her, hands tightly clasped in her lap. Her face was
a pretty picture of animation.

"Who cares for popularity?" cried Mollie, as she flung her sport hat on
the bed and turned to face Betty. "Betty Nelson, bring out that
surprise."

"Who said it was a surprise?" asked Betty tantalizingly, but the next
minute her face sobered and she regarded the girls gravely.

"Girls," she said, "I think I see a chance for the most glorious outing
we have had yet. How would you like----" she paused and regarded the
expectant girls thoughtfully. "How would you like a summer _in the
saddle_?"

"In the saddle?" repeated Grace wonderingly, but Mollie broke in with a
quick:

"Betty, do you mean on horseback?"

"Real horses?" breathed Amy Blackford.

"Yes," said Betty, nodding. "That's just exactly what I mean."

CHAPTER II

GREAT HOPES

"But where are we to do all this?" asked Grace skeptically. "Is somebody
giving away steeds for the asking? Wake me up, somebody, when Betty gets
through dreaming."

"Keep still, you old wet blanket," cried Mollie. "Can't you see Betty is
really in earnest?"

"Never mind them," said Amy, leaning a little breathlessly toward Betty.
"Let them fight it out between themselves. What is the great news,
Betty?"

"It _is_ great news," said Betty radiantly. "Listen, my children. Mother
has received a legacy from a great uncle that she had almost forgotten
she had."

"Money?" queried Grace, interested.

"No, that's the best part of it," said Betty. "Oh, girls, it's a ranch,
a great big beautiful ranch in the really, truly west!"

"Honest-to-goodness, wild and woolly?" queried Mollie, beaming.

"Better than that," answered Betty with the same lilt to her voice that
the girls had heard over the telephone. "I shouldn't wonder if we should
find the real old-fashioned, movie kind of cowboys there--sombreros, fur
leggings, bandannas, and all."

"But where," interrupted Mollie, who had been waiting with more or less
patience for Betty to come to the point, "do we come in, in all this? I
fail to see----"

"Oh hush," cried Betty, her eyes dancing. "You interrupt entirely too
much. Where do we come in, she wants to know," she paused to bestow a
beaming glance on Grace and Amy. "That's the biggest joke of all. Where
do we come in? Why, honey dear, we're the whole show!"

"The whole show," they murmured, beginning to see the light.

"You bet," said the brown-haired, rosy-checked one slangily. "