MARGARET BELKNAP’S BROTHER COULD BE SEEN DANCING ATTENDANCE ON JEAN

THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES

The Ranch Girls at Boarding School

By

Margaret Vandercook

Illustrated By

Hugh A. Bodine

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

PHILADELPHIA

Copyright, 1913, by

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

CONTENTS

[I. “STILL AS THE NIGHT”]
[II. IN DISGRACE]
[III. “GERRY”]
[IV. GETTING INTO HARNESS]
[V. NEWS AND A DISCOVERY]
[VI. HER TEMPTATION]
[VII. CINDERELLA]
[VIII. SHADOWS BEFORE]
[IX. FRIEDA’S MISTAKE]
[X. THE HOUSE OF MEMORY]
[XI. “SLEEPY HOLLOW, A LAND OF DREAMS”]
[XII. WINIFRED GRAHAM AND GERRY]
[XIII. THE APPEAL TO OLIVE]
[XIV. “TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE”]
[XV. THE DANGER OF WEALTH]
[XVI. ELECTION DAY]
[XVII. CONGRATULATIONS]
[XVIII. FANCIES OR MEMORIES?]
[XIX. NEW YEAR’S EVE]
[XX. THE TRUE HISTORY OF OLIVE]
[XXI. JEAN AND FRIEDA RETURN TO PRIMROSE HALL]
[XXII. READJUSTMENTS]
[XXIII. “MAY TIME is GAY TIME”]
[XXIV. SHAKESPEARE’S HEROINES]
[XXV. “JACK”]

The Ranch Girls at Boarding School

CHAPTER I
“STILL AS THE NIGHT”

Would the long night never pass? A figure on a bed in a big bare room stirred and then sighed. Ages ago a clock in the great house known as Primrose Hall, not far from the famous region of “Sleepy Hollow,” had struck three, then four, and now one, two, three, four, five solemn strokes boomed forth and yet not a glimmer of light nor a sound to announce the coming of morning.

“In the Lord put I my trust; how say ye then to my soul, that she should flee as a bird unto the hill? For lo, the ungodly bend their bow and make ready their arrow within the quiver, that they may privily shoot at them which are true of heart,” a tired voice murmured, and then after a short pause: “Oh, girls, are you awake yet? Aren’t you ever, ever going to wake up? Dear me, this night already seems to me to have lasted forever and ever!” For no answer had followed the question, although a door stood wide open between this and an adjoining room and the bed in the other room was occupied by two persons.

Five minutes crawled by and then another five. Tired of reciting the “Psalms of David” to induce repose, the wakeful figure slipped suddenly from its own bed and a slim ghost stole across the floor—a ghost that even in the darkness revealed two shadowy lengths of jet-black hair. In the farther room it knelt beside another bed, pressing its cheek against another cheek that felt both plump and peaceful, while its hand reached forth to find another hand that lay outside the coverlet.

“They are both sound asleep and I am a wretch to be trying to waken them,” the spectre faltered; “but how can they sleep so soundly the first night at a strange boarding school when I am so homesick and lonely I know that I am going to die or cry or do something else desperate? If only Jack were here, things would be different!” And Olive Ralston, one of the four girls from the Rainbow Ranch, sliding to the floor again, sat with her legs crossed under her and her head resting on her hands in a curious Indian posture of grief. And while she waited, watching beside the bedside where Jean Bruce and Frieda Ralston were now quietly asleep, her thoughts wandered away to the hospital in New York City, which held her beloved friend Jack.

Only the day before the three ranch girls, accompanied by their chaperon, Ruth Drew, had made their initial appearance at Primrose Hall to begin their first year of fashionable boarding school life. But once the girls had been introduced to the principal of the school, Miss Katherine Winthrop, and Ruth had had a talk with her and seen the rooms assigned to the ranch girls, she had been compelled to take the next train back to New York, a journey of twenty or more miles, for Jack had been left behind in a hospital and must not be long alone. There she lay awaiting the verdict of the New York surgeons to know whether after her accident at the Yellowstone Park the summer before she might ever expect to walk again. The chief reason of the trip from the Rainbow Lodge in Wyoming to New York City had not been to give the ranch girls an eastern education and to fit them for a more cosmopolitan life now that so great wealth was being brought forth from the Rainbow Mine, but to find out what could be done for Jack.

Now even while Olive was thinking of her best loved friend, a faint, chirrupy noise and a flutter of unfolding wings sounded along the outside walls of Primrose Hall. Lifting her head with a smothered cry of delight, the girl spied a thin streak of light shining across the floor. A moment later, back in her own room with the door closed behind her and her own window open, her eyes were soon eagerly scanning the unfamiliar scene before her. Dawn had come at last!

