There was no going to bed for Hilda now. Once out of Uncle Hank’s sight, she turned and ran noiselessly through the dim, empty, clean-smelling kitchen to the cyclone cellar, lighted her candle and began, with feverish eagerness, a letter to Pearse. She was tingling with a joy that had to express itself; all thought of her unsatisfactory talk with Pearse was swept away or changed. He’d be as glad of this chance to see her, where they could openly be friends, as she was.

Out over the page bubbled her child’s heart, which was scarcely yet the young girl’s heart, accusing herself—“I was horrid”—“I know you’ll forgive me”—“Just cross and tired”—“and hate to have to meet you on the sly.” She was almost drowned in the wonderfulness of the thought that at last they were to be together without deceit and without fear. The delight of it singing in her veins, she wrote with impulsive confidence. “Won’t it be lovely not to have to hide or tell any fibs, and to have our visit out at last? I have so many books I want to talk over with you. I have read all of Dickens—have you? Which one do you think is the best? Of course the critics praise ‘David Copperfield,’ but I love ‘Tale of Two Cities.’ I can’t ever read that last chapter without crying, and I’ve read it very, very many times.”

So, in sheer joy of heart, the letter ran on and on. It was nearly ten o’clock when it was finally stamped and addressed, and she slipped upstairs to find Burch in the front hall calling excitedly for Uncle Hank, who was just going up the stairs to his own room.

“I tell you I saw it just as plain as I see that lamp. Buster saw it, too.”

“I reckon it was the lamp—the shine of it through the winder, you know,” Hank argued calmly. “Don’t disturb your auntie.”

“What was it, Buddie?” inquired Hilda.

“A fire, out there in the brush by the irrigating ditch,” Burch replied, glad to have a listener who might display some excitement. “Buster and I were coming over from the bunk-house, and we saw it in that vine there, all blazing. We ran as hard as we could and hollered to the boys to bring a bucket—and just before we got there it suddenly went out.”

“Why, that’s queer,” laughed Hilda nervously. How careless of her to have forgotten the open shutter!

The letter was sent. She could not put it into the general mail. The secrecy she felt obliged to maintain brought some small twinges of conscience; yet it contributed an added thrill, too. She gave the missive to Sam Kee and asked him to post it when he went in to Dawn the next day.

There followed a time of anxious waiting. It seemed to Hilda that discovery would be certain if the letter came after she was gone and had to be forwarded. It worried her all the time she was getting ready, but the day before Colonel Marchbanks was due from Amarillo an envelope, addressed to Hilda in the fine, bold hand, arrived. As Uncle Hank sorted the letters over and apportioned them, she felt that the appearance of this one must shout aloud to him the name and all the marvelous, romantic history of its writer. She snatched it so swiftly that she had to be called back to get a magazine and picture postal card which completed her portion. It was only in her own room, with the door locked, that she dared open and read. It began abruptly:

“Well, Hilda, I’m afraid you and I can see very little of each other while you’re in Encinal County. So far as I am concerned, you might almost as well be at the Three Sorrows.”

Hilda stopped there. She wasn’t going to cry. Nothing to cry about. Her glance came back to the letter. There was one more sheet. She turned the page and read:

“I probably didn’t make it clear to you about how I stand with the Marchbanks family. I get along without the people at the Alamositas, and they worry along without me; I couldn’t go to see you there, Hilda, or take rides with you, and I think you will stand better with them if you don’t tell them that you and I are friends—or acquainted at all, for that matter.”

At about this point of the reading, Hilda raised her head and looked around. Her eyes were bright and dry, and her cheeks glowed like fire. This was Pearse’s answer to her childish, impulsive letter, to the reminders of the time she sheltered him in the cyclone cellar. Hilda was as generous as an Arab. She didn’t want his gratitude—but, oh, she burned with an intolerable humiliation at this lack of return for her friendship! And yet the letter was not unfriendly. In conclusion, he spoke earnestly, urgently, of the value of a good education; said how sorry he was that his own had been broken off early, and how it delighted him to know that she was to have better opportunities than his had been. This was the closing paragraph:

“I was awfully sorry to learn from your letter that you were so lonely, and had no young friends. But your coming over to the Alamositas will make that all right. They say Maybelle’s a very nice girl, and I hear they have a great deal of young company at the ranch; only, little girl as you are, I’m glad Fayte Marchbanks isn’t at home now, or likely to be back, it seems, while you are there. He’s not the sort of fellow for you to make a friend of.”

That was about all. He hadn’t thought worth while to say anything about the books she wanted to discuss with him. He might have written about them. They could have corresponded while she was at the Alamositas, anyhow. She drew her wounded girl’s pride about her with the declaration that she would never mention Pearse again to any one, never write to him again nor make any effort to see him. Then she thought miserably that this was what he had advised her to do in the letter. Her heart sank to the ultimate zero.

