He looked down at her. She was thinking, too—filled with a great desire to stay in her own dear, Western country, and with another as great to experience all the new things which this year was to bring her. Homesickness and anticipation were fighting hard. She looked up at her father, and even in the darkness saw the sadness in his face. Lost in her own thoughts, she had left him out—him, whose loneliness would be far greater than her own. She sprang up from her stool and into his lap, as she had always done before the years had made her such a big girl; and he held her close in his strong arms, while she cried softly against his shoulder.
“Daddy,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Daddy, dear, do you suppose people often want two different things so much that they can’t tell which they want the most? Did you ever?”
He held her closer. “Yes, little girl. I expect many people do that very thing when it comes to deciding. And your dad is doing that very thing this minute. He thinks he wants to keep you right here with him, but he knows away down deep that he wouldn’t let you stay if he could. He knows he wants his little daughter to go away to her mother’s school, and to have everything this big world can give her.”
“But it’s going to be so lonely for you, father. I’m so selfish, just thinking of me, and never of you. I can’t leave you all alone!” And the tears came again.
Silently he smoothed her hair, until with a choking little laugh she raised her head.
“Don would call me a quitter, I guess,” she said. “I’m homesick already, and he said to-day of course I’d be too plucky to be homesick.” She laughed again. “I’m not going to cry another tear. And there are so many things I want to ask you. Father, tell me truly, do you like the folks in Vermont? Will I like them, do you think?”
She waited for what seemed to her long minutes before he answered her.
“Virginia,” he said at last, “your mother’s people are not like us away out here. They are of New England stock and know nothing of our life here, and it naturally seems rough to them. Your mother seemed to have a different strain in her, else she had never come to Wyoming, and stayed to marry a ranchman like me. But they are your mother’s people, and as such I honor and respect them. And I want you to like them, Virginia, for your mother’s sake.”
“I will, father,” she whispered, clinging to him. “I promise I will!” A minute later she laughed again.
“I’ve written down all of Aunt Lou’s warnings, and I’ll learn them all on the train. Are grandmother and Aunt Nan like Aunt Lou, father?”