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CHAPTER XVI
FORGOTTEN

From the stair-well some little light streamed up into the darkness of the ghost-walk. And into this dim radiance came a little old lady – her old-fashioned crimped hair an aureole of beautiful gray – leaning lightly on an ebony crutch, which in turn tapped the floor in accompaniment to her clicking step —

“Step – put; step – put; step – put.”

Then she was out of the range of Helen’s vision again. But she turned and came back – her silken skirts rustling, her crutch tapping in perfect time.

This was no ghost. Although slender – ethereal – almost bird-like in her motions – the little old lady was very human indeed. She had a pink flush in her cheeks, and her skin was as soft as velvet. Of course there were wrinkles; but they were beautiful wrinkles, Helen thought.

She wore black half-mitts of lace, and her old-fashioned gown was of delightfully soft, yet rich silk. The silk was brown – not many old ladies could have worn that shade of brown and found it becoming. Her eyes were bright – the unseen girl saw them sparkle as she turned her head, in that bird-like manner, from side to side.

She was a dear, doll-like old lady! Helen longed to hurry down the remaining steps and take her in her arms.

But, instead, she crept softly back to the head of the stairs, and slipped into her own room again. This was the mystery of the Starkweather mansion. The nightly exercise of this mysterious old lady was the foundation for the “ghost-walk.” The maids of the household feared the supernatural; therefore they easily found a legend to explain the rustling step of the old lady with the crutch.

And all day long the old lady kept to her room. That room must be in the front of the house on this upper floor – shut away, it was likely, from the knowledge of most of the servants.

Mrs. Olstrom, of course, knew about the old lady – who she was – what she was. It was the housekeeper who looked after the simple wants of the mysterious occupant of the Starkweather mansion.

Helen wondered if Mr. Lawdor, the old butler, knew about the mystery? And did the Starkweathers themselves know?

The girl from the ranch was too excited and curious to go to sleep now. She had to remain right by her door, opened on a crack, and learn what would happen next.

For an hour at least she heard the steady stepping of the old lady. Then the crutch rapped out an accompaniment to her coming upstairs. She was humming softly to herself, too. Helen, crouched behind the door, distinguished the sweet, cracked voice humming a fragment of the old lullaby:

 
“Rock-a-by, baby, on the tree-top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby – ”
 

Thus humming, and the crutch tapping – a mere whisper of sound – the old lady rustled by Helen’s door, on into the long corridor, and disappeared through some door, which closed behind her and smothered all further sound.

Helen went to bed; but she could not sleep – not at first. The mystery of the little old lady and her ghostly walk kept her eyes wide open and her brain afire for hours.

She asked question after question into the dark of the night, and only imagination answered. Some of the answers were fairly reasonable; others were as impossible as the story of Jack the Giant Killer.

Finally, however, Helen dropped asleep. She awoke at her usual hour – daybreak – and her eager mind began again asking questions about the mystery. She went down in her outdoor clothes for a morning walk, with the little old lady uppermost in her thoughts.

As usual, Mr. Lawdor was on the lookout for her. The shaky old man loved to have her that few minutes in his room in the early morning. Although he always presided over the dinner, with Gregson under him, the old butler seldom seemed to speak, or be spoken to. Helen understood that, like Mrs. Olstrom, Lawdor was a relic of the late owner – Mr. Starkweather’s great-uncle’s – household.

Cornelius Starkweather had been a bachelor. The mansion had descended to him from a member of the family who had been a family man. But that family had died young – wife and all – and the master had handed the old homestead over to Mr. Cornelius and had gone traveling himself – to die in a foreign land.

Once Helen had heard Lawdor murmur something about “Mr. Cornelius” and she had picked up the remainder of her information from things she had heard Mr. Starkweather and the girls say.

Now the old butler met her with an ingratiating smile and begged her to have something beside her customary coffee and roll.

