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“Um—honey—why, Fort Worth, you know—Fort Worth ain’t New York. This here doll’s liable to be not much of a looker—no such doll-baby as you had before you come out here to Texas. It might not even be as good as some of the Marchbanks girl’s—”

She would interrupt him, declaring earnestly, “Oh, Uncle Hank, it’s going to be very beautiful!”

But there came no word from Charley Van Brunt; it was as though Fort Worth had swallowed him up. He was to have been gone a week; it was two, and he had not returned. The ranch boss wrote again and again to the hotel where his employer was to stop; even Hilda, with Uncle Hank guiding her little brown fingers, struggled through a small, smudged sheet of hieroglyphics. And when it was well into the third week and there was no answer, the manager sent Shorty to Mesquite with a telegram prepared entreating an immediate reply. But he got none—no message of any kind returned to him from Fort Worth. Old Hank, smiling and cheerful, carried a very anxious heart.