"Please don't go, Jeanette. I wish you would change your mind even at this last instant. I know you will never be the same again. Boarding school, away from your own family and our Western country! You are sure to change."
"And can you think of no possibilities for improvement in one Jeanette Colter, Via?" Cecil inquired. "There are those among us who may even be hopeful that she will alter in one or two characteristics."
"Then speak for yourself alone, Cecil Perry," Via flashed with unexpected fire. "I am perfectly well satisfied with Jeanette as she is. If any one else feels differently it is not your place to mention it."
A little chorus of laughter followed Via's response.
Cecil made a bow of mock humility.
"Forgive me if I have offended your two highnesses," he entreated. "I was not really serious, as I hoped you might guess. Neither was I aware that one had to regard Jeanette as faultless to admire her. As a matter of fact I do chance to admire her."
Jeanette shook her head.
"Cecil, I naturally possess a trusting nature and most of the things that people tell me I believe. So far as you are concerned, any other statement you make I will accept, but never your last!"
Cecil Perry's expression changed. Until this moment he had been jesting, not for Jeanette's sake alone, but partly to sustain his own courage.
He was remaining in Wyoming for the winter. His mother and Jeanette Colter would depart in the next quarter of an hour, were the train on time, for New York. Jeanette would enter a boarding school on Long Island.