“Down here,—sit right down here, an’ wait till I tell you.” Down sat the ranchman, obediently, and Steenie close beside him, while she poured into his ears a rapid history of what had befallen her since her departure from her childhood’s home.
Much of this he had already learned from her letters; much more Sutro had told him; but this last threatened calamity—the family moving on the morrow from the old house in High Street to the tiny cottage in the suburbs—and the privations which menaced this child so dear to him, was news and sad news. Still, he had come East to put his own powerful shoulder to the burden his beloved Little Un was so bravely trying to lift with her own childish strength, and there “was no such word as fail” in Kentucky Bob’s vocabulary.
“Well! Where’s yer rig-out? Ain’t a goin’ to ’pear afore the assembled multitudes in just that flimsy frock, are you,—or is it a new style?”
“No! Course not. Did I ever? But I’ve the cutest little habit ’at ever was! Grandmother had it made for me; ’cause Mary Jane said, ‘If I was bound ter break my neck, I’d better break it lookin’ ’spectable.’ Oh, that Mary Jane! She’s the dearest, best, funniest little old body; moves all of a jerk, an’ so quick she makes Mr. Resolved dizzy to watch her,—so he says. He’s way down, down at the bottom of everything, all the whole time; but he has the lumbago, an’ it’s that I s’pose. Though she’s his sister an’ she doesn’t get hypoey, never. An’—oh, my habit? Why, you see, dear Bob, when we had to sell Tito—”
“Wh-at? Say that again. ’Pears like I don’t understand very sharp.”
“Didn’t I tell you ’bout that? But it was so. We couldn’t ’ford to keep him, my grandmother says; an’ Judge Courtenay bought him; an’ Papa put the money in the savings bank toward my education, ’cause he said it was a’most like takin’ money for folks, an’ it shouldn’t be used ’cept for the best purpose. And dear Mrs. Courtenay made me bring my habit an’ keep it here; so’s when I’ve done my lessons extra well I can have a ride on Tito for a ‘reward.’ Anyhow, I see him every day; an’ I’ve ’xplained it to him best I could; but he doesn’t understand it very well, I think. Any way he doesn’t behave real nice. When I go away he whinnies an’ cries an’ acts—he acts quite naughty, sometimes. But he oughtn’t; for everybody is as good as good to him. Come and see him this minute.”
Away went the reunited friends, and Tito’s intelligent eyes lighted with almost human joy when his kind old instructor laid a caressing hand upon his head, and cried out gayly: “Howdy, old boy! Shake, my hearty, shake!”
Up went Tito’s graceful fore-leg, and “shake” it was, literally and emphatically. When this ceremony was over and the magnificent stables of Rookwood had been duly examined and admired, Steenie was commissioned to bring her friend into dinner, which was early that day on account of the afternoon’s arrangements. During its progress, Bob managed to give considerable information concerning Santa Felisa happenings, as well as dispose of a hearty meal. He had “begged off” from going to table with “these high-toned Easteners; ’cause you know, Little Un, ’t I never et to no comp’ny table nowheres,—not even to your’n an’ your pa’s. I’m a free-born American, an’ all that rubbish—but I know what’s what: the more for that reason. In—my place I’m as good as the next feller an’-a-little-better-too-sir; but outen it—I’m outen it. Them ’at rides the plains an’ looks arter stawk, as I’ve done the last hunderd years, more or less, hain’t learned to dip their fingers into no fingerbowls nor wipe their mustache on no fringed napkins.”
But Judge Courtenay overruled the stranger’s objections, and once having accepted the situation, Bob made the best of it. He was awkward, of course, and ignorant concerning table etiquette; but he let his awkwardness apologize for itself by his simple good nature in the matter; and if his talk was not polished, it was full of wit, originality, and a verve that carried his listeners captive.
“Well!” said Mrs. Courtenay, when at last they could no longer delay their rising from the board, “I do not know when I have enjoyed anything so much as your descriptions of ranch-life. It is almost as good as seeing it for myself; and it gives me a real longing for its breeziness and freedom from social cares and restrictions.”