[Illustration: BLUE BONNET.]
A TEXAS BLUE BONNET
BY CAROLINE EMILIA JACOBS (EMILIA ELLIOTT)
_Illustrated by_ JOHN GOSS
THE PAGE COMPANY BOSTON--PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1910_ BY THE PAGE COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
Made in U.S.A.
Twentieth Impression, November, 1925 Twenty-first
Impression, September, 1926 Twenty-second
Impression, October, 1927 Twenty-third
Impression, June, 1928 Twenty-fourth Impression,
March, 1930 Twenty-fifth Impression, August,
1933 Twenty-sixth Impression, December, 1935
Twenty-Seventh Impression, March, 1938
PRINTED BY THE COLONIAL PRESS INC. CLINTON,
MASS., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BLUE BONNET 1
II. ELIZABETH 16
III. TO MEET MISS ELIZABETH ASHE 34
IV. SCHOOL 51
V. AN INVITATION 68
VI. TEA-PARTY NUMBER TWO 84
VII. THE CLIMAX 100
VIII. MR. HUNT 122
IX. VICTOR 140
X. UNCLE CLIFF 161
XI. MY LADY BOUNTIFUL 184
XII. SEÑORITA 208
XIII. CHRISTMAS BOXES AND OTHER MATTERS 227
XIV. CHRISTMAS 248
XV. A DARE 268
XVI. LADIES’ DAY 288
XVII. A CLASS AFFAIR 312
XVIII. COVENTRY 333
XIX. THE BOSTON RELATIVES 351
XX. CONCERNING THE SARGENT 374
XXI. THE END OF THE TERM 395
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
BLUE BONNET _Frontispiece_
“‘GRANDMOTHER,’ SHE CRIED, ‘I’VE GOT A DOG’” 32
“‘I RECKON YOU THINK I’M A COWARD. MAYBE YOU
WON’T WANT TO BE FRIENDS ANY MORE’” 106
“‘ISN’T IT THE NICEST CHRISTMAS!’ BLUE BONNET
CRIED, HER LAP FULL OF TREASURES” 254
“‘LADIES’ DAY AT THE TRENT RINK’ PROVED A
THOROUGH SUCCESS” 295
“‘BUT I THOUGHT,’ SHE SAID, ‘THAT IT WAS A
_GIRL’S_ PRIVILEGE TO CHANGE HER MIND?’” 383
A Texas Blue Bonnet
CHAPTER I
BLUE BONNET
Blue Bonnet came up the steps of the long, low ranch house, and threw
herself listlessly back in one of the deep veranda chairs.
“Tired, Honey?” Mr. Ashe asked, laying down his paper.
“Yes, Uncle Cliff. I--hate walking!”
“Then why not ride?”
Blue Bonnet was smoothing the ears of Don, the big collie who had
followed her up on to the veranda, and now stood resting his fine head
on her knee. “I--didn’t want to,” she answered, slowly, without looking
up.
“See here, Honey,” said Mr. Ashe, leaning toward her, a note of inquiry
in his deep, pleasant voice; “come to think of it, you haven’t been
riding lately.”
“No, Uncle Cliff.” Blue Bonnet’s eyes were turned now out over the wide
stretch of prairie before the house.
“Any reason, Honey?”
The girl hesitated. “Yes, Uncle Cliff.”
“Don’t you want to tell me it, Blue Bonnet?”
“No,” Blue Bonnet answered, slowly, “I don’t want to tell it to you.
I--it’s because I’m--afraid.”
“_Afraid!_ Blue Bonnet! That’s an odd word for an Ashe to use!”
“I know, Uncle Cliff; I reckon I’m not an Ashe--clear through.” Blue
Bonnet rose hurriedly and ran down the steps. Around the house she
went, and in through the back way to her own room. There she brushed
the hot tears from her eyes with an impatient movement. “Oh, it is
true,” she said to herself, “and I can’t help it. Oh, if I could only
go away--I hate it here! Hate it! Hate it!”
