So the brother to whom she wrote dutiful letters, whenever she wrote to Aunt Val, and who soon began to send her back short answers that were rather better written and spelled than her own, came to cut little figure in her life of work and play. At school there were companions of her own age to contend against, confide in—boys and girls who lived the ranch life. And there was always The-Boy-On-The-Train to remember. In all this time, Hilda had never forgotten him. He seemed more real in some ways than Burch or Aunt Val or any one or anything that had belonged to the old life. All else that concerned that time got dim and changed; he remained the one who was always just right—the one who could do no wrong. But when there is a live boy, like Kenny Tazewell or Clarke Capadine, at hand to ride races with, how then? Does one forget the absent—at least while the hot blood is drumming in one’s ears, and every trick that Uncle Hank has taught is needed to keep the pony going straight, to stay on him and avoid dog-holes? We-ell, maybe so. But when the there-present boy wins, and isn’t very nice about it, and there might be some suspicion that he didn’t ride fairly, ah, then one recalls with pride and joy The-Boy-On-The-Train, the being without fault, the dweller in the fair mirage-land of memory, who could be nothing less than noble and generous! _He_ would never have ridden the faster pony. _He_ would be incapable of crowding one in so close to the fence that it was pull up or be scraped off—and that, too, after treacherously offering that side of the road in all appearance of good faith. No, no! Far otherwise. _He_ would have brought the proud-crested barb, or the milk-white palfrey swifter than the steeds of dawn, or the coal-black stallion eagle-winged, for his lady to ride. _He_ would have helped her on, resigned the best place, and smiled when her mount outran his’n—oh, well, then, _his_. The Marchbanks children had never come again to the Capadine ranch. Colonel Lee Marchbanks stayed in New Mexico. They all went into Hilda’s world of memory and tradition. The further edge of this world of tradition and memory melted into the world of books. And Hilda had got to be a great reader of books. There had come to Texas with the Van Brunt furniture quite a library. Some of it was unpacked and filled the bookshelves in the living-room; when it overflowed these, a lot of it went into the little place they called the office; but there were still books in boxes in the cellar. The things Hilda loved best she read over and over; she knew pages of Marmion and Lady of the Lake by heart, not to mention her beloved ballads. Great musical, stirring lines from these were always jingling through her head when she played at home. Sometimes she went about saying them under her breath. Or—and this was a sort of fearful pleasure—saying some lines of her own that she more or less made up as she went along.