“I have a lovely steak, Miss. The butcher remembers me once in a while, and he knows I am fond of a bit of tender beef. My teeth are not what they were once, you know, Miss.”

“But why should I eat your nice steak?” demanded Helen, laughing at him. “My teeth are good for what the boys on the range call ‘bootleg.’ That’s steak cut right next to the hoof!”

“Ah, but, Miss! There is so much more than I could possibly eat,” he urged.

He had already turned the electricity into his grill. The ruddy steak – salted, peppered, with tiny flakes of garlic upon it – he brought from his own little icebox. The appetizing odor of the meat sharpened Helen’s appetite even as she sipped the first of her coffee.

“I’ll just have to eat some, I expect, Mr. Lawdor,” she said. Then she had a sudden thought, and added: “Or perhaps you’d like to save this tidbit for the little old lady in the attic?”

Mr. Lawdor turned – not suddenly; he never did anything with suddenness; but it was plain she had startled him.

“Bless me, Miss – bless me – bless me – ”

He trailed off in his usual shaky way; but his lips were white and he stared at Helen like an owl for a full minute. Then he added:

“Is there a lady in the attic, Miss?” And he said it in his most polite way.

“Of course there is, Mr. Lawdor; and you know it. Who is she? I am only curious.”

“I – I hear the maids talking about a ghost, Miss – foolish things – ”

“And I’m not foolish, Mr. Lawdor,” said the Western girl, laughing shortly. “Not that way, at least. I heard her; last night I saw her. Next time I’m going to speak to her – Unless it isn’t allowed.”

“It – it isn’t allowed, Miss,” said Lawdor, speaking softly, and with a glance at the closed door of the room.

“Nobody has forbidden me to speak to her,” declared Helen, boldly. “And I’m curious – mighty curious, Mr. Lawdor. Surely she is a nice old lady – there is nothing the matter with her?”

The butler touched his forehead with a shaking finger. “A little wrong there, Miss,” he whispered. “But Mary Boyle is as innocent and harmless as a baby herself.”

“Can’t you tell me about her – who she is – why she lives up there – and all?”

“Not here, Miss.”

“Why not?” demanded Helen, boldly.

“It might offend Mr. Starkweather, Miss. Not that he has anything to do with Mary Boyle. He had to take the old house with her in it.”

“What do you mean, Lawdor?” gasped Helen, growing more and more amazed and – naturally – more and more curious.

The butler flopped the steak suddenly upon the sizzling hot plate and in another moment the delicious bit was before her. The old man served her as expertly as ever, but his face was working strangely.

“I couldn’t tell you here, Miss. Walls have ears, they say,” he whispered. “But if you’ll be on the first bench beyond the Sixth Avenue entrance to Central Park at ten o’clock this morning, I will meet you there.

“Yes, Miss – the rolls. Some more butter, Miss? I hope the coffee is to your taste, Miss?”

“It is all very delicious, Lawdor,” said Helen, rather weakly, and feeling somewhat confused. “I will surely be there. I shall not need to come back for the regular breakfast after having this nice bit.”

Helen attracted much less attention upon her usual early morning walk this time. She was dressed in the mode, if cheaply, and she was not so self-conscious. But, in addition, she thought but little of herself or her own appearance or troubles while she walked briskly uptown.

It was of the little old woman, and her mystery, and the butler’s words that she thought. She strode along to the park, and walked west until she reached the bridle-path. She had found this before, and came to see the riders as they cantered by.

How Helen longed to put on her riding clothes and get astride a lively mount and gallop up the park-way! But she feared that, in doing so, she might betray to her uncle or the girls the fact that she was not the “pauper cowgirl” they thought her to be.

She found a seat overlooking the path, at last, and rested for a while; but her mind was not upon the riders. Before ten o’clock she had walked back south, found the entrance to the park opposite Sixth Avenue, and sat down upon the bench specified by the old butler. At the stroke of the hour the old man appeared.

