With a sure instinct he had sounded the right note.
“Course we can!” the little girl echoed it with a sort of lyric jubilance. She took a long, pleased look at him, and began:
“Auntie finds it very hard to bear this kind of life. The nurse we had, she came as far as Amarillo; but she said she never in all her days saw such a flat country—and she despised it—and she just couldn’t put up with it—and there wasn’t any money ever made that would pay her to. So she went back. She went back to New York.”
“I expect this does look considerable different from New York,” Hank allowed mildly.
“Oh, it does!” Hilda glowed. “Beautifuller. I love the way it looks. Aunt Val, she’s been a great many places. But this—she wasn’t ever here before. She’s been to Europe, and to Egypt where the pyramids are, and the Sphinx that’s all getting covered up with sand. I—” Hilda sent a half-shy, questing look into the old man’s twinkling eyes—“I know a good deal about Phœnicians, and Cæsar, myself—Thor and his hammer, and Apollo, and the Holy Grail. My mother used to read to me about them.”
“Yes,” assented the ranch manager easily. “I guess them’s mostly New Yorkers and such. I haven’t the acquaintance of any of ’em.”
Hilda was silent for a few moments. This new friend was plainly somewhat given to humor. He might be jesting with her. Presently she spoke:
“But when—when my mother died in Denver, and there wasn’t anybody to take care of Burchie and me, papa telegraphed to Aunt Val and she came. It was very good of her. She doesn’t like the country—nor children, very much.” After a pause, she added, in a diminished voice, “Do you?”
“Do I what, honey?” asked Pearsall, starting a bit, for his mind had wandered from her prattle.
“Like children very much—and the country; this,” and her looks indicated the big world about them.