rom the warm brow.

"I think you have done very well for the first time, Blue Bonnet. Next
time it will come easier. You would better rest now, and perhaps
Grandmother will read to us until lunch time."

"Yes," Mrs. Clyde said, "I will indeed. What shall it be, Blue Bonnet?"

Blue Bonnet thought a minute, then she clapped her hands softly.

"I know, Grandmother. Thoreau! I read something of his this summer on
the ranch, and I liked it."

Mrs. Clyde went into the library, coming back presently with Robert
Louis Stevenson's "Men and Books."

"Perhaps you would like to know something of Thoreau's life, Blue
Bonnet. Mr. Stevenson gives a fair glimpse of him. At least he does not
spare his eccentricities. We view him from all quarters."

The lunch bell rang long before Blue Bonnet thought it time.

"Mark the place, Grandmother," she said, as they went into the
dining-room. "I want to hear it all. I don't think I should have liked
Thoreau personally, but there certainly is a nice streak in him--the way
he loved animals and nature--isn't there?"

About four o'clock in the afternoon the clouds began to break, and Blue
Bonnet in stout shoes and raincoat started off with Solomon for a run.

Her grandmother and aunt watched her as she turned her steps in the
direction of the schoolhouse.

"Blue Bonnet is a gregarious soul," Miss Clyde said, turning away from
the window. "She loves companionship. She likes to move in flocks."

"Most girls do, Lucinda. I often wondered how her mother ever endured
the loneliness of a Texas ranch, with her disposition. She seemed to
find room in her heart for all the world. But it is not a bad trait,"
Mrs. Clyde added. "It is a part of the impulsive temperament."

The next few days passed much as Monday had, except that the duties, not
to become too irksome, were varied. There was a morning in the kitchen,
when Blue Bonnet was instructed into the mysteries of breadmaking and
the preparing of vegetables.

It was on this particular morning that Mrs. Clyde, going to the kitchen
door to speak with Katie, found Blue Bonnet, apron covered, standing
before the immaculate white sink, her hands encased in rubber gloves,
with a potato, which she was endeavoring to peel, poised on the extreme
end of a fork.

For the first time in nearly twenty years of service, Katie permitted
herself the familiarity of a wink in her mistress's direction, and Mrs.
Clyde slipped away noiselessly, wearing a very b