“When she wants to be sweet and charming,” Miss Hetty put in grimly. “She has you wound round her finger, too, Isaphine.” “She’s generous to a fault,” Miss Isa defended stoutly, “always making gifts, and giving her own things away.” “Yes, it gratifies her and doesn’t cost her anything. And that and her beauty are what bind the other girls to her.... And there is a something,” Miss Hetty mused; “I don’t myself know what it is. Her mother had it, and she was a lovable, selfish creature herself. “Well, if it weren’t for Lois’ having lost her mother, and for her father’s invalidism, I really wouldn’t have her here another winter. She’s too capricious, and her extravagance sets a bad example. Her father denies her nothing. She spent more than a hundred and fifty dollars on that theater party which we allowed her to take in to town last week, and you know I don’t approve of fifteen-year-old girls doing such things.” “What shall we do about Raquel Daniels?” Miss Isaphine hastily changed the subject. “Her clothes are not adequate. She hasn’t at all the wardrobe we advise, and I took special pains to describe everything in our correspondence with her father. “And her hair, Hetty, that awful, masculine short hair! It makes her look so boyish. Hetty, I--” Miss Hetty interrupted her sister with a withering glance. “What shall we do about her clothes? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Don’t you suppose the child thought they were adequate? Can’t you see the stuff she’s made of? Can’t you see she would suffer if we suggested she discard the clothes she’s brought? Wait until she finds out for herself what she wants to wear. Use a little common sense, Isa,” snapped Miss Hetty. “Besides, Anne Marvin has exceptional taste. She’ll learn.” And Raquel, off in the wing room, was too absorbed in Anne’s company to give a thought to clothes. She was telling Anne all about Los Ranchos, and Dad, and Mother, and the boys--Grant and Custer and Georgie (he was twelve), and Jim Hovey, who was from Boston. It helped the home hunger a lot to talk about it to willing ears. It was the only world Raquel knew, and under the spell of Anne’s sympathy she spread its sunny beauty, its simplicity, its vast unfenced reaches before her new friend. “Dad, he was born under a covered wagon on the way west. His father and mother were the first people who pioneered into that valley of the Pecos. And Dad’s mother was a beauty in the South, though his father was pioneer stock from ’way back. “Dad’s got an idea he wants me to have schooling. He’s sold more than seventy thousand head of cattle in the last four years, and he said, he and Mom, that this was the time for me to go to school. He aimed to have me learn banking and bookkeeping, because he and the boys have to carry every penny in their heads.