Meantime Hank had his own worries. A year’s stay on a big, prosperous ranch like the Alamositas, within easy distance of more than one small New Mexican town—and he knew well how it went with young folks in a ranching community, where it is out of the question to draw any hard-and-fast social line. Quick courtships—even the ill-considered marriages of boys and girls who were scarcely more than children—those were the things that came about under such an arrangement. He was full of anxiety for his girl; she must not be sent unwarned into that sort of thing. He finally mustered up courage to go to Miss Valeria and say that, under the circumstances, he felt she ought to talk to Hilda about “goin’ with the boys” and such things before they let her leave for New Mexico.

The little lady listened to him with a bewildered air, which finally gave way to an embarrassed laugh. When he’d said his say, she dismissed the whole matter airily with:

“But, Mr. Pearsall, the child isn’t ‘out’ yet.”

“No,” agreed Hank seriously, “but she’s a-goin’ out to-morrow, when Marchbanks comes through for her.”

“You don’t understand me,” Miss Val said. “You don’t get my meaning. At home, in New York, we used that expression—” She broke off, drew her brows a little, and the bright black eyes behind the glasses studied the ranch boss a moment before she went on: “Hilda’s a schoolgirl—she goes to Mr. Marchbanks’ as a schoolgirl. She’s not out in society. Naturally, she won’t be thinking of any of those matters you mention. I certainly shouldn’t bring them up in talking to her—it might put foolish ideas into her head.”

“You won’t take it on you to speak to her?” Hank asked.

“Certainly not. Those people—the Marchbankses—have a daughter near Hilda’s age. Of course, Maybelle Marchbanks isn’t out yet, either. I remember the child when she was here, visiting the Capadine ranch. Mrs. Marchbanks can be trusted, I am sure, with the management of the social affairs of two school-girls. Why, Mr. Pearsall, in New York we shouldn’t be thinking, much less speaking, of such things in connection with Hilda for—for some time yet. It is the custom there, you know, to introduce a girl to society—when she is through with her schooling, and has had, perhaps, some travel abroad—at a ball or other large affair. They tell me that now a luncheon or a tea is more usual. I haven’t begun to trouble my head yet about which would be nicest for Hilda—when the time comes. But I’ll attend to all that. I’ll attend to it, Mr. Pearsall. Don’t give it another thought.”

Hank backed away, nodding. When Miss Val began talking New York— Well, he could hear her words; but, as for getting any sense out of them—

“I’ve got to do it myself,” he reflected, with some misgiving. “Lord, send me the right words.”

He was fumbling after those right words on the evening of that day, as he sat beside Hilda in the afterglow on the side door-stone—the spot where he and she had lingered so often to exchange deep confidences. He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She was like a young bird with trembling wings lifted for flight. Yet there was pathos in her face too. And to that he had not the clew of Pearse Masters’ letter in her pocket.

“Pettie,” he began, looking out over the plain to where the planet of love hung luminous in the sky, “I spoke to your aunt about saying some little things to you that ought to come to a girl easier from her women-folks than from any one else; and—she said best not to put it into your head. Now, honey-girl, I know that if your own folks don’t do it, there’ll be them that will—and anybody that does, will be the wrong person.”

There was a startled silence between them. Hilda turned eyes that were a bit frightened to his grave face. She had understood at once what it was of which he wished to speak.

“The wrong person?” She echoed him falteringly.

“Yes,” he said, “the wrong person.” He looked fondly at the slim shape beside him. Hilda’s head was now turned away; he got only the outline of one thin, brown cheek; he couldn’t see the look that was in the big, black, long-lashed eyes—nor that Hilda had turned them away from him because she herself was afraid that look was in them. “You’re only a little girl—as yet,” he repeated it, as though by repetition he meant to make it true. “And still we’re bound to remember that there’ll be plenty of young fellers over there to notice you—and for you to notice. That’s what I’m trying to speak to you about, honey—and I ain’t finding it easy.”

A quick glance from Hilda; she hated to trouble Uncle Hank this way. She tried to help him out with:

“Fayte’s not going to be there—at first, anyhow. His father said he was sending him into Old Mexico—on business—he might not be back for nearly a year.”

Uncle Hank put that by with a little wave of the hand. Fayte’s connection with the rustlers was understood by every man on the Sorrows; his father’s lame explanation that the boy had been deceived by the gang was accepted silently. This sending him off to Mexico till the talk blew over was the best Marchbanks could do.

“I ain’t thinking about that feller,” Uncle Hank said. “You’d not make a friend of him—though in front of his folks you’d have to treat him nice. I trust you to handle that. You’re young, Pettie, but you’ve got good judgment. Just take what I’m saying as mostly a warning to any young person going out among strangers. Your way is paid over there. I wouldn’t take nothing for you as a gift from Marchbanks, though he wanted me to. I intended you should be free and independent, like your father’s daughter ought to be. Anything you don’t like—you can just pick up and come home.”

