Some one was whistling "All the Blue Bonnets are over the Border." She looked up as Alec came towards her.
"Do I intrude upon a solemn hour?" he asked.
"The solemn hour has ticked its last second. I've said good-bye to everything and everybody,—except Texas and Massachusetts. Come with me to see those infants."
Hardly infants any longer, however. Long-tailed, with erect silky ears and coats that stood out shaggily from their fattening sides, the coyotes were fast growing into big, clumsy dogs.
"You'll look after them, won't you, Alec?" Blue Bonnet asked anxiously.
"That I will," he promised.
"And you'll write me often about—everything? And see that Uncle Cliff doesn't smoke too much, and that Uncle Joe takes his rheumatism medicine—"
"Trust me!" Alec knew better than to smile at such a moment. "And in turn, Blue Bonnet, you'll give an eye to Grandfather, won't you?"
They shook hands on it solemnly, and went in to breakfast.
Kitty, her face restored to its usual milky-whiteness, and looking very pretty in her jaunty travelling-suit, met them at the door. Peering over her shoulder stood Ruth—a sunburned Ruth with bright eyes and a rounder curve to her cheek than it had worn two weeks before.