A Girl of the Plains Country

								

on dry turf, like a monotonous old tune, almost sent Hilda to sleep
where she sat beside Uncle Hank on the high seat. Then, when the sky
flamed once more red with sunset, suddenly there was living green in
front of them, the ambulance swung through an open gate, up a long
avenue of young box-elders and black locusts, at the end of which
they could see a low stone house, broad, sheltering, hospitable,
with its dooryard of Bermuda grass, at the edge of which Pearsall
pulled up, got out and helped the others down. Van Brunt, who had
sat silent and uncomplaining for hours of heat and weariness,
exclaimed:
“This the ranch? Why, Pearsall, I didn’t suppose there was such a
green place in all the Panhandle.”
“Well, there’s not another like the Three Sorrows, I can tell you,”
answered the old man, busy with bags and valises; and as they moved
toward the house Miss Valeria murmured that it was better than could
have been expected.
Hilda, hanging back, saying nothing, gazed about at the new home
with eyes that loved every stone in its walls. Its pleasant rustle
of leaves and lisp of water, after all those miles of splendid, arid
plain, made her eyes smart with happy tears. The beautiful
wing-like, curving sweep in which the line of young cottonwoods,
following the happy course of a tiny irrigating ditch, flung away
around one corner of the building—here was a world where
anything—lovely—might happen. Those willows over yonder by the
little lake (the old man called it a watering tank), they looked
just like Nixies crouching down in their long green hair. There was
mystery in the very appearance of the plain about them. When a
Chinaman came to the door she could have shouted with delight.
He was a strange, limp effigy of a Chinaman, like a badly made rag
doll, his slant eyes and pigtail giving the impression that he had
lately been hung up on a line with other such toys. Apparently he
was young, though the Oriental never looks to our eyes either
exactly young or old, and certainly he was morose. The queue on his
head, the dull blue blouse he wore, his funny black-and-white
boat-shaped shoes, all charmed Hilda.
The first thing she saw that looked like the old home back in New
York was a familiar rug spread out at the foot of the stairs in the
hall.
“I s’pose your full-sized carpets ain’t come yet,” Pearsall
explained, as he showed his employer the living-room on one side,
the ranch office on the other. “These mats looked a good deal worn,”
he indicated the dull bloom of Turkish rugs disposed here and there,
“but of course they’ll be nice and soft for the children to play
on.”
Van Brunt assented kindly, and neither he nor Miss Valeria offered
any explanation. It was near supper time. The open door at the end
of the hall showed a shouldering group of masculine forms, ranch
riders, heretofore familiar to the eyes of the newcomers only in