"Val, I only wish that Millard could get a glimpse of you now!" called out Walter, laughing.
"Who is Millard?" Violet queried.
"Oh! one of our class-mates—an artist of no mean merit either. How delightfully he would caricature Valchester's appearance now."
Valchester did not seem disturbed by the playful hit. He sat Dollie down in the long grass and filled her fat little hands with pink-and-white clover heads. Jaquelina sat down beside her, apprehensive that she would cram the blossoms into her ever-open mouth and choke herself.
"And you will spend the two hundred dollars reward you will receive for the capture of the outlaw chief on your education, Miss Lina?" said Walter, resuming the conversation where it had been interrupted by the curt summons of Dollie's mother.
"Yes," Jaquelina answered, simply.
"And then?" said Walter Earle.
"Then," she answered hopefully, and a little eagerly, "I hope I shall leave the farm and earn my own living somewhere. I am ambitious of becoming a governess."
"A vaulting ambition," said Violet, with a light laugh.
"Not very," said Lina, with a gentle innocence and gravity that checked Violet's delicate sarcasm. "It will be better than the farm, that is all."