“Open it!” Hilda couldn’t restrain herself. “It’s just a valentine—a Christmas valentine—Uncle Hank; but I want you to keep the book, and—and you said I could be a ranchwoman—and write poetry at nights and while I’m resting.” She had worked with her own red-and-blue pencil and Frosty McQueen’s violet ink to put a vine around the page by way of border. The blossoms of this stem were botanically erratic, but they would commend themselves to Uncle Hank’s partial eyes. A red bird plumed itself in the upper right-hand corner of the sheet, supported by a blue fowl on the left. The little girl had written in her large, clear, childish hand between: My Uncle Hank I wish to thank For all he teaches me. To ride and rope And soon I hope A ranchwoman to be. The “Sorrows” fair, Shall be our care, Where we shall tend the kine. There through the years Of hopes and fears I’ll be your valentine. “Kine are cattle—in poetry—you know, Uncle Hank,” she explained hastily, as she saw he had finished the verses. “And I put in a note to tell why I had to give it to you now, instead of on Valentine day.” He turned the sheet and found: “To My Dear Uncle Hank: “This is a Valentine only it is Christmas you know and I have nothing to give you but my love because the Necktie is at Mesquite and it Snows. But you will understand and I can get it then. “Your loving little girl, “Hildegarde Rensselaer Van Brunt.” With misty eyes, the old man was reading: “Nothing to give you but love ... but you will understand....” He folded the sheet together, and bent to kiss the upraised childish face. “Nothin’ but love—why, Pettie, that’s a gift to fill the whole—wide—world!” CHAPTER IX STOCKINGS AND SHOES Spring came along while Aunt Val and Burchie were in Fort Worth. Think of it—think of being away when that happened! Hilda wouldn’t have missed it for anything. For she knew that this country of the Staked Plain played a yearly prank. Throughout the long, dry summer it hid beneath the soft green-brown that clothes its mighty levels, dreaming delicate mist of dream, that showed to mortal eyes as mirage. In winter, it lay under the great reaches of snow. But on some magically determined day in spring, when you were not thinking of anything in particular, it suddenly burst out upon you and shouted, “Booh!” “Booh!” cried the Texas plains of Lame Jones County (a place supposed by the foolishly learned to be a dry, windswept, featureless waste, almost desert) in a great voice that had no sound, and seemed to come from everywhere at once. And you looked about and said, “Why, you almost scared me!” You looked a long time and then you said, “How beautiful you are—oh, how beautiful! Where have you been all year?”