The young girl drew a deep breath. In the excitement of her arrival at school the day before, in the first meeting with so many strangers, Olive had not spared time to see or think of the surroundings of Primrose Hall, but now she could examine the landscape thoroughly. Set in the midst of one of the most beautiful valleys along the Hudson River, this morning the fields near by were bright with blue asters, with goldenrod and the white mist-like blossoms of the immortelles; the low hills in the background were brown and red and gold with the October foliage of the trees. Beyond the fields the Hudson River ran broader and deeper than any stream of water a ranch girl had ever seen, and across from it the New Jersey palisades rose like hoary battlements now veiled in a light fog. Surely no sunrise on the river Rhine could be more wonderful than this sunrise over the Hudson River; and yet, as Olive Ralston gazed out upon it, its beauty did not dry her tears nor ease the lump in her throat, for what she wanted was home, the old familiar sights and sounds, the smell of the Rainbow Ranch—and nothing could be more unlike the low level sweep of their Wyoming prairie than this Hudson River country.

“Heimweh,” the Germans call this yearning for home, which we have named homesickness, but a better word theirs than ours, for surely this longing for home, for accustomed people and things in the midst of strange surroundings, may be a woe very deep and intense.

From the first hour of the ranch girls’ planning to come east to boarding school Olive Ralston had believed that the change from the simple life of the ranch to the more conventional school atmosphere would be more difficult for her than for either Jean or Frieda. True, she had not spoken of it, but Olilie, whom the ranch girls had renamed Olive, had never forgotten that she was in reality an unknown girl, with no name of her own and no people, and except for her friends’ generosity might still be living in the dirty hut in the Indian village with old Laska.

After talking it over with Ruth and Jack, they had all decided that it would be wiser not to mention Olive’s strange history to her new schoolmates. Now in the midst of her attack of homesickness, Olive wondered if the girls would not at once guess her mixed blood from her odd appearance, or else might she not some day betray her ignorance of the little manners and customs that reveal a good family and good breeding? In the two happy years spent at the Rainbow Ranch she had learned all she could from Ruth and the other three girls, but were there not fourteen other ignorant years back of those two years?

A charming picture Olive made standing at the open window with her quaint foreign face framed in the high colonial casement. But now, finding both the autumn air and her own thoughts chilling, she turned away and began slowly to dress. She was still blue and yet at the same time ashamed of herself, for had she not been indulging in the most foolish habit in the world, feeling sorry for herself? Here at Primrose Hall did she not hope to find the beginning of her big opportunity and have not big opportunities the world over the fashion of starting out with difficulties to be overcome? When Olive’s education was completed she had made up her mind to return once more to the Indian village where she had spent her childhood and there devote her life to the teaching of the Indian children. Though Jack and Frieda Ralston, since the discovery of the gold mine near Rainbow Creek, were probably very wealthy and though it was but right that Jean Bruce as their first cousin should share their fortune with them, Olive did not feel that she wished to be always dependent even on the best of friends.

Having slowly dressed with these thoughts in her mind, the young girl’s mood was afterwards a little more cheerful, and yet she could not make up her mind how best to amuse herself until the half-past seven o’clock bell should ring for breakfast. She might write Jack, of course, but there was no news to tell her at present, and stirring about in her room hanging pictures or arranging ornaments would surely awaken Jean and Frieda, who were still slumbering like the seven famous sleepers. No other girl shared Olive’s room because Ruth and the four ranch girls hoped that after a few weeks’ treatment in the New York hospital Jack would then be able to join the others at school.

Idling about and uncertain what to do, Olive came again to her open window and there stood listening to the “chug, chug, chug” of a big steamer out on the river and then to the shriek of an engine along its banks. Suddenly her face brightened.

“What a goose I am to be moping indoors!” she exclaimed aloud, “I think I will try Jack’s old remedy for a bad temper and go and have a good walk to myself before breakfast.”

Now Olive did not have the least idea that in going out alone and without permission she would be breaking an iron law of Primrose Hall. Nothing was farther from her mind than disobedience, but no one had yet told her of the school rules and regulations and taking a walk alone seemed to her the most natural thing in the world. Had she only waited a few hours longer she must have understood differently, for the students were expected to assemble that very morning to hear what was required of them at Primrose Hall.

As quietly as possible Olive now slipped on her coat and hat, creeping along the hall on tiptoes so as not to disturb the other sleepers, and for the same reason she as quietly unlocked the big front door. But once out on the lawn, so innocent was she of trying to escape unnoticed, that she paused for several moments to gaze back at the great house she was about to leave.

