eckoned she'd never make a Westerner, and
she hated the ranch and was going to sell it as soon as she came of
age--"

"Don't!" came in a smothered tone from Blue Bonnet. Her face was
buried again. "Don't remind me how downright horrid I was."

"And six months later that same little girl--blue eyes same as
yours--was telling me how she reckoned that three hundred years would
never make an Easterner of her, and she loved the ranch and wanted to
be a Texas Blue Bonnet as long as she lived!"

"And so I do, Uncle."

"Well, I'm just running over a few items in order to remind you that
most troubles aren't half as black as your feelings paint them at the
time. It's best not to worry over spilt milk till you see it's made a
grease-spot. Ten to one the cat will lick it up,--and it's an ill wind
that blows nobody good. There,--that figure of speech is as mixed as
a plum-pudding, but it has a heap of sound philosophy!"

Blue Bonnet was smiling now. "I wish all the preachers would say the
kind of things you do. Most of the sermons I've heard sound like that
last piece of mine--'variations on one theme'--and the theme is Duty
with a big D. Sarah was brought up on those. And they must be pretty
successful, for Sarah is awfully good. Isn't she?"

"Just that--awfully good."

She looked up quickly, struck by something odd in his tone; but he was
perfectly sober.

"She's the salt of the earth," he added, "and you--"

"And what am I?"

He smiled down at her. "Do you remember how the south pasture looks
when the blue bonnets bloom in March,--how fresh and sweet, a sky
turned upside down--? It's the glory of the ranch, Honey. And what
they are to the ranch, you are to me. Please don't be trying to be
something you can't be, Blue Bonnet!"

She laughed outright. "That sounds like the Duchess in 'Alice in
Wonderland.' Don't you remember?"

"I confess I don't. You've been neglecting my education, young lady,
since you began your own. What does the Duchess say?"

"'Be what you would seem to be'--or, if you want it put more
simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might
appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'" The face she turned to him as she finished was cloudless,
and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"That's quite plain," he said, "and I hope you'll take the lesson to
heart!"

She smiled as she rose.