"Cared!" exclaimed the old fellow. "Cared for you! Why, Hopie, your father worships the ground you walk on! He's a great, good-hearted man, the best in the world, and you mustn't have no hard feelin's agin' him for any little weaknesses, because the good in him is more'n the good in most men. There ain't no one that's perfect, but he's better'n most of us, I reckon. An' he loves you, an' is so proud of you, Hopie!"
"Oh, I know it, I know it!" exclaimed the girl passionately.
"An' your mother's goin' East next month," concluded McCullen. "She's very anxious to get away."
"My poor father!" said Hope softly. Then more brightly: "I suppose Sydney's out with the cattle."
"Them cattle 're gettin' pretty well located," replied McCullen. "Don't need much herdin'. No, I seen him there at Harris' as I come along. He said he was goin' to take you an' that little flaxen-haired girl out ridin', but concluded, as long as you was busy at the school-house, that he'd just take the little one—providin' she'd go. He was arguin' the question with her when I rode by, an' I reckon he's there talkin' to her yet, er else givin' her a ridin' lesson. He'll make a good horsewoman out o' her yet, if her heart ain't buried too deep up there under the rocks."
"Oh, Jim!" rebuked the girl. "It's dreadful to talk like that, and her poor heart is just crushed! It's pitiful!"
"I reckon that's just what Sydney thinks about it," replied Jim, his eyes twinkling. "You ain't goin' to blame him for bein' sympathetic, be you, Hopie?"
She laughed, but nervously.
"Louisa's the sweetest thing I ever saw, Jim! She's promised to stay and go back to the ranch with me in the fall when school is over. Isn't it nice to have a sister like that? But goodness, she wouldn't look at Syd—not in ten years!"
She was so positive in this assertion that it left Jim without an argument. She slowed down her horse to a walk, and he watched her take O'Hara's letter from her belt and read the lengthy epistle from beginning to end. Not a change of expression crossed the usual calm of her face. But for a strange force of beauty and power, by which she impressed all with whom she came in contact, her lack of expression would have been a defect. This peculiar characteristic was an added charm to her strange personality. She was rarely understood by her best friends, who generally occupied themselves by wondering what she was going to do next.