"It will give me great pleasure, if I may," he replied.
She held out her hand to him.
"If you may! Are you not master of your own actions? Good-by!"
She took her hand from his firm clasp with something like a jerk, and found herself blushing furiously as she turned to the little German girl.
As far as anyone could be made comfortable in the Harris home Hope made her little charge so. She shared her room, her bed with her, took her to school each day and kept her constantly at her side.
She was a simple, trusting German girl, bright, and extremely pretty, and her name was Louisa Schulte. From the first she had loved Hope with an affection that was as touching as it was beautiful, and as she came to know her better, day by day her love and admiration grew akin to worship. She believed her to be the most wonderful girl that ever lived, in some respects fairly superhuman. She marveled at the skill with which she could ride and shoot, and her wisdom in Western lore. And behind every accomplishment, every word and act, Louisa read her heart, which no one before had ever known.
So finding in the bereaved girl, who had so strangely come into her life, the sympathy and love for which she had vainly searched in one of her own sex, Hope gave her in return the true wealth of a sister's heart.
For some time after Louisa's arrival Hope was with her almost constantly, but the inactive life began to tell upon her. Her eyes would light up with an involuntary longing at the sight of the breed boys racing over the hills upon their ponies.
"Why don't you go?" asked the German girl, one morning, reading her friend with observant eyes as the boys started out for a holiday.
It was a beautiful warm Saturday morning. The two girls were sitting on a pile of logs by the side of the road sunning themselves, far enough away from the Harris house and its surroundings to enjoy the beauty of a perfect day.