"No—but merely because I'm intimidated into promising," he answered. His big arms went tight about the slender body and he pulled his daughter up on his lap.
A silence, while she fussed with his necktie. Her blue eyes looked into his gray ones a moment as though absently, then back to the necktie. Her fingers fell idle; her head snuggled against his neck. Bob Thorpe laughed loud and long.
"Well, what is it this morning?" he asked between chuckles.
The girl sat up suddenly, pushed back the hair that defied fastenings, and tapped a stretched palm with the stiff forefinger of the other hand.
"I'm not a Western girl," she declared deliberately; and then, as the brown face before her clouded, hastened: "Oh, I'm not wanting to go away! I mean, I'm not truly a Western girl, but I want to be. I want to fit better.
"When we decided that I should graduate and come back here with my mommy and daddy for the rest of my life, I decided. There was nothing halfway about it. Some of the other girls thought it awful; but I don't see the attraction in their way of living.
"When I was a little girl I was a sort of tom-cow-boy. I could do things as well as any of the boys I ever knew could do them. But after ten years, mostly away in the East, where girls are like plants, I've lost it all. Now I want to get it back."
"Well, go to it!"
"Wait! I want to start well—high up. I want to have the best that there is to have. I—want—a—horse!"
"Horse? Bless me, bambino, there are fifty broken horses running in the back pasture now, besides what the boys have on the ride. Take your pick!"