“I don’t quite remember. Your grandmother is a lady, and looks it. Your Aunt Nan was but a little girl of your age when I saw her, but I think she’s—well, a little less particular than your Aunt Lou, judging from her letters. I have been wrong,” he continued after a pause, “in not sending you on to them in the summers, but I could not go, and it seemed a long way to have you go without me. And though we’ve always asked them, none of them has ever come here, until your Aunt Lou came this summer.” “Why didn’t mother go oftener?” He hesitated a moment. “Some way she didn’t want to leave for so long. She loved this Big Horn country as much as you and I. We went together once before you came; and then the summer you were five years old she took you and went again. But that was the last time. Do you remember it?” “I remember the tall clock on the stairs. I held the pendulum one day and stopped it, and grandmother said it had not stopped for seventy-five years. Then she scolded me, and told mother I was a little wild thing—not a bit like my mother—and mother cried and said she wished we were back home with you.” They were silent again, listening to the wind in the cottonwoods. A long silence, then her father said quietly, “Your grandmother was wrong. You are very like your mother. But I am sorry you had to look like your dad. It will disappoint them in Vermont.” Virginia’s eyes in the darkness sparkled dangerously. She sat up very straight. “If they don’t like the way I look,” she announced deliberately, “I’ll go on to school, and not trouble them. I’m proud of looking like my father, and I shall tell them so!” Her father watched her proudly. Back through the years he heard her mother’s voice: “If they don’t like the man I’ve married, we’ll come back to the mountains, and not torment them!” A creaking sound, occurring regularly at intervals of a few seconds, came from the road back of the house leading to the ranch buildings, and gradually grew more distinct. “Jim’s coming,” said Virginia. “He isn’t going on the round-up to-morrow, is he, father? Don’t let him go, please!” The creaking drew nearer, accompanied by hard, exhausted breathing. “No,” her father told her, his voice low. “I’m not going to let him go. He’s too worn out and old for that work, though it’s wonderful how he rides with that wooden leg; but I can’t tell him he shan’t take charge of the branding. He couldn’t stand that disappointment. Come on, Jim,” he called cheerily. “We’re on the porch.” Virginia echoed her father. “Come and talk with us, Jim.” “I’m a-comin’,” came from the corner of the porch, “fast as this old stick’ll bring me. Ain’t much the way I used to come, is it, sir? But stick or leg, I’m good for years yet. Lord, Miss Virginia, I’m a-goin’ to teach your boys and girls how to throw the rope!” And talking as he wheezed and creaked, Jim reached the porch and laboriously stumped up the steps.