Blythe had long since departed to his own home, having been, during the last weeks of his convalescence, under the same roof with his mother and the Ross family. Many an hour the girls spent in amusing him, and they had all been on such intimate terms that Blythe, who had quite a gift for caricature, used many of his idle moments in making entertaining pictures of the different members of the family going about their various employments. It was one of these Alison enclosed to Neal. It was sufficiently like to bring the two girls very vividly before the young man, but his memory went beyond the suggestion and saw them as they really were, Christine with sensitive, delicate features, trim figure, and with bands of sleek hair parted above her smooth forehead; Alison tall, slender, girlishly young, her hair inclined to be rebellious, eyes honest and fearless, eyebrows a little darker than her hair, and raised a trifle at the inner corners, giving her a look of innocent surprise, mouth not too small, and often smiling. The casual observer would have called Christine, with her regular features, the prettier, but in Alison’s expressive face her friends found a greater charm. Leaving Christine to read the letter she danced out of the door and called Lolita who, nothing loath, assisted in the milking which was by no means an ordinary process. Around the small pen, where a few calves were kept, gathered the anxious and eager mothers who lowed soft encouragement to their impatient babies, restlessly running up and down behind the rails. As Alison let down the bars one after another of the cows lumbered in, while the girl kept up a constant talk: “There now, Daffy, you are in too much of a hurry. So now, Bess, that’s not your calf. Look out, Brindle, you are not to treat me with such disrespect; if you don’t look out I shall be run over, you clumsy thing.” As soon as the calves had fairly commenced their evening meal, Alison, with a deft swing of a lasso, encircled the horns of one of the cows, and Lolita made the other end of the rope fast to the neck of the calf, who was thus drawn beyond reach of the source of supply. Alison then speedily milked about a pint into the earthen vessel she held, after which the yearning calf was allowed to wriggle back to its mother. This process was repeated till each cow had contributed her proper amount of milk for the needs of the family, each supply being separately conveyed to a bucket set outside the fence. This method, generally employed upon the ranchos, was one against which Alison constantly inveighed, so that her brother promised if possible he would have a cow specially “gentled” for her, although a Texas cow was not willing to stand until her calf had been allowed to receive a first share of her milk.