“You got to learn,” Hank said. “Teacher cuffs you side o’ the head if you don’t. You can get used to most any way of doing things, Pettie. I got as far as long division, in the cipherin’, and read ’way into the Bible—taking all the hard words as they come. Then my pa died off, of lung fever,—pneumonia they call it now—and I had to go home and run the farm for my mother. We hadn’t got to grammer yet. Don’t know if the teacher knew it himself. So you see that left me with just the English language to use, and after I come to Texas I picked up the Texas language that a man uses workin’ cattle.” “Well, you can run a ranch ’most better than anybody, and Shorty and all the boys say so.” “Yes, your Uncle Hank can run a ranch.” “Well—you can teach me that—you can teach me to run a ranch.” “Why, yes. Reckon I can.” “Well, I can ride some now, can’t I? And I’m not afraid—very bad—any more. I’m going to be lots of help to you, Uncle Hank, aren’t I?” “Lots of help,” the man repeated softly. “When Aunt Val goes to Fort Worth, there’ll be just you and me to run the Three Sorrows ranch, won’t there? And you’ll teach me all the time—” “Outside of school and your books, Pettie. Outside of them, we’ll be full pardners. You and me’ll run this ranch.” And he swung her down on the door-stone. CHAPTER VII THE NORTHER So Hilda, alone at the ranch with Uncle Hank, Sam Kee in the kitchen, the cowboys out in their own place, came up to the first Christmas since her father’s death. There’d been Christmas cards from Aunt Val and Burchie, at the Sanitarium, and some talk of their trying to be at the Three Sorrows for the week; but in the end Miss Valeria sent a blue silk party dress for her niece, and a letter saying she could not risk having Burch exposed to changes of weather at this time. There was a Miss Wingfield, of Kentucky, in the Sanitarium, who played a very fair game of cribbage. She had found some rather good society in Fort Worth itself—and so on, and so on. Uncle Hank puckered his lips as though he might be going to whistle when they unpacked the expensive-looking little frock, so utterly unsuited to any of Hilda’s uses or needs. And when they came to try it on, they found it too tight in some places and too big in others. Miss Valeria’s letter said, just as she would have said it if she had been there, that, since she didn’t have Hilda’s measurements, there might be changes to be made, but that a local seamstress could probably attend to it. “Well,” said Uncle Hank doubtfully, “there’s a Mrs. Johnnie DeLisle at Mesquite that’s a crackerjack at sewing—sewing and cutting out things. I reckon Miss Valeria would call her a seamstress. She ain’t very local—not to us. We’ll have to go sixty miles to her. But as we was going in to-morrow—weather permitting—to do a—er—a little Christmas buying, why we can take it along, and have her fix it.”