“I passed it on into the right hands, you see,” Blue Bonnet said, and presently she slipped away to her room.
The big trunk which Benita had packed with such loving care for the journey East stood open, and partly filled, and on the lounge lay her suit case ready for the morrow.
Blue Bonnet sat down near it, Solomon beside her, thinking of that last afternoon at home, and the hopes and fears filling her heart then; thinking of a good many other things besides.
It was going to be a different going back from the one she had so insisted on that November morning; very “decently and in order,” for—Blue Bonnet’s eyes danced—was not Aunt Lucinda superintending the packing?
How many things had happened in this room; she had had her good moments and her bad, but the former had predominated; and when next fall came it would be almost like coming home.
“And if I haven’t learned anything else, Solomon,” she observed, “I have learned to make a bed beautifully; Aunt Lucinda said as much this morning.”
“Will you be wanting any help, Miss?” Delia asked, from the open door, and Blue Bonnet relinquished most willingly the task of unbuttoning that long row of buttons.
“Katie and me ain’t liking to think of to-morrow,” Delia said. “’Tis the dull house this’ll be the summer long.”
“You’ll be dusting the parlor every Saturday morning now,” Blue Bonnet laughed; “not just when I’ve forgotten it.” It was awfully good of everybody to be nice about not wanting her to go.
She was sitting on the porch in the twilight, thinking contentedly of the long twilights to come on the ranch veranda, with Grandmother sitting close by, and all the “We are Seven’s” and Alec there, too, when Mrs. Clyde said slowly, “Blue Bonnet, why—when Cousin Tracy gave you such excellent material to work with—didn’t you try for the Sargent? Why, at one time, we thought you were going to,—your aunt and I.”