It is probable that if Sarah's hair had not already been as light as hair can well be, that wild ride would have turned it several shades lighter. The terrors that were compressed into those two hours are beyond description, while the bobbing, b.u.mping and shaking of her poor plump body left reminders that only time and witch hazel were able to eradicate.

When they returned at noon Gertrudis had a wonderful dinner awaiting them, and the riders, with their appet.i.tes freshened by the air and exercise, fell upon it like a pack of famished wolves. All except Sarah. Protesting that she was not in the least hungry, she went at once to her room. On the little stand by her bed lay the Spanish grammar and dictionary, mute evidences of the way she had intended to spend the siesta hour. She gave them not so much as a glance, but stepping out of her clothes left them in a heap where they fell,--an action indicating a state of demoralization hardly to be believed of the parson's daughter,--and flung herself into bed with a groan.

Two hours later she was awakened by the other four girls who had turned inquisitors, and while two were stripping off the bedclothes the other two applied a feather to the soles of her feet.

"Oh--is it morning?" gasped Sarah, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.

"It doesn't seem as if I had been asleep a minute."

"Such a waste of time!" quoted Kitty mockingly. "There's such a thing, Sarah, as overdoing the siesta," she taunted.

Sarah drew up her feet and sat on them, smothering the groan that arose to her lips at the action. Every bone and joint had a new and awful kind of ache, and in that minute Sarah wished she had never heard of the Blue Bonnet ranch. Just then came the welcome clatter of dishes and at the doorway appeared Benita bearing a tray of good things, while back of her was Grandmother Clyde.

"Now off with you,--you tormentors," the Senora commanded gaily. "This poor child must be nearly famished."

"Grandmother's pet!" sang Blue Bonnet over her shoulder, as obeying orders, the four girls left the suffering Sarah in peace.

Existence a.s.sumed a brighter hue to Sarah when she had eaten the generous repast Benita set before her; and when she had bathed and rubbed herself with the Pond's Extract Mrs. Clyde had secretly provided her with, life seemed once more worth living. But she was very quiet and moved with great circ.u.mspection for the rest of the day, quite content to leave to the others the handling of the fireworks in the evening.

Uncle Cliff's "dangerous" box yielded still more wonders. The noisy bombs and giant crackers of the morning were followed by pyrotechnics that aroused unbounded admiration from the grown-ups and caused an excitement among the small greasers that threatened to end in a human conflagration. A small fortune went up in gigantic pin-wheels; flower-pots that sent up amazing blossoms in all the hues of the rainbow; rockets that burst in mid-air and let fall a shower of coiling snakes, which, in their turn, exploded into a myriad stars; Roman candles that sometimes went off at the wrong end and caused a wild scattering of the audience in their immediate vicinity; and "set-pieces" that were the epitome of this school of art.

It would have been hard to say which was most tired, the hostess or her guests, when the last spark faded from the big "Lone Star" of Texas which ended the show. No bedtime frolic to-night; the four in the nursery undressed in a dead quiet and fell asleep before their heads fairly touched the pillows. In her own little room Sarah held another seance with the witch hazel bottle, and went to sleep only to dream of a wild ride across the meadows on Blue Bonnet's rocking-horse, with a fierce band of Comanche Indians pursuing her, yelling fiendishly all the while, and keeping up a mad fusillade of Roman candles.

CHAPTER IV

THE ROUND ROBIN

"WHAT'S the program for this morning?" asked Uncle Cliff, as the ranch party a.s.sembled on the veranda after a very late breakfast.

"I don't know what the others are going to do," said Sarah, "but I'm going to write letters."

The other girls exchanged amused glances: it was evident that Sarah wished to forestall suggestions of another ride. Kitty was beginning to show symptoms of sauciness when Mrs. Clyde interrupted kindly with--"I think Sarah's suggestion quite in order. Every one at home will be looking for letters."

