I've been so homesick all day that I could go round the
corner and cry if you--if you hadn't said I mustn't."
"What are you homesick for?"
"Oh, for the old ranch and the ponies and my dogs and--and lots of
things. See the way the wind flecks the water over there? Well, that's
just the way it does the grasslands back home."
"But it's such a parched, barren sort of a place, Wyoming."
"It is _not_. You ought to see it in the early spring, when
everything is vivid green, and the cactus is in bloom--the red-flowered
kind that looks so pretty against the sides of the gray buttes. Why, you
can gallop for miles with your horse's hoofs sinking into beds of
prairie roses!"
"But it's virtually green in England all the year round. I'd like to
show you a well-run English estate. Rather a pretty sight. Hascombe
Hall's a fairly decent example. Some hundreds of acres, don't you know."
"Some hundreds!" repeated Bobby, scornfully. "Our ranch covers two
hundred thousand acres, and it takes Pa Joe four days' hard riding to
get over it!"
"Oh, I say, most extraordinary! But if I were you, I wouldn't think
about home affairs," said Percival, to whom her background in Wyoming
was of no consequence. He liked to think of her as having begun to live
when she met him, and as gracefully ceasing to exist when they parted.
"All right," said Bobby, resignedly. "I've kept bottled up this long; I
suppose I can manage the rest of the time. What's that book you've been
reading?"
"Shelley.
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