Later, swinging in the hammock on the back veranda, she looked up
suddenly as her uncle came to sit on the railing beside her. Something
in his face and manner made her wonder.
“Blue Bonnet,” he said, abruptly, “we might as well have it out--right
here and now--it’ll be the best thing for us both.”
Blue Bonnet sat up, pushing back her soft, thick hair. “Have it out?”
she repeated.
“Blue Bonnet,” he answered, bending nearer, “suppose you tell me just
what it is you would like to do? It wouldn’t take much insight to see
that you aren’t very happy nowadays; and--well, I reckon your father
wouldn’t want things going on as they’ve been--lately.”
The girl’s face changed swiftly. “Oh, I have been horrid, Uncle Cliff!
But I--oh, I do so--hate it--here!”
“Hate it here! Hate the Blue Bonnet Ranch--the finest bit of country in
the whole state of Texas!”
“I--hate the whole state of Texas!”
“Blue Bonnet!”
“I do. I want to go East to live. I--my mother was an Easterner. I want
to live her life.”
“But, Honey, your mother chose to come West. Why, child,”--there was a
quick note of triumph in the man’s voice--“it was your mother who named
you Blue Bonnet.”
“I wish she hadn’t. It’s a--ridiculous sort of name--I would like to
have been called Elizabeth--it is my name, too.”
“Elizabeth?” Mr. Ashe repeated. “It doesn’t seem to suit you nearly as
well, Honey. All the same, if you like it. But Blue--Elizabeth, you
know that this is your ranch, and that your father wanted you brought
up to know all about it, so as to be able to manage things for yourself
a bit--at a pinch.”
“I shall sell--as soon as I come of age.”
Mr. Ashe rose. “I reckon we’d best not talk any more now.”
“Uncle Clifford.” Blue Bonnet looked up. “Uncle Clifford, please
don’t think it’s just--temper. I mean it, truly--I sha’n’t ever make
a Westerner. I’m sorry--on your account. Still, it’s true--I hate it
all--now,--everything the life out here stands for--and I want to go
East. I--I don’t see why I shouldn’t choose my own life--for myself.”
Her uncle looked down into the upturned, eager face. “You seem to have
gone over this pretty thoroughly in your own mind, Bl--Elizabeth.”
“I have, Uncle Cliff.”
“Well, you and I’ll talk things over another time; I’ve some business
to see to now. I suppose things’ll have to go on, even if you do intend
to sell--in six years.”
“I wish you’d try to see my side of it, Uncle Cliff.”
“I’m going to--after a while. Just now, I can’t get beyond the fact
that you hate the Blue Bonnet Ranch. I hope your father doesn’t know
it!” And Mr. Ashe turned away.
Below the house, leaning against the low fence enclosing the oblong
piece of ground called “the garden,” Mr. Ashe found Uncle Joe Terry,
ranch foreman, and his chief adviser in the difficult task of bringing
up his orphan niece.
Uncle Joe was smoking placidly, his eyes on the wild riot of color
which was one of the principal characteristics of Blue Bonnet’s
garden. “Tell you what,” he said, as Mr. Ashe came up, “this here place
needs weeding. Blue Bonnet ain’t been keeping an eye on Miguel lately.”
Blue Bonnet’s uncle stood a moment looking down at the neglected
garden. “Yes,” he said, “and it’s not only the garden, Joe, that’s been
left to itself lately.”
“She ain’t been out on Firefly this two weeks,” Uncle Joe commented.
“What’s wrong, Cliff?”
“She wants to go East.”
“So that’s it? Well, I reckon it’s natural--wants to run with the other
young folks, I suppose?”
“But--Joe, she says she hates--the ranch.”
Uncle Joe puffed at his pipe thoughtfully. “Hm--so she says that? She
always was an outspoken little piece, Cliff.”
