“No, they’re on a ranch in Tulare County.”
“Why, we’ve got a ranch in Tulare County.” She was still looking round as if expecting to find something that as yet escaped her eye. “Where’s—where—a—Show me your—your ribbons and things.”
“I haven’t got any. We can’t afford ribbons in this family.”
“Let me see your collars and ties, then.” Hildegarde opened her top drawer. In the course of turning over collars and handkerchiefs and little boxes the silver locket came to light.
“Why don’t you wear it any more?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
Bella leaned her head with its halo of short, brown curls against her friend, and very softly she beguiled her: “Please, Miss Mar, show me that friend of your father’s again.”
Hildegarde hesitated a moment and then she opened the locket. Jack Galbraith’s face smiled out upon the big girl and the little girl.
“Did you say you hadn’t ever seen him?”
“No, he hasn’t been here for sixteen years. Not since he was a little boy. And he might have been here always, because he was an orphan and his father was my father’s greatest friend. But some relations of his that nobody had ever heard of before, they discovered him when he was nine, and made him come to New York and live with them. But he didn’t like it. At least—I don’t know—mother thinks they didn’t like it.”