Hilda’s hand went instinctively to her pocket. Uncle Hank talked a good deal like the letter there.

“Oh, well,” she said, half bitterly, “if I’m such a child, Aunt Val must be right; you won’t need to talk to me about—about these things for years yet.”

Hank could not remember when Hilda had ever spoken to him like that. He couldn’t know that she was answering Pearse’s letter, making her little stand of maiden dignity with Pearse.

“Think so?” he asked gently. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Pettie. You’ll find yourself a grown-up young lady all of a sudden—and then maybe some of the things you have allowed to hang about will make trouble.”

Hilda’s only answer was a sort of inarticulate sound. Presently the old man spoke again.

“These here common working people marry very young, Pettie,” holding the slim wrist and tapping his own palm with her hand. “That’s natural, and right enough. You see how they live; there’s nothing to keep them from marriage. They don’t have to have education, like Charley Van Brunt’s daughter. I see now that I myself didn’t look at this thing right; seemed to me you was getting—or had got—pretty well all the learning you’d need—the reading of books and such to sort of fill out. I thought you felt that way, too, but the way you’ve took up with this idea of going over to the Marchbanks place shows me different.”

“Oh, Uncle Hank!” Hilda protested, in a misery of self-condemnation. What would he think if he knew that most of the rapture over the idea of going to the Alamositas had been because of what he’d call “a young feller,” who was working on an adjoining ranch? And she couldn’t tell him any part of it. The whole cyclone-cellar matter would have to come out, if she told him any. And it wasn’t her secret. It concerned Pearse. Pearse had a right to say whether it should be told or not. She didn’t examine very closely into her own feeling as to whether she would have told Uncle Hank if she’d felt free to. She let that go. He was speaking:

“I’ve always been so sort of drove for ready cash—and not liking to sell more cattle than needful, or to hitch any mortgages onto the old Sorrows. You haven’t had a heap of things you ought.”

“Oh, Uncle Hank—” the girl broke out again; he silenced her gently, and went on:

“But you have had pretty good schooling, and I do think that by the time you’re through your work out yonder I can have the money to send you to college. Then, when you’re graduated and got your papers to show for it, we’ll talk about a European tour. Miss Valery seems to think that would be about the figger. I believe we can cover it for you. The ranch is doing better every year. It’s coming up, Pettie, hand over fist. If that railroad should go through, as it seems it might, we’ll all be rich before you know it. Even if it don’t, I haven’t a doubt but I’ll be ready to put up the money—your money, of course, you understand, girl—for you and your aunt to go a-traveling, and for the biggest kind of a baile—or whatever shindig Miss Valery speaks for—when you git back—a young lady. Ain’t that a bright prospect?”

The childish hand, hard from much horseback riding, with a good firm grip in its slim fingers, trembled in his, as Hilda answered:

“Yes, Uncle Hank; I’ll do my best!”

He seemed scarcely to hear her.

“You’re going out there—plumb away from me—to a new life, at least for a spell. We don’t neither of us know what you may run onto, honey. I’m just obliged to feel a—to—well, to fix it so’t you’d see that your Uncle Hank would understand—do you see what I’m driving at, Pettie?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, then, I’m a-going to tell you some things about myself—things I’ve never spoke to any one about. I expect you don’t know your Uncle Hank was married?”

“Yes, Mrs. Johnnie told me—that time she made the first dresses for me.”

Hilda spoke low, for Mrs. Johnnie was even then at the Sorrows, making the sewing machine hum while she got Hilda’s outfit ready. Mrs. Johnnie had stood out for one “party dress” and constructed it from some uncut silks Miss Valeria had. That party dress, and some things Mrs. Johnnie had tried on, seemed to make Uncle Hank’s warnings not unreasonable. He stroked the little hand he held with steady fingers.

“She died,” he repeated, “but it wasn’t that that broke my heart so; any man might lose his wife by death.” He was silent a long minute; then he began on a louder note, as though resolved to go through with a painful thing: “You see, Pettie, she was a girl that I knew back where I was raised, in the Tennessee mountains. It’s what happened to her that I want to tell you, so’s you get my meaning.”

He sat silent for a moment. Hilda waited breathlessly. Then he went on:

“Mattie’s folks was well to do. They sent her down to the valley school—sorta like our sending you over to the Alamositas; see, Pettie? She ran away with a feller, from the school. It was a boy we all knowed—Judge Moseley’s son. He was in school himself at the time. She was just a little thing, younger than you are now. I had my mother, and the farm and the raising of my younger brothers and sisters on my hands; hadn’t aimed to name marriage to Mattie at that time; but I never thought of any one else; and when she ran off with that Moseley boy, seemed to me my heart was broke smack in two. I got things settled for Ma and the young ’uns and lit out to Texas—that’s where a Tennessee boy goes usually to better himself. I done well. My part of it ain’t what I want you to notice, Pettie. It’s Mattie’s part that means something to a girl. It was seven years from that time I left Tennessee till I saw her again. And how do you think I saw her next time?”

