“I wish my boy might be worthy of a girl like little Barbara,” she thought. “A fine pair they would make and what happiness ’twould be for them both, and for me.” Then as she happened to glance into the hat-rack mirror, she smiled a queer little smile with lips that were quivering. “Well, now, Matilda Wilson,” she said aloud to her reflection, “if you aren’t matchmaking, and it’s a thing you’ve always said you wouldn’t do, for it’s just a interferin’ in other folks’ lives. What’s more, the two of them are only children, still a-going to school, but I guess mothers are all the same,” she added as she went kitchenward, “first off we try to keep our boys just little fellows and then, when all of a sudden we see that they’re nearly young men, we begin to choose a girl we want them to marry, but I’ll try to welcome whoever they choose just as I’d want some other boy’s mother to welcome a girl of mine if I had one.” Then, as the good woman poured boiling water over a great pan full of dishes, her thoughts wandered, with equal pride, from Benjy to her older son, Harry. “Whoever gets Hal for a husband,” she thought, “gets a man to lean on who won’t prove a bending reed when trouble comes. He hasn’t the nice, easy manner, maybe, that Benjy has, but Hal’s honest and dependable. He never seemed to take to girls, though, so maybe he won’t be one to marry, but, if he does, I wonder, now, who it will be. I hope someone I’d like real well, but if ’tisn’t, I won’t let that make any difference. The dear boy will never know it, or the girl either.”
It almost seemed as if the mother heart knew instinctively that Harry’s choice was to be someone of whom she could not really approve, and yet, how could she know, for Harry had not even met the girl who was to be the one dearest of all in his life.
It was nearly noon when the four riders drew near the walled-in Papago village and Virginia suggested that they lunch with her dear friend Winona, daughter of the Chief Grey Hawk.
Benjy was surprised to hear the proud declaration of friendship that this white girl made for a maiden of a race so unlike her own, but he said nothing, although he secretly wondered what manner of a maid Winona might be.
Virginia had no trouble whatever in finding the almost hidden entrance in the mountain wall that surrounded the Papago village for she had carefully noted its exact relation to the clump of cactus on her last visit, and so it was that Winona, happening to look up from the little class which she had gathered about her in the shade of the cliff, was both delighted and surprised to see the four riders approaching her, three of whom she knew. The lad she had never seen before.
Springing up, with the grace which was always in her every movement, she approached the girls who had dismounted with outstretched hands, and Benjy was amazed to note the real beauty of the dusky maiden whose noble, intelligent face was aglow with the joy of so soon again seeing her beloved Virginia.
The lad acknowledged his introduction to the Indian girl and heard her saying, “You are the son of our nearest neighbor to the north? We Papagoes often climb to the summit of the mountain overlooking your ranch, Mr. Wilson, but we never descend on the other side. Our pilgrimages always take us to the south it would seem.”
Then to Virginia she added, “It is high sun, so let us go to my home and lunch together.” Turning to the group of unkempt little Indian girls who still seated on the ground, were watching wide-eyed she said something in their own tongue. The listeners concluded that it was a dismissal of the class for the morning, and they were right, for with joyful little cries such as delighted puppies might have uttered, the Indian children sprang up, then to the utter amazement of the watching lad, they surrounded the smiling Babs who, reaching out her arms, gathered in as many of them as she could.
Benjy’s first impulse was to draw Barbara away from the embrace of the “Indian brats,” but when that girl looked up at him, her pretty flower face aglow, he realized that they weren’t wild, uncouth creatures to her, but just little children who loved her, and who were begging her in their own queer language to come and play with them “Ring-around-a-rosie.”
When Winona had interpreted their request, Barbara exclaimed merrily, “The rest of you may prepare the lunch. Until it is ready I’ll romp with the kiddies.”