Arizona -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Guardian and ward -- Juvenile fiction; Ranch life -- Juvenile fiction
“I wish my boy might be worthy of a girl like little Barbara,” she
thought. “A fine pair they would make and what happiness ’twould be
for them both, and for me.” Then as she happened to glance into the
hat-rack mirror, she smiled a queer little smile with lips that were
quivering. “Well, now, Matilda Wilson,” she said aloud to her
reflection, “if you aren’t matchmaking, and it’s a thing you’ve
always said you wouldn’t do, for it’s just a interferin’ in other
folks’ lives. What’s more, the two of them are only children, still
a-going to school, but I guess mothers are all the same,” she added
as she went kitchenward, “first off we try to keep our boys just
little fellows and then, when all of a sudden we see that they’re
nearly young men, we begin to choose a girl we want them to marry,
but I’ll try to welcome whoever they choose just as I’d want some
other boy’s mother to welcome a girl of mine if I had one.” Then, as
the good woman poured boiling water over a great pan full of dishes,
her thoughts wandered, with equal pride, from Benjy to her older
son, Harry. “Whoever gets Hal for a husband,” she thought, “gets a
man to lean on who won’t prove a bending reed when trouble comes. He
hasn’t the nice, easy manner, maybe, that Benjy has, but Hal’s
honest and dependable. He never seemed to take to girls, though, so
maybe he won’t be one to marry, but, if he does, I wonder, now, who
it will be. I hope someone I’d like real well, but if ’tisn’t, I
won’t let that make any difference. The dear boy will never know it,
or the girl either.”
It almost seemed as if the mother heart knew instinctively that
Harry’s choice was to be someone of whom she could not really
approve, and yet, how could she know, for Harry had not even met the
girl who was to be the one dearest of all in his life.
It was nearly noon when the four riders drew near the walled-in
Papago village and Virginia suggested that they lunch with her dear
friend Winona, daughter of the Chief Grey Hawk.
Benjy was surprised to hear the proud declaration of friendship that
this white girl made for a maiden of a race so unlike her own, but
he said nothing, although he secretly wondered what manner of a maid
Winona might be.
Virginia had no trouble whatever in finding the almost hidden
entrance in the mountain wall that surrounded the Papago village for
she had carefully noted its exact relation to the clump of cactus on
her last visit, and so it was that Winona, happening to look up from
the little class which she had gathered about her in the shade of
the cliff, was both delighted and surprised to see the four riders
approaching her, three of whom she knew. The lad she had never seen
before.
Springing up, with the grace which was always in her every movement,
she approached the girls who had dismounted with outstretched hands,
and Benjy was amazed to note the real beauty of the dusky maiden
whose noble, intelligent face was aglow with the joy of so soon
again seeing her beloved Virginia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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