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In there—right back in that parlor—Aunt Val, seated among her visiting ladies, had said that Uncle Hank used bad grammar! And the lady from Ohio had agreed that he was ignorant, though good-hearted. The big black eyes yet flashed; Hilda retired to her mental theater and hastily set its stage as the ranchhouse parlor, dragging onto it Miss Val herself, the visiting ladies from their several ranches, and the pert outsider from Ohio. On chairs of unworthiness there she stuck the offenders. To them she saw enter this big, haughty, terrifying other self of hers. It came swishing through the room, about seven feet tall, irreproachably clean of countenance, teeth and finger-nails, with conquering eyes and a paralyzingly correct toilet. Often it never spoke at all; merely froze the guilty ones into silence with one glance as it passed; but this was a time for plain speaking.

Uncle Hank was not ignorant! Ignorant, yourself, Miss or Madam Ohio! Could it be possible that she, Hilda, alone of them all was aware that he knew more than anybody else in the world? Why, you starched-up lady with your gold spectacles and shiny slippers, it would need a lifetime’s toil for you to come into half his stored wisdom concerning coyotes and why they howl; touching prairie dogs, wild mustangs, cactus, jack rabbits, trail-herds, boggy fords, relating to “when we were down on the Pecos,” or “one spring on the Canadian,” or, “when cows stampede.” Uncle Hank was beautiful too. No one living had such eyes as those blue ones of his; his smile was as the very rays of the sun; his voice; his touch—! Hilda knew that sometimes children had to get along without relatives and without parents; but that any little girl could possibly face existence without some sort of Uncle Hank was beyond her powers of belief. Supposing that she—even in her own proper and insignificant person—should lead these glib scoffers to Uncle Hank’s trunk, lift the lid and show them where his Sunday suit lay? If that did not convict them of shallow judgments, surely the bottle of cologne would do the trick. It was imported, so Uncle Hank said; and to Hilda’s thinking its possession was better than a patent of nobility.