“You could not have walked all this way, Lawdor?” said the girl, smiling upon him. “You are not at all winded.”

“No, Miss. I took the car. I am not up to such walks as you can take,” and he shook his head, mumbling: “Oh, no, no, no, no – ”

“And now, what can you tell me, sir?” she said, breaking in upon his dribbling speech. “I am just as curious as I can be. That dear little old lady! Why is she in uncle’s house?”

“Ah, Miss! I fancy she will not be there for long, but she was an encumbrance upon it when Mr. Willets Starkweather came with his family to occupy it.”

“What do you mean?” cried the girl.

“Mary Boyle served in the Starkweather family long, long ago. Before I came to valet for Mr. Cornelius, Mary Boyle had her own room and was a fixture in the house. Mr. Cornelius took her more – more philosophically, as you might say, Miss. My present master and his daughters look upon poor Mary Boyle as a nuisance. They have to allow her to remain. She is a life charge upon the estate – that, indeed, was fixed before Mr. Cornelius’s time. But the present family are ashamed of her. Perhaps I ought not to say it, but it is true. They have relegated her to a suite upon the top floor, and other people have quite forgotten Mary Boyle – yes, oh, yes, indeed! Quite forgotten her – quite forgotten her – ”

Then, with the aid of some questioning, Helen heard the whole sad story of Mary Boyle, who was a nurse girl in the family of the older generation of Starkweathers. It was in her arms the last baby of the family had panted his weakly little life out. She, too, had watched by the bed of the lady of the mansion, who had borne these unfortunate children only to see them die.

And Mary Boyle was one of that race who often lose their own identity in the families they serve. She had loved the lost babies as though they had been of her own flesh. She had walked the little passage at the back of the house (out of which had opened the nursery in those days) so many, many nights with one or the other of her fretful charges, that by and by she thought, at night, that she had them yet to soothe.

Mary Boyle, the weak-minded yet harmless ex-nurse, had been cherished by her old master. And in his will he had left her to the care of Mr. Cornelius, the heir. In turn she had been left a life interest in the mansion – to the extent of shelter and food and proper clothes – when Willets Starkweather became proprietor.

He could not get rid of the old lady. But, when he refurnished the house and made it over, he had banished Mary Boyle to the attic rooms. The girls were ashamed of her. She sometimes talked loudly if company was about. And always of the children she had once attended. She spoke of them as though they were still in her care, and told how she had walked the hall with one, or the other, of her dead and gone treasures the very night before!

For it was found necessary to allow Mary Boyle to have the freedom of that short corridor on the chamber floor late at night. Otherwise she would not remain secluded in her own rooms at the top of the house during the daytime.

As the lower servants came and went, finally only Mrs. Olstrom and Mr. Lawdor knew about the old lady, save the family. And Mr. Starkweather impressed it upon the minds of both these employés that he did not wish the old lady discussed below stairs.

So the story had risen that the house was haunted. The legend of the “ghost walk” was established. And Mary Boyle lived out her lonely life, with nobody to speak to save the housekeeper, who saw her daily; Mr. Lawdor, who climbed to her rooms perhaps once each week, and Mr. Starkweather himself, who saw and reported upon her case to his fellow trustees each month.

It was, to Helen, an unpleasant story. It threw a light on the characters of her uncle and cousins which did not enhance her admiration of them, to say the least. She had found them unkind, purse-proud heretofore; but to her generous soul their treatment of the little old woman, who must be but a small charge upon the estate, seemed far more blameworthy than their treatment of herself.

The story of the old butler made Helen quiver with indignation. It was like keeping the old lady in jail – this shutting her away into the attic of the great house. The Western girl went back to Madison Avenue (she walked, but the old butler rode) with a thought in her mind that she was not quite sure was a wise one. Yet she had nobody to discuss her idea with – nobody whom she wished to take into her confidence.