“She says, too, that she means to sell.”
“My lady must be a bit excited. Well, it won’t be to-morrow, Cliff, and
a whole lot of things can happen in six years. You just give my lady
her head; she’s looking to be crossed, and she’s all braced up to pull
the other way. All you want to do is to go with her a bit.”
“It’s a pretty big proposition--sending her East,” Mr. Ashe said.
“Oh, she’ll pick up a lot of tomfool notions, most likely,” Uncle Joe
admitted, “and a whole heap of others that’ll come in mighty handy
one of these days. You just send her ’long back to those folks of her
mother’s and quit worrying.”
That night Mr. Ashe wrote a letter to Blue Bonnet’s grandmother. He
said nothing to Blue Bonnet herself about it, however. Possibly Mrs.
Clyde would not care to assume the charge of her granddaughter. In any
case, it would be well to have the matter settled before mentioning it.
Then one evening, not a fortnight later, Uncle Joe, coming home from
the little post-office town, twenty miles away, tossed him several
letters.
“Postmarked Woodford,” the older man said. “Looks like sentence was
about to be pronounced.”
Five minutes more and Mr. Ashe knew how hard he had been hoping against
hope these last two weeks.
“Well?” Uncle Joe asked; and the other looked up to find him still
sitting motionless in his saddle.
“They want her to come as soon as possible, so that she may be ready to
start school at the beginning of the fall term.”
“Pretty good school back there?”
“Said to be--it’s the one her mother went to.”
“I reckon they’re tickled to death to have her come?”
“They seem pleased.”
“Blue Bonnet’s out in the garden,” Uncle Joe suggested.
Blue Bonnet was gathering nasturtiums when her uncle called to her from
the gate at the upper end of the garden. He had two letters in his
hand, and, as she reached him, he held them out. “They came to-night,”
he explained. “They are in answer to one I wrote a short time ago.”
Blue Bonnet took them wonderingly, and, sitting on the ground, the
great bunch of gay-colored nasturtiums beside her, she opened one of
them. As it happened, it was the one from her Aunt Lucinda--a short
letter, perfectly kind and sincere, but very formal. On the whole, a
rather depressing letter, in spite of the answer it brought to her
great desire.
Blue Bonnet refolded it rather soberly. “I wish,” she said, studying
the firm, upright handwriting, “that I hadn’t read this one first.
Grandmother’s must be different.”
It certainly was. A letter overflowing with the joy the writer felt
over the prospect of Blue Bonnet’s coming. Through its magic the girl
was carried far away from the little garden, from all the old familiar
scenes. Dimly remembered stories her mother used to tell her of the big
white house standing amidst its tall trees came back to her, and the
vague hopes and dreams that had been filling her thoughts for weeks
past began to take definite form.
And she was going there--back to her mother’s old home. She was to have
the very room that had been her mother’s,--Grandmother had said so.
It seemed too good to be true. She was glad, now, she had kept this
letter to the last. And she would be going soon;--that thought, with
its accompanying one of hurry and preparation, brought her back to the
present.
Picking up the letters, she ran up to the house. On the back steps she
found Uncle Joe.
“Seems like you was in a hurry,” he said.
Blue Bonnet laughed, looking at him with shining eyes. “I’m going East!”
“To-night?” he questioned.
“No, not to-night; but very soon, I think.”
Uncle Joe seemed neither surprised, nor impressed. “Humph,” he grunted,
knocking the ashes from his pipe. “Well, I reckon it’s all right back
East--for them that like it.”
His reception of her news rather daunted Blue Bonnet, and she went at
a slower pace through the wide center hall to the front veranda, where
her uncle sat.
“Uncle Cliff,” she asked, giving him the letters, “you mean--I’m to go?”
Mr. Ashe shifted the letters from one hand to the other for a moment,
without speaking; then he said gravely, “Yes, you’re to go, Elizabeth.
