Part 17 (1/2)

”Oh, you soldiers!” said Nola, shaking her brush at Frances' placid back, ”you get up so early and you dress so fast that you're always ahead of everybody else.”

Frances turned to her, a smile for her childish complaint.

”You'll get into our soldiering ways in time, Nola. We get up early and live in a hurry, I suppose, because a soldier's life is traditionally uncertain, and he wants to make the most of his time.”

”And love and ride away,” said Nola, feigning a sigh.

”Do they?” asked Frances, not interested, turning to the window again.

”Of course,” said Nola, positively.

”Like the guardsmen of old England, Or the beaux sabreurs of France--”

that's an old border song, did you ever hear it?”

”No, I never did.”

”It's about the Texas rangers, though, and not real soldiers like you folks. A cavalryman's wife wrote it; I've got it in a book.”

”Maybe they do that way in Texas, Nola.”

”How?”

”Love and ride away, as you said. I never heard of any of them doing it, except figuratively, in the regular army.”

Nola suspended her brus.h.i.+ng and looked at Frances curiously, a deeper color rising and spreading in her animated face.

”Oh, you little goose!” said she.

”Mostly they hang around and make trouble for people and fools of themselves,” said Frances, in half-thoughtful vein, her back to her visitor, who had stopped brus.h.i.+ng now, and was winding, a comb in her mouth.

Nola held her quick hand at the half-finished coil of hair while she looked narrowly at the outline of Frances' form against the window. A little squint of perplexity was in her eyes, and furrows in her smooth forehead. Presently she finished the coil with dextrous turn, and held it with outspread hand while she reached to secure it with the comb.

”I can't make you out sometimes, Frances, you're so funny,” she declared. ”I'm afraid to talk to you half the time”--which was in no part true--”you're so nunnish and severe.”

”Oh!” said Frances, fully discounting the declaration.

No wonder that Major King was hard to wean from her, thought Nola, with all that grace of body and charm of word. Superiority had been born in Frances Landcraft, not educated into her in expensive schools, the cattleman's daughter knew. It spoke for itself in the carriage of her head there against the light of that fair new day, with the suns.h.i.+ne on the dying cottonwood leaves beyond the windowpane; in the lifting of her neck, white as King David's tower of s.h.i.+elds.

”Well, I _am_ half afraid of you sometimes,” Nola persisted. ”I draw my hand back from touching you when you've got one of your soaring fits on you and walk along like you couldn't see common mortals and cowmen's daughters.”

”Well, everybody isn't like you, Nola; there are some who treat me like a child.”

Frances was thinking of her father and Major King, both of whom had continued to overlook and ignore her declaration of severance from her plighted word. The colonel had brushed it aside with rough hand and sharp word; the major had come penitent and in suppliance. But both of them were determined to marry her according to schedule, with no weight to her solemn denial.

”Mothers do that, right along,” Nola nodded.

”Here's somebody else up early”--Frances held the curtain aside as she spoke, and leaned a little to see--”here's your father, just turning in.”

”The senor boss?” said Nola, hurrying to the window.