you half the messages from the ranch yet."

"I might try. I'll see."

She came back in a few minutes with Miss North.

"Miss Ashe tells me that you have just come from her home in Texas,"
Miss North said. "I can quite appreciate how much you have to tell her
of her friends. Perhaps you would stay and dine with us?"

Alec seemed a bit embarrassed. To dine among so many girls was not as
alluring as it sounded.

"Oh, do, Alec--please!" Blue Bonnet insisted.

Blue Bonnet was invited to sit at Miss North's table for the occasion.
The Seniors sat at Miss North's table, so Alec had Blue Bonnet next to
him, and Annabel opposite--an embarrassment of riches.

The girls seemed overwhelmed with such unexpected good fortune. They
acted as if they had suddenly been struck dumb. Miss North and Blue
Bonnet took turns breaking the silence with trivial generalities.

To Alec it seemed as if the meal would never end. He answered the
questions put to him mechanically, owing to his extreme embarrassment;
but he found courage toward the end of the meal to cast a sly glance in
Annabel's direction--a glance not unobserved by Annabel.

Out in the hall, away from Miss North's watchful eye, he said to Blue
Bonnet:

"If you ever get me into a deal like that again, you'll know it! It was
worse than busting my first broncho."

And, although it was January, and the thermometer registering freezing
weather, he took out his pocket handkerchief and mopped the perspiration
from his neck and brow.

He made his adieux to Miss North very charmingly, however, thanking her
for her hospitality; and Blue Bonnet left him at the reception-room
door, conscious that broncho busting, and other things incident to ranch
life, had not made any serious inroads on his native good breeding.

CHAPTER IX

WOODFORD

"Now, Carita, tell me all of it--everything you heard. Come on, I think
I ought to know."

Blue Bonnet and Carita had been interrupted in the packing of their
suitcases for a week-end at Woodford, by Annabel Jackson, who had
stepped in Blue Bonnet's room to return a dress. Her presence had caused
Carita to let slip a bit of gossip prevalent in the school.

Carita squeezed a waist into the last bit of space her suitcase
afforded, and turned to Blue Bonnet.

"Oh, what do you ask me for, Blue Bonnet? I don't like to tell
you--really I don't! What's the use? Oh, dear, I wish I hadn't dropped
that hint. I didn't mean to--it just slipped