CHAPTER XXXIII A SAND STORM “March winds surely are blowing,” Margaret sang out, as she and Virginia were hurled along at a merry pace from the “hen corral,” the small fenced-in enclosure whither the girls had been to gather eggs. When they reached the shelter of the kitchen, Virginia declared, “It’s great fun to race with the wind back of one, but I wouldn’t care to go far across the desert facing this gale. I suppose that it will blow now for days and days. It usually does in March. Sometimes it hurls the sand against our windows in terrific gusts and woe to the horseman who is caught out in a such a storm.” “What happens? Is he buried alive?” Margaret asked. “No, not often that. Sometimes he turns and rides with the wind until it has abated. Let’s get the darning basket, shall we? This is such a cozy time to sit by the fire and mend. I always enjoy it most when there is a storm outside, don’t you?” Fifteen minutes later the two girls were comfortably curled up in easy chairs in front of the wide grate on which a mesquite root was cheerfully burning. Margaret, dropping her darning into her lap sat watching the flames. “A penny for your thoughts,” Virginia teased. Margaret looked up with a little laugh. “Virg,” she said, “my thoughts had gone way back to the first chapter. I was thinking how I had rebelled when you wrote that I would have to leave boarding school and come out here to live on the desert. I was so sure that I was leaving happiness behind me and that I would be miserable ever after, but instead—” she paused. “Have you been unhappy, dear, and are you hiding it in your heart?” Virginia asked anxiously. “Unhappy?” Margaret lifted such a glowing face that Virginia felt that her question was answered before the next words were uttered. “I have never been so happy before in all my life. This is the first real home that I ever had. Mother died when I was so very young, and then father placed me in boarding school, and then he died. Of course I was happy at Vine Haven and Babs was like a dear sister, but Oh, Virginia, there’s nothing like a comfortable, love-filled house for a home, is there? Of course I still love Babs, and now I have you, and Malcolm for a brother.” Margaret had returned her attention to the sock she was darning which chanced to belong to the lad she had just mentioned, and she smiled as she continued, “How nice Malcolm is. But isn’t he much more serious than most boys of eighteen? Is it because he has had so much responsibility since your father died?” “Perhaps, and also because he is of a serious nature,” Virginia replied, as she threaded a needle. “And yet there is lots of fun in Buddy. You haven’t had an opportunity to become acquainted with him. He has been so occupied since you came. If he does return to V. M. Ranch tomorrow I do hope he plans staying at home for a while. He has been away now for two weeks.”