There were two lonely and neglected people in that fine mansion. She, herself, was one. The old nurse, Mary Boyle, was the other. And Helen felt a strong desire to see and talk with her fellow-sufferer.

CHAPTER XVII
A DISTINCT SHOCK

That evening when Mr. Starkweather came home, he handed Helen a sealed letter.

“I have ascertained,” the gentleman said, in his most pompous way, “that Mr. Fenwick Grimes is in town. He has recently returned from a tour of the West, where he has several mining interests. You will find his address on that envelope. Give the letter to him. It will serve to introduce you.”

He watched her closely while he said this, but did not appear to do so. Helen thanked him with some warmth.

“This is very good of you, Uncle Starkweather – especially when I know you do not approve.”

“Ahem! Sleeping dogs are much better left alone. To stir a puddle is only to agitate the mud. This old business would much better be forgotten. You know all that there is to be known about the unfortunate affair, I am quite sure.”

“I cannot believe that, Uncle,” Helen replied. “Had you seen how my dear father worried about it when he was dying – ”

Mr. Starkweather could look at her no longer – not even askance. He shook his head and murmured some commonplace, sympathetic phrase. But it did not seem genuine to his niece.

She knew very well that Mr. Starkweather had no real sympathy for her; nor did he care a particle about her father’s death. But she tucked the letter into her pocket and went her way.

As she passed through the upstairs corridor Flossie was entering one of the drawing-rooms, and she caught her cousin by the hand. Flossie had been distinctly nicer to Helen – in private – since the latter had helped her with the algebra problems.

“Come on in, Helen. Belle’s just pouring tea. Don’t you want some?” said the youngest Starkweather girl.

It was in Helen’s mind to excuse herself. Yet she was naturally too kindly to refuse to accept an advance like this. And she, like Flossie, had no idea that there was anybody in the drawing-room save Belle and Hortense.

In they marched – and there were three young ladies – friends of Belle – sipping tea and eating macaroons by the log fire, for the evening was drawing in cold.

“Goodness me!” ejaculated Belle.

“Well, I never!” gasped Hortense. “Have you got to butt in, Floss?”

“We want some tea, too,” said the younger girl, boldly, angered by her sisters’ manner.

“You’d better have it in the nursery,” yawned Hortense. “This is no place for kids in the bread-and-butter stage of growth.”

“Oh, is that so?” cried Flossie. “Helen and I are not kids – distinctly not! I hope I know my way about a bit – and as for Helen,” she added, with a wicked grin, knowing that the speech would annoy her sisters, “Helen can shoot, and rope steers, and break ponies to saddle, and all that. She told me so the other evening. Isn’t that right, Cousin Helen?”

“Why, your cousin must be quite a wonderful girl,” said Miss Van Ramsden, one of the visitors, to Flossie. “Introduce me; won’t you, Flossie?”

Belle was furious; and Hortense would have been, too, only she was too languid to feel such an emotion. Flossie proceeded to introduce Helen to the three visitors – all of whom chanced to be young ladies whom Belle was striving her best to cultivate.

And before Flossie and Helen had swallowed their tea, which Belle gave them ungraciously, Gregson announced a bevy of other girls, until quite a dozen gaily dressed and chattering misses were gathered before the fire.

At first Helen had merely bowed to the girls to whom she was introduced. She had meant to drink her tea quietly and excuse herself. She did not wish now to display a rude manner before Belle’s guests; but her oldest cousin seemed determined to rouse animosity in her soul.

“Yes,” she said, “Helen is paying us a little visit – a very brief one. She is not at all used to our ways. In fact, Indian squaws and what-do-you call-’ems – Greasers – are about all the people she sees out her way.”

“Is that so?” cried Miss Van Ramsden. “It must be a perfectly charming country. Come and sit down by me, Miss Morrell, and tell me about it.”

Indeed, at the moment, there was only one vacant chair handy, and that was beside Miss Van Ramsden. So Helen took it and immediately the young lady began to ask questions about Montana and the life Helen had lived there.

