g to fool me," declared Sue Latrop.

"You wait! I expect Frances will wear at the dinner some of those
wonderful old jewels the Captain digs out of his chest once in a while.
I've heard they are really amazing----

"Jewels to deck out the Cattle Queen!" interrupted Sue, tauntingly.
"Nose ring and anklets included, I s'pose?"

"Now, Sue! how can you be so mean?" cried one of the other girls.

"Pshaw! I suppose she'll be a wondrous sight in her 'best bib and
tucker.' Loaded down with silver ornaments, like a Mexican belle at a
fair, or an Indian squaw at a poodle-dog feast. She will undoubtedly
throw all us girls in the shade," and Sue burst into a gale of laughter.

"I declare! you're cruel, Sue!" cried one of the girls from Amarillo.

"I'd like to know how you make that out, Miss?" demanded the girl from
Boston.

"Frances has never done you a bit of harm. Why! you are accepting her
hospitality this very moment. And yet, you haven't a good word to say
for her."

"I don't see that I am called upon to give her a good word," sneered
Miss Latrop. "She is a rough, rude, quite impossible person. I fail to
see wherein she deserves any consideration at my hands. I declare! to
hear you girls, one would think this cowgirl was of some importance."

Frances came quietly away from the window, postponing her dusting in
that quarter until later. But she was tempted--very sorely tempted
indeed.

Sue expected her to look like a cross between an Indian squaw and a
Mexican belle at dinner--and Frances was sorely tempted to fulfil the
Boston girl's idea of what a "cattle queen" should look like at a
society function!

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE BURSTING OF THE CHRYSALIS

Frances Durham Rugley was growing up. At least, she felt a great many
years older now than she did that day so short a time before when,
riding along the trail, she had heard Pratt and the mountain lion
fighting in Brother's Coulie.

She looked at her reflection in the long dressing-mirror in her own
room, and could not see that she had added to her stature in this time
"one jot or tittle." But inside she felt worlds older.

It was the afternoon of the dinner-party day. She had come upstairs to
make ready to receive her guests. The dinner was for seven and Frances
had given herself plenty of time to dress.

Pratt was off on his pony, "getting the stiffness out of himself," he
declared. The old Captain was just as busy as a bee, and just as fussy
as a c