He glanced up. Hilda was all eyes, all attention.

“Her and Alf came through my ranch—movers. You know what that means, Pettie. We don’t get so many of them on the Sorrows, being off the main line of travel, but you’ve seen ’em—a ramshackle old wagon, a ga’nted team, a man on the driver’s seat, looking out ahead of him, clear into the nevertheless, never noticing that the woman and children he’s dragging around with him from place to place—no home, no comforts, no nothing—are just about perishing on his hands. Yes, that’s what Alf Moseley had come to be—a mover. He had the itchy foot. You can’t do nothing for one of them fellers. And Mattie—at twenty-four or five—Mattie was an old, broke-down woman.

“They had but one child—and Mattie had named him for me—Henry Pearsall Moseley. They stayed at my place longer than movers usually stops. I offered Alf a partnership, but he was aimin’ to strike toward the Rio Grande, and what I could offer wouldn’t hold him. But they stayed long enough, even that time, for my heart to get just wrapped around that little feller that was named for me. He was four years old, and the finest boy of his age that I ever put my eyes on—bar none. Well, after that they come and went, as you may say. No harm to Alf, he didn’t think no more of his own comfort than he did of the horses he drove or poor Mattie. Except for the time they went into the bottom country, the baby, Harry, throve well. They’d use my ranch for a stopping place when they couldn’t git no further—had lost a horse or such. And finally, at the end of the Brazos bottom trip, when Alf was dead—climate in there killed him—and all but killed Mattie—she sent for me, and I went and got her and the boy.

“We was married before we started on the return trip. It was the only arrangement to make. Mattie—any girl that thinks she’ll run away from school and marry some lively boy that she don’t know how he’ll turn out—well, I wish such a girl could have seen and heard my poor Mattie on her trip back to the ranch with me. She never mended in health, Pettie. I done everything I could, even to sending her back east—and it mighty nigh pulled the heart out of my breast to part with the boy. He hugged me ’round the neck with his little short arms and promised he’d take good care of his mother and bring her right back to me as soon as she was well.”

“Oh, Uncle Hank!” whispered Hilda, leaning her head against his arm.

“But she never come back. She died. At the time, I wasn’t where I could have the boy with me, as it seemed. Jeff Aiken—husband of Mattie’s sister—wrote that he had the little chap in school, that he was doing terrible well, and that it was Mattie’s wish that he should stay there. I sent the money for him, same as I’d been sending it to Mattie. Everything I had was for him—till— But that ain’t what I started out to tell you. That’s just an old man’s sorrow, and the thing that broke me all up and took my ranch and left me the lonesomest somebody in Texas.”

“You hadn’t any one left, had you, Uncle Hank?” Hilda found voice to say finally, when it seemed the old man would not go on.

“No. I hadn’t nobody. But I’ll tell you how that come, some other time, Pettie. What I’m trying to get you to notice now is that my poor Mattie ruined her life when she ran away from school to marry. She’d never have took Alf Moseley when she was older and had her full sense. It was the thing being secret—meeting Alf out without nobody knowing—and thinking it was great—that got her into it. That’s what I’m warning you against.”

Hilda nodded. She couldn’t get out a word, so she just nodded. What would Uncle Hank think if he knew about Pearse Masters and the cyclone cellar? But that was in the past. And suddenly the knowledge that she would have been glad of secret meetings with Pearse over at the Alamositas—that it was only his letter, showing that there was to be nothing of the sort, that had taken all the glow out of going—brought the tears. Uncle Hank was very penitent when he saw them.

“Don’t cry, honey,” he begged, patting her arm. “Nothing to cry about. All these troubles I been talking of is in the past. Mebbe I shouldn’t ’a’ named ’em to you. You got bright prospects ahead. You’ll be mighty happy over there, with a nice girl of your own age to go with, and a first-class teacher.”

“Let’s give it up, Uncle Hank,” she said chokingly. “I don’t want to go. I don’t care about the education or—or anything that there is over there in New Mexico. Really, I don’t. I’d rather stay here—at the Sorrows—with you.”

Hilda wiped her eyes and showed as clear a countenance as she could and drew up to face him. One of the boys came whistling along the path from the bunk-house. Sam Kee opened his kitchen door and threw out a pan of water.

“No, Pettie—no, you’re just tired—and a little scared to-night. Uncle Hank’s seen what it is you really do want—what you ought to have, anyhow. A chance to try your wings—to try your wings—”