Having listened to a jerky sermon as to what would be polite to say to the visiting ladies, Hilda had decided that silence was the wise policy, so she had retreated as far as the hall with Burchie. She might not speak, but she couldn’t help hearing, and these tea-ing ladies—and in particular that friend of Mrs. Capadine’s from Ohio—had offended her deeply. They sat in the parlor, while here in the hall she played with Burchie, rounding up for his amusement cattle of twigs in pastures marked off by the pattern on the rug. No doubt the ladies looked at her and thought her a good child. They would have been startled to know that much of their talk was judged—and condemned—by the active brain beneath the damp, carefully smoothed down thatch of dark curls. Burch refused to be interested in the roundup of twigs. He made one of his silent demands for the building blocks that he loved to set up and tear down, set up and tear down again. They were on the shelves on the other side of the living-room. As Hilda was slipping through to get them, her aunt stopped her. “What is it, Hilda?” “I only wanted to get Burchie’s blocks. He doesn’t care to play roundup.” “And you do?” Stout Mrs. Capadine reached out a hand, and when Hilda stopped at her knee to say politely that she did, “Well, I expect you’ll be the ranchwoman of the family, then—a regular little cattle queen.” “Uncle Hank’s already taught me to ride pretty well,” Hilda told her seriously. “I have to grow a little taller, and my arms have to be longer, before I can learn to rope.” Once more back with Burchie and the play on the floor, she heard the Ohio lady caution, laughing: “Take care. Little pitchers have long ears, you know.” And Mrs. Capadine lowered her voice away down when she next spoke. “Well, when Mr. Capadine told me that Lee Marchbanks had applied for the guardianship of the children, I didn’t know but you’d asked him to act in that capacity, Miss Van Brunt; but I see that your arrangement with the present incumbent still stands.” “Act in that capacity” was a little beyond Hilda. She had no doubt that Colonel Lee Marchbanks could do it; and “present incumbent” was surely something disagreeable; but her uneasy mind settled on the question—what children the Colonel might wish to be guardian of. “No,” Aunt Val was speaking in her most New York voice, very languid, “I didn’t write to Colonel Marchbanks; he wrote to me. This man Pearsall is—er—well-meaning, of course, but I can’t help feeling that an educated person, a gentleman, such as Colonel Marchbanks seems to be, might be a more fortunate selection.”