A Texas Blue Bonnet: Caroline Emilia Jacobs

“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.