much worried for fear he won't be satisfactory."

Genevieve did laugh this time.

"Well, if he isn't, I don't see how that can be your fault," she
retorted. "Come, now let's forget all this, and just talk Texas
instead."

"Aunt Mary says I do do that--all the time," rejoined Cordelia, with a
wistful smile. "Aunt Sophronia is there, too, and _she_ says I do.
Still, she likes to hear it, I verily believe, else she wouldn't ask me
so many questions," concluded Cordelia, lifting her chin a little.

"I'd like to take Miss Jane there sometime," observed Genevieve, with a
gravity that was a little unnatural.

"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed Cordelia--then she stopped short with a hot
blush. "I--I beg your pardon, I'm sure, Genevieve," she went on
stammeringly. "I ought not to have spoken that way, of course. I was
only thinking of Miss Jane and--and the cowboys that day they welcomed
us."

"Yes, I know," rejoined Genevieve, her lips puckered into a curious
little smile.

"I don't believe I'm doing any more talking, anyway, than Tilly is,"
remarked Cordelia, after a moment's silence. "Of course, Tilly, with her
poor arm, would make a lot of questions, anyway; but she _is_ talking a
great deal."

"I suppose she is," chuckled Genevieve, "and we all know what _she'll_
say."

"But she says such absurd things, Genevieve. Why, Charlie Brown--you
know he calls us the 'Happy _Tex_agons' now--well, he told me that
Tilly'd been bragging so terribly about Texas, and all the fine things
there were there, that he asked her this morning real soberly--you know
how Charlie Brown _can_ ask questions, sometimes--"

"I know," nodded Genevieve.

"Well, he asked her, solemn as a judge, 'Do these wondrous tamales of
yours grow on trees down there?'

"'Oh, yes,' Tilly assured him serenely. And when Charlie, of course,
declared that couldn't be, she just shrugged her shoulders and answered:
'Well, of course, Charlie, I'll own I didn't _see_ tamales growing on
trees, but Texas is a very large state, and while I didn't, of course,
see anywhere near all of it, yet I saw so much, and it was all so
different from each other, that I'm sure I shouldn't want to say that I
_knew_ they didn't have tamale trees somewhere in Texas!' And then she
marched off in that stately way of hers, and Charlie declared he began
to feel as if tamale trees did grow in Texas, and that he ought to go
around telling folks so."

"What a girl she is!" laughed Genevieve. "B