“Oh, I’m glad I came anyways--anyway, I mean--although I guess the proper place for me would have been the State Agricultural College! But I’ve met you, and I’ll never forget that. And Dad wants me to have some life away from the ranch, he says. “Mom does too. But she’s different from Dad. She doesn’t talk much. She says she was so much alone in the early days, with the mesa and the desert stretchin’ out so silent all ’round, that she guesses she forgot how to talk. Most ranch women are like that. And then when Dad came in, he would do all the talkin’. “Mom says she wants me to have a plenty of pretty things to think about when I go back home. Ranch women are bound to be alone more or less. But I think it’s mighty pretty to raise the colts and gentle them. That’s my job at home. “I’m more like Dad, I guess. I like to ride the range. And I haven’t forgotten how to talk.” Both girls laughed spontaneously. “But Dad seems to set a lot of store by his mother’s memory. Says he’d like for me to have some of the things she gave up when she and my granddad went West. “And he wants me to be able to hold my own out in the world as well as on the range, he says. And I’ve got to do it.” “Raquel, do you look like this grandmother?” “Dad thinks so, because he wants to, but no one else seems to. Not even me, and I’d like to, myself! Do you want to see her picture?” At Anne’s eager nod, Raquel laid before her roommate a tintype from which looked out a vivid, dark face. The finely-cut features, the way the head was set upon the slender throat, made you think of pride, and mettle, the endurance of a blooded horse. She smiled out at you in the strangely lifelike way that tinted tintypes have. “She _is_ beautiful, Raquel,” said Anne at last, “and you are very like her, except for the curls, and--and the coquetry. I never realized before just how lovely you are.” Anne’s blue eyes looked up in frank and generous admiration at the finely featured brown face bending over her, the sleek, closely cropped brown head, which clever Anne saw had chic--in a day before the boyish bob was smart. She was growing tremendously fond of Raquel. Too covered with embarrassed shyness to speak, Raquel brought out from the calfskin valise some snapshots of herself and the boys. “Jimmy took these. There’s Dad. Isn’t he sweet?”--pointing at a tall, lean, bow-legged figure in the middle of the group, horny-handed, weather-beaten. “And Custer, he’s awfully handsome. Mom is right pretty, but she won’t ever stand up for a picture. She had one when she was married, she said, and she’s never had time to be dressed up since.” “Why, Rakie, Rakie Daniels,” chanted Anne, “is this you in the beauteous leather breeches, with the silver belt and all those silver buttons? And look at the hat! Aren’t you wonderful! Did you bring them with you?” Raquel grinned sheepishly. “Took up the whole bottom of my trunk, and I guess I won’t get to wear ’em anyway.”