Uncle Hank was there to meet her with the buckboard. Well, it was a relief to have him to face—first. Uncle Hank was going to be the hardest part of it. She could deceive the others, if necessary; but she knew those kind blue eyes would look right through her.
And that’s just what they seemed to do as he swung her down from the steps, searched her face gravely and said in a sort of subdued tone:
“My, it’s a weight off my mind to have you here, all right, Pettie!” Then after another anxious survey of her pale cheeks, the lips that she couldn’t keep from quivering, the eyes that were only bright because of unshed tears, he finished on a falling note, “I got Lee Marchbanks’s telegraft about noon.”
The trunk had been thrown off. The train thundered away. Now Burch rode in from the trail, swung down from his pony, and came across to give her the usual funny, bumping kind of Burch kiss and ask in blunt boy fashion as he picked up the valises:
“What started you home all in a hurry before the term was over, Hilda? Not sick, are you?”
She glanced sidewise at Uncle Hank, who was bringing her trunk to lash on the back of the buckboard, and got a little shake of the head, which showed that he alone had whatever disquieting information there was in that telegram of Colonel Marchbanks’s.
“S’pose we leave sister tell us why she come home when she’s ready to say, Bud,” he suggested. “Reckon we’re glad to see her—whatever’s the reason. When folks get back ’tain’t polite, right at the first go-off, to ask too many questions, or so I was fetched up to believe.”
“All right, Uncle Hank.” Burch, piling valises into the buckboard, grinned across at the old man strapping on the trunk. “Of course you’d stick up for Hilda, whatever she did. You always do. All I’ve got to say is that it takes something more than a quitter to get ready for college. Bet I beat her yet.”
“I guess you will, Buddie.” Hilda’s foot was on the step. “I never said I was going to college, anyhow. Uncle Hank and I are going to be partners and run the ranch; you know that.”
Burch stared up at her, absently chucking a bag to see if it was firm.