Sarah colored slightly. “I am afraid I do use that word too often.” She stood a moment, her hand on the parsonage gate. There seemed to be so many more oughts in her life than in Blue Bonnet’s; and yet, everyone liked Blue Bonnet. Dr. Clark had said only the other day that she was as refreshing as one of the breezes from off her own prairies. Sarah had no desire to be called breezy, but of late she was conscious that she didn’t want to be thought—the word came hard—priggish. That was the exact term Kitty had used yesterday. “I—I don’t want to seem to be—preaching at you,” she added.
“You weren’t! You’re just a dear, good old Sarah!” In spite of the fact that they were standing right on the main street, Blue Bonnet gave her companion a hearty hug.
Sarah colored considerably more than slightly this time; no one had ever hugged her on Main Street before.
“I think,” Blue Bonnet announced later, at the dinner-table, “that, when you remember her bringing up, Sarah isn’t half bad!”
Grandmother’s eyes twinkled. “It is very kind of you to make proper allowances for her bringing up, though I had not supposed there was anything out of the way about it.”
“There is—from the Texas point of view,” Blue Bonnet laughed. “Anyhow, I mean to try and be more like her. That would suit you right down to the ground, wouldn’t it, Aunt Lucinda?”
“How soon do you begin, Blue Bonnet?” Miss Lucinda’s smile was most expressive.
“Why, right away!” the girl answered.
She wrote to Uncle Cliff and Carita that afternoon, was in early from her run with Solomon, and after supper was found by Miss Lucinda standing before one of the tall bookcases in the back parlor, studying the titles inside with dubious eyes.
“Aren’t there any one-volume Lives, Aunt Lucinda?” she asked. “Sarah’s Sunday evening reading was always devoted to ‘Lives.’”