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Then he had added that statement about selling beef even though it were down. He didn’t have to do it that time, because he got a good chance to make a trade with McGregor. Yet the fact remained that he would have. He would even have put a mortgage on—and a mortgage must be an exceedingly desperate undertaking, for he looked that way when he said it.

So Aunt Val and Burchie were to go to Fort Worth to a sanitarium there which some one had recommended. There had been great preparations in the past weeks, clothing ordered from New York, and this afternoon Aunt Val was entertaining at tea some ladies from the C Bar C and the McGregor ranch. She had told Hilda that, for the occasion, she might put on Burchie one of the new suits that had arrived, adding:

“And do try to make yourself look nice, Hildegarde. I’m afraid you’re a very untidy little girl. Wash carefully. Wash brother carefully, and pick out a new, plain dress—white linen will be best.”

Good thing Aunt Val asked for white linen. It was about the only frock Hilda had that would have passed muster, and Miss Valeria was just as apt to have suggested something that had been worn out and outgrown long ago. If Hilda could have got the words together to say it, her statement would have been that the mere surface of things made altogether too much difference to her aunt—that with her the serious question was, not what was inside your head, but how was the hair on that head combed and smoothed up, how well the face on its front, the ears that ornamented its sides, kept washed? Always and always the thing you said to Aunt Val was of much less importance than the way you said it.