"She would, of course; but I want an excuse to talk with Isita and persuade her to go to school this winter."
"But if we're feeding cattle here this winter, you won't be teaching down on the flat."
"Isita can go to school just the same, can't she? Besides, I want to advise her to find a place where she can work for her board while she's going to school. Her mother would send her if she weren't afraid of old Biane."
"Better go slow. If you're too friendly, we'll have their hogs down here in the wheat every day instead of twice a week."
But Harry insisted on having Isita. The one drawback to her life on the ranch had been the lack of girl friends, and her interest in Isita had taken the place of other interests.
As she rode over to the Bianes' two days before the dinner party, she tried to frame a tactful speech in which to offer the other girl a dress to wear; for probably she had nothing suitable, and Harry did not want her to refuse to come, merely because she lacked a dress.
The Biane cabin was still not much more than the "prove-up shack" that the original owner had quitted. It was of unpainted boards with only two half windows to break its blank walls, and seemed scarcely to deserve the name of "home." And still, some one had tried to improve the place. A woven-wire fence enclosed a small garden patch in which, among the cabbages, Harry recognized bachelor's-buttons and poppies grown from seed she had given Isita. Some packing boxes had been fitted together for a chicken house, and an attempt had even been made to fence in a few acres of wheat; but the live stock—Joe's hogs, half a dozen sheep and several thin cows—wandered loose, rather to the detriment of the crops of neighboring ranchers.
As Harry rode up, the morning sunshine was beaming over all; on the chickens scratching in front of the cow shed, on the scarlet poppies beside the path. Yet to Harry the clutch of poverty seemed actually visible. What a place for a young girl to grow up in! Chopping wood, plowing, herding sheep; while the good-for-nothing father and brother went fishing and hunting!
"I'd like to take her to stay with me all winter," Harry thought in sympathetic indignation. "If she had half a chance, she'd make something worth while of herself. How thankful I am for my life!"
No one was visible about the place, and Harry knocked twice before she got any response. Then halting steps came across the room within, the door was unlocked, and Isita's mother stood in the narrow opening.