At the sound Blue Bonnet sprang up, and running to her grandmother hugged her convulsively. "She isn't dead--only stunned," the girl sobbed in a glad relief.

Mrs. Clyde held her off for a second. "It wasn't you then?" she questioned as if afraid to trust her eyes.

"No, no!" cried Blue Bonnet.

"Thank G.o.d!" breathed her grandmother. Then she folded the girl, wet as she was, in her arms, and held her close as if she would never let her go. In that moment Blue Bonnet knew and was never to forget how much she was loved by her mother's mother.

A sound drew them to the group about Kitty.

"There now!" young Abbott was saying cheerfully. "She's all right.

Now, Knight, get in some of your good work,--first aid to the injured as taught by the Reverend Bayard Judson. A stretcher is what we need."

Much pleased to be called upon, Knight set about his task, while Alec supplied the place of his disabled arm. Under his directions two stout saplings were cut and the small twigs trimmed from them. Then stripping off his coat he bade Alec thrust the two poles into its sleeve, one in each. Uncle Cliff's coat went on at the other end; both coats were b.u.t.toned underneath, and there before the eyes of the interested group, was a stretcher ready for the patient.

Kitty, still weak and dazed, but with the color beginning to return to her milk-white cheeks, was borne gently to the house by Uncle Cliff and the doctor, attended by a body-guard of Alec and Mrs. Clyde, and followed by the other dripping and subdued We are Sevens.

There was a rather bad quarter of an hour for Kitty while the doctor bathed and dressed her wound. After much debating and grave consideration in his most profound manner, young Abbott had decided that the cut was not deep or wide enough to warrant his sewing it up.

Whereat there was great rejoicing in the household,--not, however, shared by the medical man. A bit of st.i.tching would have given him practice and no end of professional enjoyment. However, Kitty felt that she had had quite her share of attention and was glad to be left alone in the nursery tucked in between cool sheets, to sleep off the ache in her broken head.

When she awoke it was dusk in the room. Beside her bed stood somebody, bearing a tray.

"Are you awake?" asked a sepulchral voice.

"Yes," she whispered faintly.

The tray was hastily placed on a stand, a second pillow slipped deftly under Kitty's head, and then before she had recognized her servitor a pair of soft lips were laid on hers and a penitent voice whispered: "I'm so sorry, Kitty,--and ashamed!"

"It wasn't your fault, Blue Bonnet," said Kitty, returning the kiss warmly. "Served me right for being such a peac.o.c.k."

"Then all's serene on the Potomac?" Blue Bonnet questioned.

And with a rea.s.suring, though somewhat shaky smile, Kitty returned:

"All's serene!"

CHAPTER VIII

CONSEQUENCES

BLUE BONNET came in from an early morning romp with Don and Solomon looking even more rosy and debonair than usual. It was surprising how much easier it was to rise early at the ranch than it had been at Woodford. She liked to steal quietly out of the nursery and go adventuring before breakfast; she felt then like Blue Bonnet the fourteen-year-old, full of the joy of life, untroubled by fears of any sort or desires for the great unknown. She and Don in those days had had many a ramble before the dew was off the gra.s.s. Hat-less and short-skirted she had climbed fences, brushed through mesquite and buffalo gra.s.s; hunted nests of chaparral-birds; sat on the top bar of the old pasture fence and watched the little calves gambolling; or, earlier in the spring, had gathered great armfuls of blue bonnets from over in the south meadow. Now when she found herself away from the house, skirting San Franciscito in an eager chase for a b.u.t.terfly, she could have thought the past ten months all a dream,--except for a certain small brown dog tearing madly from one gopher-hole to another, while Don, in the veteran's scorn for the novice, refused to be enticed from his mistress' side.

"Where's Grandmother?" she asked as she entered the dining-room.

Grandmother always sat at the head of the breakfast table, and her sweet "homey" face over the teacups, was the first thing Blue Bonnet looked for.

"Benita says the Senora is not well," replied Juanita.

The brightness all went out of the morning. Grandmother breakfasting in bed! It was unheard of. In her impetuous rush from the room Blue Bonnet almost collided with Benita. "Is Grandmother awake--can I go to her?" she asked, impatiently.

"It is better not. The Senora prefers to rest," said Benita.