Really, the young society woman was not offensive; the questions were kindly meant. But Helen saw that Belle was furious and she began to take a wicked delight in expatiating upon her home and her own outdoor accomplishments.

When she told Miss Van Ramsden how she and her cowboy friends rode after jack-rabbits and roped them – if they could! – and shot antelope from the saddle, and that the boys sometimes attacked a mountain lion with nothing but their lariats, Miss Van Ramsden burst out with:

“Why, that’s perfectly grand! What fun you must have! Do hear her, girls! Why, what we do is tame and insipid beside things that happen out there in Montana every day.”

“Oh, don’t bother about her, May!” cried Belle. “Come on and let’s plan what we’ll do Saturday if we go to the Nassau links.”

“Listen here!” cried Miss Van Ramsden, eagerly. “Golf can wait. We can always golf. But your cousin tells the very bulliest stories. Go on, Miss Morrell. Tell some more.”

“Do, do!” begged some of the other girls, drawing their chairs nearer.

Helen was not a little embarrassed. She would have been glad to withdraw from the party. But then she saw the looks exchanged between Belle and Hortense, and they fathered a wicked desire in the Western girl’s heart to give her proud cousins just what they were looking for.

She began, almost unconsciously, to stretch her legs out in a mannish style, and drop into the drawl of the range.

“Coyote running is about as good fun as we have,” she told Miss Van Ramsden in answer to a question. “Yes, they’re cowardly critters; but they can run like a streak o’ greased lightning – yes-sir-ree-bob!” Then she began to laugh a little. “I remember once when I was a kid, that I got fooled about coyotes.”

“I’d like to know what you are now,” drawled Hortense, trying to draw attention from her cousin, who was becoming altogether too popular. “And you should know that children are better seen than heard.”

“Let’s see,” said Helen, quickly, “our birthdays are in the same month; aren’t they, ’Tense? I believe mother used to tell me so.”

“Oh, never mind your birthdays,” urged Miss Van Ramsden, while some of the other girls smiled at the repartee. “Let’s hear about your adventure with the coyote, Miss Morrell.”

“Why, ye see,” said Helen, “it wasn’t much. I was just a kid, as I say – mebbe ten year old. Dad had given me a light rifle – just a twenty-two, you know – to learn to shoot with. And Big Hen Billings – ”

“Doesn’t that sound just like those dear Western plays?” gasped one young lady. “You know – ‘The Squaw Man of the Golden West,’ or ‘Missouri,’ or – ”

“Hold on! You’re getting your titles mixed, Lettie,” cried Miss Van Ramsden. “Do let Miss Morrell tell it.”

“To give that child the center of the stage!” snapped Hortense, to Belle.

“I could shake Flossie for bringing her in here,” returned the oldest Starkweather girl, quite as angrily.

“Tell us about your friend, Big Hen Billings,” drawled another visitor. “He does sound so romantic!”

Helen almost giggled. To consider the giant foreman of Sunset Ranch a romantic type was certainly “going some.” She had the wicked thought that she would have given a large sum of money, right then and there, to have had Big Hen announced by Gregson and ushered into the presence of this group of city girls.

“Well,” continued Helen, thus urged, “father had given me a little rifle and Big Hen gave me a maverick – ”

“What’s that?” demanded Flossie.

“Well, in this case,” explained Helen, “it was an orphaned calf. Sometimes they’re strays that haven’t been branded. But in this case a bear had killed the calf’s mother in a coulée. She had tried to fight Mr. Bear, of course, or he never would have killed her at that time of year. Bears aren’t dangerous unless they’re hungry.”

“My! but they look dangerous enough – at the zoo,” observed Flossie.

“I tell ye,” said Helen, reflectively, “that was a pretty calf. And I was little, and I hated to hear them blat when the boys burned them – ”

“Burned them! Burned little calves! How cruel! What for?”

