IX
The Reformation of Kid McCoy
ISS McCOY, of Texas, had been subjected to the softening influences of St. Ursula's School for three years, without any perceptible result. She was the toughest little tomboy that was ever received—and retained—in a respectable-boarding-school.
"Margarite" was the name her parents had chosen, when the itinerant bishop made his quarterly visit to the mining-camp where she happened to be born. It was the name still used by her teachers, and on the written reports that were mailed monthly to her Texas guardian. But "Kid" was the more appropriate name that the cowboys on the ranch had given her; and "Kid" she remained at St. Ursula's, in spite of the distressed expostulation of the ladies in charge.
Kid's childhood had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk from a champagne glass. Her father had died—quite opportunely—while his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. The next three turbulent years of her life were spent on a cattle range with "Guardie," and the ensuing three in the quiet confines of St. Ursula's.
The guardian had brought her himself, and after an earnest conference with the Dowager, had left her behind to be molded by the culture of the East. But so far, the culture of the East had left her untouched. If any molding had taken place, it was Kid herself who shaped the clay.
Her spicy reminiscences of mining-camps and cattle ranches made all permissible works of fiction tame. She had given the French dancing master, who was teaching them a polite version of a Spanish waltz, an exposition of the real thing, as practised by the Mexican cow-punchers on her guardian's ranch. It was a performance that left him sympathetically breathless. The English riding master, who came weekly in the spring and autumn, to teach the girls a correct trot, had received a lesson in bareback riding that caused the dazed query:
"Was the young lady trained in a circus?"