"I jest let go with the gun! Crackey! I didn't have time to shoulder it, and it kicked and hit me in the nose and made my nose bleed awful. I was 'all in,' too, and I thought the wolf was going to eat Bozie, and then mebbe _me_, and I set up to bawl so't Big Hen heard me farther than he could have heard my little rifle. "Big Hen was always expectin' me to get inter some kind of trouble, and he come tearin' along lookin' for me. And there I was, rolling in the grass an' bawling, the second wolf kicking his life out with the blood pumping from his chest, not three yards away from me, and Bozie streakin' it acrost the hill, his tail so stiff with fright you could ha' hung yer hat on it!" "Isn't that perfectly grand!" cried Miss Van Ramsden, seizing Helen by the shoulders when she had finished and kissing her on both cheeks. "And you only ten years old?" "But, you see," said Helen, more quietly, "we are brought up that way in Montana. We would die a thousand deaths if we were taught to be afraid of anything on four legs." "It must be an exceedingly crude country," remarked Hortense, her nose tip-tilted. "Shocking!" agreed Belle. "I'd like to go there," announced Flossie, suddenly. "I think it must be fine." "Quite right," agreed Miss Van Ramsden. The older Starkweather girls could not go against their most influential caller. They were only too glad to have the Van Ramsden girl come to see them. But while the group were discussing Helen's story, the girl from Sunset Ranch stole away and went up to her room. She had not meant to tell about her life in the West--not in just this way. She had tried to talk about as her cousins expected her to, when once she got into the story; but its effect upon the visitors had not been just what either the Starkweather girls, or Helen herself, had expected. She saw that she was much out of the good graces of Belle and Hortense at dinner; they hardly spoke to her. But Flossie seemed to delight in rubbing her sisters against the grain. "Oh, Pa," she cried, "when Helen goes home, let me go with her; will you? I'd just love to be on a ranch for a while--I know I should! And I _do_ need a vacation." "Nonsense, Floss!" gasped Hortense. "You are a perfectly vulgar little thing," declared Belle. "I don't know where you get such low tastes." Mr. Starkweather looked at his youngest daughter in amazement. "How very ridiculous," he said. "Ahem! You do not know what you ask, Flossie." "Oh! I never can have anything I want," whined Miss Flossie. "And it must be great fun out on that ranch. You ought to hear Helen tell about it, Pa." "Ahem! I have no interest in such things," said her father, sternly. "Nor should you. No well conducted and well brought up girl would wish to live among such rude surroundings." "Very true, Pa," sighed Hortense, shrugging her shoulders. "You are a very common little thing, with very common tastes, Floss," admonished her oldest sister.