"What's up, Blue Bonnet?" he asked anxiously. He was on the rug beside her now, and with a hand under her quivering chin tilted her face and scanned it closely.
She winked fast for a moment. "Uncle Cliff, do you find it terribly hard to be good?"
"Thundering hard, Honey." He thought whimsically that it was lucky no one else had heard that question. "So hard that my success at it hasn't been remarkable!"
"Oh, Uncle, it has!" she declared. "And it always seems so easy for you to 'live as you ride—straight and true.' I was so proud last winter when you said I'd proved I was an Ashe, clear through. But I reckon you spoke too soon. I've been showing what Alec calls 'a yellow streak.'"
"Don't you say that of my girl! I'll wager our best short-horn against a prairie-dog that if you've a yellow streak it's pure gold!" He caressed the brown head that nestled against his arm.
She wriggled away and faced him firmly. "You may as well know the worst, Uncle Cliff. It was my fault that Kitty was hurt yesterday. It's my fault Grandmother is ill and Debby's feet hurt. I was mean and thoughtless and selfish and—"
He put his hand over her mouth. "Look here, no Ashe is going to hear one of his race called all those ugly names. Remember whom you're talking to! Things always seem to come in bunches, Honey, but you have to dispose of them one at a time. Why, it's hardly a year since a girl about your size—a bit younger she was, but she had blue eyes just like yours,—was saying she reckoned she'd never make a Westerner, and she hated the ranch and was going to sell it as soon as she came of age—"
"Don't!" came in a smothered tone from Blue Bonnet. Her face was buried again. "Don't remind me how downright horrid I was."
"And six months later that same little girl—blue eyes same as yours—was telling me how she reckoned that three hundred years would never make an Easterner of her, and she loved the ranch and wanted to be a Texas Blue Bonnet as long as she lived!"
"And so I do, Uncle."