"It certainly would be fine for Alec."
"Yes, and for Uncle Cliff, too. He gets mighty tired of the grind—that's what he calls it sometimes. Why, his little trips East are about the only pleasure he has; and yet—I don't believe you could drive him off the Blue Bonnet Ranch. He loves everything about it, from the smallest yearling to each blade of grass. He says my father did too, and his father. It's a kind of a family trait."
She laughed softly.
"And you have inherited the feeling?" Grandmother asked.
"Oh, I love it," the girl answered. "Of course I love it—but I'm not crazy to winter and summer on it."
Mrs. Clyde seemed satisfied. It would be easier to transplant Uncle Cliff sometime in the future, she thought, than to sacrifice Blue Bonnet to the Texas wilderness. The bond between herself and the child was riveting so close that the thought of a possible separation often appalled her. Yet she did not wish to be selfish; Blue Bonnet's allegiance was to her uncle—there could be no doubt of that.
"By the way, Grandmother, did I tell you that the General has a new picture of Alec? It's just fine. I'll run over and get it."
She was back in the shortest possible time, excited and breathless.
"There he is," she said, thrusting the picture in her grandmother's hands. "Did you ever see anybody change so in your life? That shows what Texas air will do for people. Why, he's fat, positively fat, for him, isn't he?"
"He certainly seems to have grown stouter," Mrs. Clyde admitted.