When a girl hates the ranch, hates everything the life here stands
for, and is afraid to ride, I don’t see that there’s anything left to
do--but send her East.”
Blue Bonnet dropped down on the upper step, the quick color flooding
her face. To _go_ East was one thing--but to be _sent_! She sat very
still for a few moments, looking out over the broad, level prairie.
Her uncle was the first to speak.
“I suppose you’d best get started pretty soon; there’ll be some fixing
up to do after you get there.”
“Am I going alone?” Blue Bonnet asked.
“I don’t see how I can leave home at present,” her uncle answered.
“Perhaps I’ll hear of some one going East who’ll be willing to look
after you.”
“It’ll seem funny to go to school with other girls,” Blue Bonnet said.
“I wonder how I’ll like going to school.”
“I reckon you’ll be learning a good many lessons of various kinds,
Honey.” Mr. Ashe spoke a little wistfully. It was hard to realize that
Blue Bonnet was going away.
The girl looked up soberly; his words had somehow reminded her of Aunt
Lucinda’s letter. A sudden dread of the writer of it seized her. “Uncle
Cliff,” she asked, “what are they like--Grandmother and Aunt Lucinda?”
“Suppose you wait and find out for yourself, Honey.”
“I wish Aunt Lucinda hadn’t been so much older than Mamma. Uncle Cliff,
have you ever been in Woodford?”
“No, Honey; it’s a right pretty place, I reckon. You’ll have to write
and tell me all about it.”
“And you’ll answer, won’t you? You’ll write very often?”
“Of course, Honey; but I don’t know what I’ll find to tell you--you
won’t care about ranch talk.”
“But you’ll write? You’ve promised--and you’ve never broken a promise
to me,” Blue Bonnet said.
And that night, lying awake and thinking of the new life to come,
Blue Bonnet found the thought of those promised letters strangely
comforting. “It--it can’t seem so far then,” she told herself.
* * * * *
“Hurry, Benita!” Blue Bonnet urged, “I hear Uncle Joe coming.”
The old woman gave a finishing touch to the waist she was laying in
place in the big trunk standing in the center of Blue Bonnet’s room.
“Si, Señorita,” she said, “all is ready.”
She lifted the tray in place and closed down the lid, passing a hand
admiringly over the surface of the trunk. “Señorita has the trunk of
the Señora, is it not?”
“Yes,” Blue Bonnet answered gravely.
“I remember, as it were but yesterday, the coming of the Señora,”
Benita said, “and the Señor calling ‘Benita! Oh, Benita! Here is your
new mistress!’ She was but the young thing--that little Señora--not
much older than you are now, Señorita mia, and with the face all bright
and the eyes so expressive--like yours.”
“Eighteen,” Blue Bonnet said, thoughtfully, “and I’m fifteen.”
“It was I who unpacked the trunk--this and others, for there were
many--and now I am packing it again for the going of the Señorita.”
Benita’s voice was trembling. “And the Señorita goes to the home of
her mother’s mother. Much would the Señora tell me of the home she had
left, in those first days.”
Blue Bonnet came to put an arm about the old woman, who, since her
mother’s death ten years before, had mothered and looked after her to
the best of her ability. “I wish you were going too, Benita,” she said.
“Si, Señorita mia, it is the journey too long for old Benita.”
“All the way from Texas to Massachusetts,” Blue Bonnet said. “I wonder
who’ll look after me and do everything for me there, Benita.”
“That thought troubles me much, also, Señorita.”
“Oh, I’ll get along somehow,” Blue Bonnet laughed. She turned as Uncle
Joe came down the hall, a coil of rope over his shoulder.
“Ready!” she called.
“This looks like business, for sure,” Uncle Joe said, slipping an end
of the rope under Blue Bonnet’s trunk.
