“Yes—go—quick!” cried Hilda, all in one breath. “Hurry. She might be gone before you get over there.” The two girls raced down the stairs, passed Fayte in the hall; he looked around and called, “What’s the grand rush?” But they didn’t stop. Half way to the gate, Hilda caught up little Jinnie, who was playing, and hugged her tempestuously. Five minutes later, Maybelle, returning from her errand, found the two of them sitting on the Bermuda grass, playing cat’s cradle. Maybelle whispered: “I made her invite him. She wasn’t going to, but I told her he was an old friend of yours, and that your folks thought a great deal of him.” “Oh, Maybelle—you oughtn’t to have said that last; it isn’t true.” “Whiskerin’ secrets! Whiskerin’ secrets!” squealed Jinnie. “I hear you two girls whiskerin’ your secrets!” “I thought that was what you said.” Maybelle’s face was as innocent as a pan of milk. “Anyhow—it’s done now. You just keep quiet—and it’ll work out all right.” Hilda was quiet enough, outwardly; but she could never have told how she got through the day that followed. Yet she did get through it without actual betrayals. Maybelle was in the kitchen, making tamales for to-morrow’s lunch. Hilda, at a desk, elbows on it to prop her face into studying position, had no realization of how time passed. She had drifted so far away from her surroundings that Miss Ferguson’s hesitating, embarrassed voice startled her, saying almost in Maybelle’s exact words: “Hilda—what is it?” “What is what?” “If there was—anything—if you needed advice—you could come to me, you know.” “Advice?” Hilda came to herself with a jerk. She glanced from the book in front of her to her teacher’s face. “I don’t need anything, thank you. I am all right. Everything’s all right.” Poor Miss Ferguson—what would she know? What could she do, or say? No use. You had to keep such things to yourself and do the best you could with them. She seized her pencil and went to work again, saying softly, without looking up, “You’re very kind—but it’s all right.” CHAPTER XXVII OLD MAN HIPP’S STEER The Flying M crowd and the Burketts had agreed on a place all to themselves in the willows along Caliente creek. The colonel said he intended to try for some plover up there. Hilda, riding with Maybelle and Fayte, watched eagerly as they neared the picnic grounds, saw that the Burketts were already there ahead of them; out of their vehicles, off their ponies, moving about a camp-fire and spreading a tablecloth. “There’s Lefty Adams and Billy Grainger,” commented Maybelle, softly. But nobody said, “There’s Pearse Masters.”