stepped into a doorway to thin.. Across the street a blue-bell
+sign caught her at..ention, and sent a swift light to her eye." The
+missing text was inserted.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SUNBRIDGE GIRLS AT SIX STAR
+RANCH***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25578.txt or 25578.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/5/7/25578
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #25578 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25578)