She nodded rather soberly. She had worn a sober face a good deal of
the time during the days of preparation. “Uncle Joe,”--she looked up a
little wistfully into the kind, weather-beaten face,--“you--you’ll look
after Uncle Cliff, won’t you?”
“Sure I will, Blue Bonnet, same’s if he was an infant in arms.”
“And you’ll write to me, too, sometimes--and tell me all
about--everything?”
“I ain’t much on letter-writing,” Uncle Joe answered, “but I’ll make a
try at it now and then; and you’re going to be so busy doing the things
you’re wanting to do that you won’t have much time to be pestered with
the goings-on out here.”
“Please, Uncle Joe, you know that isn’t so.”
“Ain’t it? There now, that’s roped to stay. Seems kind of hard to
realize that come another twenty-four hours and the Blue Bonnet
Ranch’ll be without its best and prettiest Blue Bonnet. Eh, Benita?”
Benita shook her gray head sadly. “The sunshine goes with the going of
the Señorita,” she said.
“I reckon you’ll take to the doings back there all right, Blue Bonnet,”
Uncle Joe began. “There! I’m always forgetting--just as if your uncle
hadn’t explained how, seeing as everything was to be new, you wasn’t
to be Blue Bonnet any more, but Elizabeth. It’s a fine name, Elizabeth,
and it’s going to suit back East all right; but, if you was staying on
here, I’m thinking you’d have to go on being Blue Bonnet. I doubt if
the boys here on the ranch would stand for anything else--they’re sort
of kicking now over your going.”
“Yes,” Blue Bonnet said, “I’ve had to say such a lot of good-byes--I
don’t see _why_ they care so much.” And, after Uncle Joe had carried
out the trunk, and Benita had gone, she sat quite still on the foot
of her bed beside her half-packed hand-bag, trying to realize that in
another twenty-four hours she would be travelling further and further
from the Blue Bonnet Ranch.
She and her uncle were to leave early the next morning, taking the long
drive to the nearest railway station in the cool of the day. Mr. Ashe
was to go the first hundred miles with her, and from there on she would
be in charge of a friend of his who was going East.
And she had never been fifty miles on the railway in her life! Blue
Bonnet’s eyes brightened. She drew a quick breath of pleasure. To be
fifteen, and setting out to the land of one’s heart’s desire! All the
doubts, the regrets, the half-vague fears of the past ten days vanished.
Hearing her uncle’s step on the veranda, she went out to meet him. He
was looking down at the trunk; something of the same expression in his
eyes that had been in old Benita’s.
“Don’t you wish you were going, too?” the girl asked gaily.
“Yes, Honey.”
“Isn’t it a big trunk and doesn’t it look delightfully travellingified?”
“Delightfully what?”
Blue Bonnet laughed. Reaching up, she touched the little knot of dark
blue, pea-like blossoms in her uncle’s buttonhole. “You won’t forget me
while you have your blue bonnets,” she said.
“I reckon I won’t forget you, Honey.”
They went in to supper, Blue Bonnet talking and laughing excitedly;
but afterwards, when she and her uncle went out to the front veranda
as usual, her mood changed suddenly. It was so still, so peaceful, out
there--and yet, already, so strangely alien.
For a few moments she walked up and down restlessly, followed closely
by Don. Don scented the coming change; he thoroughly disapproved of
that roped trunk on the back veranda.
“Uncle Cliff--” Blue Bonnet came at last to sit on the arm of her
uncle’s chair, letting her head rest on his shoulder. Something had
got to be put into words, which she had been trying to say in various
other ways for a good many days past. “Uncle Cliff, I--truly--I am
sorry--that I spoke the way I did--that night.”
Mr. Ashe stroked the brown head gently. “That’s all right, Honey.
And remember, Honey, if things go wrong, if you’re disappointed,
or--anything like that, you’ve only to send word. This is your
home,--and will be--for six years. And, Honey, you won’t forget,--what
your father said,--that you were to try to live as he had taught you to
ride--straight and true.”