“I reckon I won’t do that, Dad,” she said, laughing at him fondly.
“I don’t know. I reckon you’ve had too much responsibility on those shoulders of yours. You left school too young, too. That’s what these other girls say. Why, that Boston girl is going to school now!
“But, shucks! she wouldn’t know enough to hurt her if she attended school from now till the end of time!”
Frances laughed again. “That is pretty harsh, father. Now, I think I have had quite schooling enough to get along. I don’t need the higher branches of education to help you run this ranch. Do I?”
“By mighty!” exploded the Captain. “I don’t know whether I have been doing right by you or not. I’ve been talking to Mrs. Bill Edwards about it. I loved you so, Frances, that I hated to have you out of my sight. But—”
“Now, now!” cried the girl. “Let’s have no more of that. You and I have only each other, and I couldn’t bear to be away from you long enough to go to a boarding school.”
“Yes–I know,” went on Captain Rugley. “But there are ways of getting around that. We’ll see.”
One thing he was determined on was Captain Dan Rugley. He proposed to have “some doings” at the ranch-house before Pratt was well enough to be discharged from “St. Frances’ Hospital,” as he called the hacienda.
The old ranchman worked up the idea with Mrs. Edwards before Frances knew anything about it.
“They call it a ‘dinner dance,’” he confided to Frances at length, when the main plan was already made. “At least that’s what Mrs. Edwards says.”