"Uncle Cliff telegraphed," said Blue Bonnet, loath to settle down to so prosaic a pursuit.

"But a telegram isn't very satisfying to mothers and fathers, dear,"

replied her grandmother. "And think of poor Susy and Ruth."

"I intend to write them, too," remarked Sarah.

"Let's all write them!" exclaimed Blue Bonnet.

"That's the right spirit," said Senora with an approving nod. "A 'round-robin' letter will cheer the poor girls wonderfully."

"You hear the motion, are all in favor?" asked Alec.

"Will you write a 'robin,' too?" bargained Kitty, who loved to torment the youth.

"Sure!" he agreed at once, thus taking the wind out of her sails.

"Aye, aye, then!" they all exclaimed, and the motion was declared carried.

There was a scattering for paper and ink, after which every one settled down for an hour's scribbling, some using the broad rail of the veranda as a table, others repairing to desks in the house. Blue Bonnet doubled up jack-knife fashion on one of the front steps, using her knees for a pad; while Sarah, complaining that she could not think with so many people about her, took herself off to the window-seat in the nursery.

"The idea of wanting to think!" exclaimed Kitty. "I never stop to think when I write letters."

"You don't need to tell that to any one who has ever heard from you,"

remarked Blue Bonnet. "The one letter I had from you in New York took me an hour to puzzle out,--it began in the middle and ended at the top of the first page, and there were six 'ands' and four 'ifs' in one sentence."

"That's quite an accomplishment--I'll wager you couldn't get in half so many," retorted Kitty. And then for a while there was silence, broken only by the scratching of pens and the query from Blue Bonnet as to whether there were two s's or two p's in "disappoint."

"TO SUSY AND RUTH DOYLE, WOODFORD, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS.

"THE BLUE BONNET RANCH, "July the fifth.

"YOU POOR DEARS: You'll never know if you live to be a thousand years old what a fearful disappointment it was when Doctor Clark told me the awful news. Where did you get it? Is it very bad? And do you have to gargle peroxide of hydrogen? Amanda says she just lived on it when her throat was bad. Are you honestly as red as lobsters? It's a perfect shame you should have to be sick--and in vacation, too. There might be some advantages if it should happen--say at examination time. Grandmother says it is very unusual to have scarlet fever in warm weather,--it just seems as if you must have gone out of your way to get it--or it went out of its way to get you.

"The ranch party isn't a bit complete without you. I'm going to take pictures of everything and everybody so as to show you when we get back. That sounds as if I meant to go back again next fall, when really it isn't decided yet. I'm more in love with the ranch than ever and feel as if I never wanted to leave it again. It's so fine and big out here. There's so much air to breathe and such a long way to look, and you can throw a stone as far as you like without 'breaking a window or a tradition'--as Alec says. We have our traditions, too, but they can stand any amount of stone-throwing--in fact that's part of them.

"It's worth crossing the continent to see Sarah on horseback, riding across the saddle in a wild Western way that would shock her reverend father out of a whole paragraph. Kitty dared her and I must say she showed pluck--Comanche can go _some_ when he gets started, and Sarah stayed with him to the finish. But you can imagine why she wanted to write letters to-day instead of riding again. You can thank her for the round robin. There, I've reached the bottom of the page before I've begun to tell you anything. But the others will make up for it, I reckon. No more now--I must save strength for a letter to Aunt Lucinda. Do hurry and get well and out of quarantine so that you can write to

"Your devoted "BLUE BONNET."

"DEAR SUSY AND RUTH: We arrived on Monday evening after a very pleasant journey. The name of the station where you get off is Jonah--isn't that odd? We had to drive twenty miles in a very queer kind of vehicle in order to reach Blue Bonnet's home, and this letter will have to go back over the same road in order to be posted. I think I had better go back to the beginning and tell you all about our trip from the time we left Woodford.

