“Right here!” laughed the Texas plain. Its laugh was green, oh, green with pure joy, radiant with incredible stretches of blue and rose and gold—wild hollyhocks, cactus blooms, phlox—nodding, dancing in the April breeze. Hilda was getting along without any knowledge of cities, except the London or New York of romance, or the Bagdad that came into a fairy tale. She’d never even been to Mesquite, for she and Uncle Hank turned back from the Bar Thirteen after that Christmas blizzard, and the old man found plenty of work on the Sorrows to keep him there. But who would ask for more? Her world was bounded by the great pastures that stretched out and away to the horizon; the foreground of existence was made up of the daily small happenings at school or around headquarters, as the low, rambling stone house was called. Visitors here were few and far between; the people of her home world were Sam Kee in the kitchen, the cowpunchers over at the bunk house, with Shorty O’Meara, Buster, Missou’ and Old Snake Thompson for prominent citizens and Uncle Hank for kindly ruler. Sam Kee let her mix up things sometimes in his big clean kitchen. She propped Rose Marie beside her in a chair and read to the doll; or she drifted about the house murmuring verses or speeches from her favorite stories. Oh, she was happy at the ranch, with Uncle Hank—she sometimes felt guilty that she didn’t miss Aunt Val, or Burchie—or even her father—at all. Her mother’s memory was getting to be a dim thing, like a beautiful sweet dream that you tried to call back in the morning—and couldn’t. When Uncle Hank shook his head a little once or twice and said he was afraid she was sort of running wild, she knew what he meant, but she didn’t tell him. It was her “personal appearance,” as Miss Belle had called it when she spoke to her on the matter. The truth is, it was getting harder and harder for Hilda to make herself neat for school. She looked at the great acres of hollyhock, phlox and daisies and wished that a little girl could just grow dresses as they did. There had been a big supply of clothing provided by her mother: so many linens, such a number of ginghams, and the heavier frocks in proportion. In Aunt Val’s time Hilda just picked out whatever she thought she’d like to wear and put it on. There was never any trouble about it then, only sometimes if she went down stairs in the morning wearing a little lace frock with ribbons and the open-work stockings and slippers that belonged to it, Aunt Val would send her back to her room again to put on something “more suitable.” But now, even Aunt Val was gone, and pretty much everything that had traveled to Texas in the big trunk was worn out, soiled, torn or getting too small for her.