"What's the matter with her, Benita? I never knew Grandmother to be ill before," Blue Bonnet asked miserably.

"It is the shock, I think. The Senora is not so young as she once was, Senorita."

Blue Bonnet turned away, sick at heart. In the nursery she found nothing to improve her spirits. Kitty lay languid and pale among her pillows, saying that her head ached and she didn't care for any breakfast. Debby, too, had kept her bed, declaring that she couldn't bear shoes on her poor lacerated feet. Amanda and Sarah only appeared as usual, and these two had their spirits dampened immediately by the sight of Blue Bonnet's gloomy countenance.

The three of them had the table to themselves, the men having breakfasted earlier than usual and Alec and Knight having hurried through the meal and ridden off, no one knew where. Blue Bonnet was not conversational; everything in her world seemed topsy-turvy, and she felt that she must have an hour of hard thinking to sort things out and put them in their places.

Amanda and Sarah, respecting Blue Bonnet's mood, were silent. During this period of unusual restraint, a resolution was forming in Amanda's mind, and at the conclusion of the meal she made an announcement that would have petrified the rest had it come at any other time.

"I'm going to study," she said.

Sarah looked her approval of this decision. "I'll help you,--let's do it in my room."

Relief on Blue Bonnet's part quite crowded out surprise. "Then you don't mind if I leave you to yourselves?" she asked.

"We wouldn't get much done if you didn't," Amanda replied with more frankness than tact.

Blue Bonnet had found solitude glorious in the half-hour before breakfast, but now it had lost its charm: joy in her heart had given place to hate. Not hatred of the old life, such as had driven her to pastures new; not hatred of Texas and "all it stood for"--as she had once pa.s.sionately declared to Uncle Cliff. This time the object of her deep and bitter feeling was--herself. She had been rude to a guest in her own house. She had seen one of her best friends risk her life and had made no move to prevent it. She had been the cause of her grandmother's receiving a shock which, at her time of life, might prove very serious. And all this in spite of having lived for nearly a year with two such perfect gentlewomen as Aunt Lucinda and Grandmother Clyde. In spite of her boasted loyalty to the "We are Sevens." In spite of her promise to her aunt to care tenderly for her grandmother and bring her back safely to Woodford.

She had wandered aimlessly outdoors and now flung herself face down on the Navajo under the big magnolia. "It's no use,--I reckon it's the same old thing. I'm not an Ashe clear through." With the thought came swift tears.

Her head lay against something hard and unyielding; and after her first grief had spent itself, she put up her hand to push away the object--but grasped it instead. It was a book; opening her tear-wet reddened eyes Blue Bonnet saw that it was a volume of her grandmother's favorite Th.o.r.eau. It lay just where Mrs. Clyde had dropped it the day before when she had sprung up at Debby's frightened cry.

She dried her eyes and sat up. Leaning against the low, wicker chair, that was her grandmother's chosen seat, she slowly turned the leaves of the well-worn volume, her thoughts more on the owner of the book than on its author. All at once her glance was caught and held by something that seemed an echo of the cry that kept welling up from her own unhappy heart. It was a prayer, only ten short lines, and she read them with growing wonder:

"Great G.o.d! I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself; That in my striving I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.

That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practise more than my tongue saith.

That my low conduct may not show, Nor my relenting lines, That I thy purpose did not know Or over-rated thy designs."

How could any one, and that a grown man and a poet, have so exactly voiced the thoughts of a young girl on a far-off Texas ranch?

" . . . . I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself."

That was just it--she had disappointed herself, grievously, bitterly.

So absorbed was she that she did not hear a foot-fall, nor did she look up until Uncle Cliff exclaimed, "All alone, Honey? That doesn't often happen these days!" His cheerful voice expressed no regret for the absence of the others.

She looked up, and then quickly down again; but not soon enough for the traces of tears to escape his watchful eye.

"What's up, Blue Bonnet?" he asked anxiously. He was on the rug beside her now, and with a hand under her quivering chin tilted her face and scanned it closely.

She winked fast for a moment. "Uncle Cliff, do you find it terribly hard to be good?"

"Thundering hard, Honey." He thought whimsically that it was lucky no one else had heard that question. "So hard that my success at it hasn't been remarkable!"