Down at the road gate he met the Babe, riding on her pony, Queen Berengaria.
"O, Uncle Harvey, I'm so glad you've come!" chirped the child, joyously. "Ain't you going to spend the day? It's been the longest time since you've come, and we all want to see you so bad."
Harvey Grannis's eyes softened; in his own rough way he loved the child very much; she was named for him, and, unlike the other girls, she was not the least bit afraid of him. How he would have loved to have his little namesake niece to ride about with him over his own ranch!
"Glad to see your old uncle, are you Harvie? Well, I can't say the rest of 'em felt that way about it! You're a fine little girl, and I'd like to have you where I could keep an eye on you." He sighed regretfully. "No, I ain't going to spend the day this time--maybe some other day. And say, Harvie, don't you let 'em talk you into hating your old uncle," earnestly.
"Why, no Uncle Harvey, 'course not," agreed the Babe, wonderingly. "But there don't anybody at our house hate you. Please come on back, and Ruth'll make a cake for dinner."
Harvey Grannis declined to accept this hospitable invitation, knowing better than the child that he had made himself unwelcome.
"I've got to go now, honey," he said. "You can give a message to your mother for me." He looked at his namesake a long time. "Harvie," he wheedled, and nobody would have guessed that his voice could be so soft and pleading, "wouldn't you like to come over to the Circle G and live?"
Little Harvie looked doubtful.
"Do mother and the girls want to go? What'll father think of it when he gets home?"
Grannis had not the heart say to her, as he had said freely to the others, that they must give up hope of John Spooner's return. Instead he offered a bait which he thought would take her mind from the two questions she had asked.