"That's quite an accomplishment—I'll wager you couldn't get in half so many," retorted Kitty. And then for a while there was silence, broken only by the scratching of pens and the query from Blue Bonnet as to whether there were two s's or two p's in "disappoint."
"To Susy and Ruth Doyle, Woodford,
Massachusetts.
"The Blue Bonnet Ranch,
"July the fifth.
"You Poor Dears: You'll never know if you live to be a thousand years old what a fearful disappointment it was when Doctor Clark told me the awful news. Where did you get it? Is it very bad? And do you have to gargle peroxide of hydrogen? Amanda says she just lived on it when her throat was bad. Are you honestly as red as lobsters? It's a perfect shame you should have to be sick—and in vacation, too. There might be some advantages if it should happen—say at examination time. Grandmother says it is very unusual to have scarlet fever in warm weather,—it just seems as if you must have gone out of your way to get it—or it went out of its way to get you.
"The ranch party isn't a bit complete without you. I'm going to take pictures of everything and everybody so as to show you when we get back. That sounds as if I meant to go back again next fall, when really it isn't decided yet. I'm more in love with the ranch than ever and feel as if I never wanted to leave it again. It's so fine and big out here. There's so much air to breathe and such a long way to look, and you can throw a stone as far as you like without 'breaking a window or a tradition'—as Alec says. We have our traditions, too, but they can stand any amount of stone-throwing—in fact that's part of them.
"It's worth crossing the continent to see Sarah on horseback, riding across the saddle in a wild Western way that would shock her reverend father out of a whole paragraph. Kitty dared her and I must say she showed pluck—Comanche can go some when he gets started, and Sarah stayed with him to the finish. But you can imagine why she wanted to write letters to-day instead of riding again. You can thank her for the round robin. There, I've reached the bottom of the page before I've begun to tell you anything. But the others will make up for it, I reckon. No more now—I must save strength for a letter to Aunt Lucinda. Do hurry and get well and out of quarantine so that you can write to
"Your devoted
"Blue Bonnet."
"Dear Susy and Ruth: We arrived on Monday evening after a very pleasant journey. The name of the station where you get off is Jonah—isn't that odd? We had to drive twenty miles in a very queer kind of vehicle in order to reach Blue Bonnet's home, and this letter will have to go back over the same road in order to be posted. I think I had better go back to the beginning and tell you all about our trip from the time we left Woodford.
"The private car we came in is called The Wanderer and it is really a pity you could not have shared it with us. It is much grander than Mrs. Clyde's drawing-room at home,—the mahogany shone till you could see your face in it, and wherever there was not mahogany there was a mirror, and Slivers, the porter, dusted everything about twenty times a day. If you could see Slivers I should not have to explain why he is called by that name. I am sure he is the tallest and slimmest man I have ever seen. And that is odd, too, for you always think of them as plump and fat. He is a negro, you know, and doesn't seem to mind it a bit, but is as jolly as if he were white and as fat as you think he ought to be, and sang and played his banjo in the evenings quite like a civilized person. He waited on table, too, while the chief—the cook, you know—prepared our meals in the most cunning little kitchen you can imagine.
"It was a very interesting trip. Sometimes we would begin our breakfast in one state and before we had finished we would be in another, and yet there would seem to be no difference. I think travelling is a very interesting way to learn Geography, for you forget to think of Kansas as yellow and Oklahoma as purple, and think of them as real places with trees and farms and other things like Massachusetts. I knew already that Texas is as big as all the New England states put together, but I never really grasped it before. I am learning new things every day, some Spanish, though not as much as I could wish. Yesterday I learned to ride astride. That is, nearly learned. I don't feel entirely at home that way yet and it has tired me considerably, but I dare say it will come easier after a while. My horse is named Comanche, and he looks just that way. There is more white to his eyes than anything else.
"Benita is Blue Bonnet's old nurse. She does the most exquisite drawn-work and is going to teach me (it would be as well for you not to mention this when you write) the spider-web stitch and the Maltese cross, so that I can do a waist for Blue Bonnet. She is doing so much for us all that I want to make some return for her hospitality. Blue Bonnet, I mean, not Benita.