“She belongs to us.”
“Oh, she does, does she?” Mr. Ashe said; his glance went from Kitty’s saucy, piquant little face to Blue Bonnet’s happy one. Blue Bonnet was getting to belong to a good many people nowadays it seemed.
“It has all been perfectly lovely,” Blue Bonnet told him, as they rode home together in the frosty starlight; she brought her horse a little nearer, laughing up into her uncle’s face, “and you behaved beautifully.”
“Don’t I always?”
“Of course, but—I was a little bit afraid you might—Sarah’s horse is so—even Amanda’s for that matter—and Black Pete sometimes—”
“My dear,” Mr. Ashe replied, gravely, “one of the earliest lessons taught me in my childhood was respect—for my elders!”
Blue Bonnet was very happy those days. As for Uncle Cliff, he looked on and wondered; it was the Blue Bonnet he had always known—and yet a different one. A less heedless, inconsequent, Blue Bonnet; one more thoughtful of the comfort of others.
He said something of this that evening to Mrs. Clyde. “I suppose it’s being with women,” he said. “You’re making a little woman out of her—I reckon it’s what her mother would have wished—only, don’t take all the spirit out of her.”
“Not much danger of that,” Mrs. Clyde answered; “a little taming down will do no harm.”
“It hasn’t so far. She seems to like it back here all right.”