These were some of the excited comments. And in spite of Belle and Hortense, most of the visitors were now interested in the Western girl’s narration.

“They have to brand ’em, you see,” explained Helen. “Otherwise we never could pick our cattle out from other herds at the round-up. You see, on the ranges – even the fenced ranges – cattle from several ranches often get mixed up. Our brand is the Link-A. Our ranch was known, in the old days, as the ‘Link-A.’ It’s only late years that we got to calling it Sunset Ranch.”

“Sunset Ranch!” cried Miss Van Ramsden, quickly. “Haven’t I heard something about that ranch? Isn’t it one of the big, big cattle and horse-breeding ranches?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Helen, slowly, fearing that she had unwittingly got into a blind alley of conversation.

“And your father owns that ranch?” cried Miss Van Ramsden.

“My – my father is dead,” said Helen. “I am an orphan.”

“Oh, dear me! I am so sorry,” murmured the wealthy young lady.

But here Belle broke in, rather scornfully:

“The child means that her father worked on that ranch. She has lived there all her life. Quite a rude place, I fawncy.”

Helen’s eyes snapped. “Yes. He worked there,” she admitted, which was true enough, for nobody could honestly have called Prince Morrell a sluggard.

“He was – what you call it – a cowpuncher, I believe,” whispered Belle, in an aside.

If Helen heard she made no sign, but went on with her story.

“You see, it was such a pretty calf,” she repeated. “It had big blue eyes at first – calves often do. And it was all sleek and brown, and it played so cunning. Of course, its mother being dead, I had a lot of trouble with it at first. I brought it up by hand.

“And I tied a broad pink ribbon around its neck, with a big bow at the back. When it slipped around under its neck Bozie would somehow get the end of the ribbon in its mouth, and chew, and chew on it till it was nothing but pulp.”

She laughed reminiscently, and the others, watching her pretty face in the firelight, smiled too.

“So you called it Bozie?” asked Miss Van Ramsden.

“Yes. And it followed me everywhere. If I went out to try and shoot plover or whistlers with my little rifle, there was Bozie tagging after me. So, you see when it came calf-branding time, I hid Bozie.”

“You hid it? How?” demanded Flossie. “Seems to me a calf would be a big thing to hide.”

“I didn’t hide it under my bed,” laughed Helen. “No, sir! I took it out to a far distant coulée where I used to go to play – a long way from the bunk-house – and I hitched Bozie to a stub of a tree where there was nice, short, sweet grass for him.

“I hitched him in the morning, for the branding fires were going to be built right after dinner. But I had to show up at dinner – sure. The whole gang would have been out hunting me if I didn’t report for meals.”

“Yes. I presume you ran perfectly wild,” sighed Hortense, trying to look as though she were sorry for this half-savage little cousin from the “wild and woolly.”

“Oh, very wild indeed,” drawled Helen. “And after dinner I raced back to the coulée to see that Bozie was all right. I took my rifle along so the boys would think I’d gone hunting and wouldn’t tell father.

“I’d heard coyotes barking, as I thought, all the forenoon. And when I came to the hollow, there was Bozie running around and around his stub, and getting all tangled up, blatting his heart out, while two big old coyotes (or so I thought they were) circled around him.

“They ran a little way when they saw me coming. Coyotes sometimes will kill calves. But I had never seen one before that wouldn’t hunt the tall pines when they saw me coming.

“Crackey, those two were big fellers! I’d seen big coyotes, but never none like them two gray fellers. And they snarled at me when I made out to chase ’em – me wavin’ my arms and hollerin’ like a Piute buck. I never had seen coyotes like them before, and it throwed a scare into me – it sure did!

“And Bozie was so scared that he helped to scare me. I dropped my gun and started to untangle him. And when I got him loose he acted like all possessed!

“He wanted to run wild,” proceeded Helen. “He yanked me over the ground at a great rate. And all the time those two gray fellers was sneakin’ up behind me. Crackey, but I got scared!