"The private car we came in is called The Wanderer and it is really a pity you could not have shared it with us. It is much grander than Mrs. Clyde's drawing-room at home,--the mahogany shone till you could see your face in it, and wherever there was not mahogany there was a mirror, and Slivers, the porter, dusted everything about twenty times a day. If you could see Slivers I should not have to explain why he is called by that name. I am sure he is the tallest and slimmest man I have ever seen. And that is odd, too, for you always think of them as plump and fat. He is a negro, you know, and doesn't seem to mind it a bit, but is as jolly as if he were white and as fat as you think he ought to be, and sang and played his banjo in the evenings quite like a civilized person. He waited on table, too, while the chief--the cook, you know--prepared our meals in the most cunning little kitchen you can imagine.

"It was a very interesting trip. Sometimes we would begin our breakfast in one state and before we had finished we would be in another, and yet there would seem to be no difference. I think travelling is a very interesting way to learn Geography, for you forget to think of Kansas as yellow and Oklahoma as purple, and think of them as _real_ places with trees and farms and other things like Ma.s.sachusetts. I knew already that Texas is as big as all the New England states put together, but I never really _grasped_ it before. I am learning new things every day, some Spanish, though not as much as I could wish. Yesterday I learned to ride astride. That is, nearly learned. I don't feel entirely at home that way yet and it has tired me considerably, but I dare say it will come easier after a while. My horse is named Comanche, and he looks just that way. There is more white to his eyes than anything else.

"Benita is Blue Bonnet's old nurse. She does the most exquisite drawn-work and is going to teach me (it would be as well for you not to mention this when you write) the spider-web st.i.tch and the Maltese cross, so that I can do a waist for Blue Bonnet. She is doing so much for us all that I want to make some return for her hospitality. Blue Bonnet, I mean, not Benita.

"I do hope you will soon be better. I felt so mean at leaving without even saying good-bye. But I had to think of all my brothers and sisters and the girls--I couldn't expose them to the fever, you know. I hope you liked the postals we sent. Amanda and I came very near being left once when we couldn't find the post-box at Kansas City,--we had to run a block, while Alec and Kitty stood on the back platform and laid bets on the winner. (Amanda won.)

"We are all well and hope you are the same,--I mean I hope you are better and will soon be well.

"With best love, "SARAH JANE BLAKE."

"Oh, girls, I am simply speechless and can't find a word to say when I try to describe our grand trip and this perfect peach of a place, and the glorious time we have had and are having ever since we left pokey old Woodford and arrived at the Blue Bonnet ranch. I keep pinching myself to see if I'm really me, but it isn't at all convincing, and I suppose I'll simply go on treading air and not believe in the reality of a thing till I come to earth in time to hear the Jolly Good say--'Miss Kitty, you may take problem number ninety-four'--and wake up to the monotonous old grind again--oh, if you could only see this darling old house and the picturesque Mexicans--rather dirty some of them (I suppose that's why they are called greasers) and the perfectly dear way they adore Blue Bonnet and their deference to her 'amigos'--I tell you I feel like a princess when they call me 'Senorita'

with a musical accent that makes you downright sick with envy. Why anybody on earth ever left the West to go and settle up the East I don't see,--you may think I mean that the other way about but I don't, for anybody can see at half a glance that this country is as old as Methusalem--the live-oaks look as if they'd been here forever and ever and would stay as much longer--they're all 'h.o.a.ry with moss' and all that sort of thing like that poem of Tennyson's--or maybe it is Longfellow's--it doesn't matter which in vacation, thank goodness. I don't like to seem to be rubbing it in about our good times, for it's just too hateful that you can't be here, too, and ride like mad for miles without coming to a fence and wear the adorable riding-suits Mr. Ashe got for us in New York--all seven alike and as becoming as anything--and have the best things to eat, wear, do, and see every minute of the day.

"This won't go into the envelope with the rest if I run on any longer so I'll close,--with a fat hard hug and lots of love to you both,

"KITTY."