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She was not particularly shy; but she shrank from unkind remarks, and she was sure of having at least one critic-extraordinary at the table Sue Latrop. This was really Frances' "coming out party" but she didn't want to "come out" at all! "Oh! I wish they had never come here. I wish daddy had not asked them to this dinner.
Most of the others were young people, although nearer Pratt's age than that of the ranchman's daughter. Sue Latrop was the only one from the East. She had been to Amarillo before, and she evidently had much influence over her girl friends from that Panhandle city, if over nobody else.
Frances welcomed everybody quietly, but with a smile. She instructed Ming to set tables in the inner court of the hacienda, as it would be both cool and shady there on this hot noontide. She noticed that Sue Latrop scarcely bowed to her, and immediately set about chattering to two or three of her companions.
She keenly realized how she, herself, must appear in the company of the pretty Eastern girl. "Of course, Pratt, and Mrs. Edwards, and all of them, must see how superior she is to me," Frances thought, as Molly galloped away with her. "But just the same, I don't like that Sue Latrop a bit!"
It was by chance she heard one of them say: "Well, I don't care, Sue, I think she is real nice. You are awfully critical." "I can't bear dowdy people," drawled Sue Latrop. "I know she'll be a sight at that dinner to-morrow night. My goodness! if for nothing else I'd come to see how she looks in her 'best bib and tucker' and how that queer old man acts when he is what he calls 'all dolled up."
She looked out for every guest's needs and directed the two Mexican boys and Ming in their service with all the calmness and judgment of a hostess who was long used to dinner parties. Indeed, Sue Latrop was forced to admit in her secret soul that she had never seen any hostess manage better at an entertainment of this kind.
"Oh, dear me!" cried Sue Latrop. "He's forgotten his cute, little cattle queen. Give her my love, Pratt." The young fellow did not reply. If the girl from Boston had really been of sufficient importance, Pratt would have hated her. Sue had made herself so unpleasant that she could never recover her place in his estimation that was sure!
The girls meanwhile made much of the old Captain all but Sue Latrop. But she did not count for as much as she had at the beginning of her visit at the Edwards ranch. The other young folk had begun to find her out. The punchers who were off duty were attracted to this gay party on the porch, as naturally as flies gravitate to molasses. The Amarillo girls and, of course, Mrs.
"Sh!" warned the third girl. "Somebody will hear you." "Pooh! If they do?" returned Sue Latrop, carelessly. "If I were you," said the other girl, with warmth, "I wouldn't accept an invitation to dine with people whom I expected to make fun of." "Silly!" laughed the girl from Boston. "I've got to find enjoyment somewhere and there's little enough of it in this Panhandle.
They were all getting a little tired of Sue Latrop and her pose. Finding herself the only one on the ground, Sue scrambled up very clumsily and just in time to see Fatty rope the first pony out of the bunch that was now racing around and around the corral. This was a black and white rascal with a high head and rolling eye, that looked as though he had never been bridled in his life.
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