“A calf is awful strong – ’specially when it’s scared. You don’t know! I had to leave go of either the rope, or the gun, and somehow,” and Helen smiled suddenly into Miss Van Ramsden’s face – who understood – “somehow I felt like I’d better hang onter the gun.”

“They weren’t coyotes!” exclaimed Miss Van Ramsden.

“No. They was wolves – real old, gray, timber-wolves. We hadn’t been bothered by them for years. Two of ’em, working together, would pull down a full-grown cow, let alone a little bit of a calf and a little bit of a gal,” said Helen.

“O-o-o!” squealed the excited Flossie. “But they didn’t?”

“I’m here to tell the tale,” returned her cousin, laughing outright. “Bozie broke away from me, and the wolves leaped after him – full chase. I knelt right down – ”

“And prayed!” gasped Flossie. “I should think you would!”

“I did pray – yes, ma’am! I prayed that the bullet would go true. But I knelt down to steady my aim,” said Helen, chuckling again. “And I broke the back of one of them wolves with my first shot. That was wonderful luck – with a twenty-two rifle. The bullet’s only a tiny thing.

“But I bowled Mr. Wolf over, and then I ran after the other one and the blatting Bozie. Bozie dodged the wolf somehow and came circling back at me, his tail flirting in the air, coming in stiff-legged jumps as a calf does, and searching his soul for sounds to tell how scart he was!

“I’d pushed another cartridge into my gun. But when Bozie came he bowled me over – flat on my back. Then the wolf made a leap, and I saw his light-gray underbody right over my head as he flashed after poor Bozie.

“I jest let go with the gun! Crackey! I didn’t have time to shoulder it, and it kicked and hit me in the nose and made my nose bleed awful. I was ‘all in,’ too, and I thought the wolf was going to eat Bozie, and then mebbe me, and I set up to bawl so’t Big Hen heard me farther than he could have heard my little rifle.

“Big Hen was always expectin’ me to get inter some kind of trouble, and he come tearin’ along lookin’ for me. And there I was, rolling in the grass an’ bawling, the second wolf kicking his life out with the blood pumping from his chest, not three yards away from me, and Bozie streakin’ it acrost the hill, his tail so stiff with fright you could ha’ hung yer hat on it!”

“Isn’t that perfectly grand!” cried Miss Van Ramsden, seizing Helen by the shoulders when she had finished and kissing her on both cheeks. “And you only ten years old?”

“But, you see,” said Helen, more quietly, “we are brought up that way in Montana. We would die a thousand deaths if we were taught to be afraid of anything on four legs.”

“It must be an exceedingly crude country,” remarked Hortense, her nose tip-tilted.

“Shocking!” agreed Belle.

“I’d like to go there,” announced Flossie, suddenly. “I think it must be fine.”

“Quite right,” agreed Miss Van Ramsden.

The older Starkweather girls could not go against their most influential caller. They were only too glad to have the Van Ramsden girl come to see them. But while the group were discussing Helen’s story, the girl from Sunset Ranch stole away and went up to her room.

She had not meant to tell about her life in the West – not in just this way. She had tried to talk about as her cousins expected her to, when once she got into the story; but its effect upon the visitors had not been just what either the Starkweather girls, or Helen herself, had expected.

She saw that she was much out of the good graces of Belle and Hortense at dinner; they hardly spoke to her. But Flossie seemed to delight in rubbing her sisters against the grain.

“Oh, Pa,” she cried, “when Helen goes home, let me go with her; will you? I’d just love to be on a ranch for a while – I know I should! And I do need a vacation.”

“Nonsense, Floss!” gasped Hortense.

“You are a perfectly vulgar little thing,” declared Belle. “I don’t know where you get such low tastes.”

Mr. Starkweather looked at his youngest daughter in amazement. “How very ridiculous,” he said. “Ahem! You do not know what you ask, Flossie.”