Primrose Hall was so handsome and imposing that its new pupil felt a thrill of admiration as she looked upon it. A red brick mansion of the old colonial period, it was set in a lovely garden with flowers and shrubs growing close about the house and an avenue of elm trees leading down to the gate. Back of the house was an English garden with a border of box and a sun-dial at the end of a long path. This morning only a few late asters were in bloom in the garden and bushes of hardy hydrangeas with their great blossoms now turning rose and brown from the first early autumn frosts. The house and estate of twelve acres had belonged in the family of Miss Katherine Winthrop for the past five generations and Olive smiled a little over her queer conceit, for the house somehow suggested its present owner to her. Surely Miss Winthrop had appeared just as imposing and aristocratic as her old home on first meeting with her the day before, but far colder and more imposing than any mere pile of brick and stone.

Primrose Hall was of so great size that it included all the bedrooms and reception rooms necessary for its pupils and teachers, and the only other school buildings about the grounds were the recitation hall and two sorority houses devoted to the pleasures of the girls. Olive had never heard of secret societies, yet she wondered what the mystic words “Kappa” and “Theta” meant, inscribed above their doors.

Primrose Hall had been recommended to Ruth Drew and the ranch girls by Peter Drummond, the New York friend whom they had learned to know at the Yellowstone Park, but apart from its excellent reputation as a finishing school, their choice had fallen upon it because of the far-famed beauty of its historic grounds. In this same old house Washington and Lafayette had been known to stay, and who can guess how many powdered belles and beaus may have flirted with one another in the garden by the old sun-dial?

When Olive had grown tired of the views about the houses she determined to extend her walk over a portion of the estate, and coming to a low, stone wall, climbed over it without thinking or caring just where it led her. Being outdoors once more and free to wander as she choose after two weeks’ confinement, one aboard a stuffy train and the other in a palace-like hotel in New York, was now so inspiring that Olive felt like singing aloud. Indeed, it seemed to her that her own personality, which had somehow vanished since leaving the ranch, had come back to her this morning like a dear, familiar garment. It was as though she had lately been wearing fine clothes that did not belong to her and in this hour had donned once again her own well-worn dress.

Running along with the fleetness and quietness of her early Indian days, soon the truant found herself in a woods thick with underbrush and trees never seen before by a Wyoming girl. The air was delicious, the leaves sparkled with the melting of the frost, there was a splendid new wine of youth and romance abroad in the world and Olive completely forgot that she was in the midst of a highly civilized community and not in the heart of a virgin forest. Indeed, it was not until she had come entirely out of the woods that her awakening took place. Then she found herself apparently in some one’s private yard, for she stood facing a white house set up on a hill with a tower at the top of it and queer gabled windows on either side. At the entrance to its big front door stood two absurd iron dogs, and yet there was nothing in any of these ordinary details to make the onlooker turn crimson and then pale. And yet as she stared up at the house the idea that had suddenly come to her seemed so utterly, so absurdly impossible that surely she must be losing her senses.

For five minutes Olive waited without taking her gaze from the house, and then with a shrug of her shoulders turned and walked back into the woods. At first she paid no particular attention to what direction she was taking until all at once, hearing footsteps not far behind, she felt reasonably sure they were following hers.

CHAPTER II
IN DISGRACE

It was ridiculous for Olive to have been so frightened with so slight cause, yet the thought that some one might be in pursuit of her filled her with a nervous terror. To the people not afflicted with timidity, most fears are ridiculous, and yet no single weakness is harder to overcome. Of the four ranch girls, Olive was the only timid one, but before one criticizes her, remember her childhood. Now with her heart pounding and her breath coming in short gasps, she quickened her pace into a run, recalling at the same time their chaperon’s forgotten instruction that she must no longer expect the happy freedom of their western lands. But the faster the frightened girl ran the faster the traveler back of her appeared to be following. And now Olive dared not hide deeper in the woods, knowing that the hour was growing late and that any added delay would make her late for breakfast.

Many times in her life would her Indian knowledge of the woods save her in emergencies of this sort, so in another moment she remembered that an Indian never runs away from his pursuer, but hides until his enemy has passed. Behind a low clump of laurel bushes the girl hid herself, crouching low and expecting each instant to see a tramp or an armed gamekeeper, whose business it was to keep intruders out of private property, savagely on the lookout for her.

Her pursuer did come on without hesitation and finally arrived just opposite Olive’s hiding place, but then it was the girl in hiding who suddenly sprang to her feet, startling the newcomer. For the enemy she had so dreaded was only another girl like herself with a smile on her face and a bundle of books under her arm. She was ten years older perhaps, yet she looked not unlike Jacqueline Ralston before her illness; her eyes were blue instead of gray, but she had the same bright bronze hair and firm line to her chin and the same proud way of holding up her head.

“Who or what are you?” she asked Olive, “a wood nymph living in this underbrush, for your clothes are of so nearly the same color that I did not see you at first.”

Olive, who was wearing a dark olive-green coat suit and a tam-o’-shanter of velvet of the same shade, shook her head. “I am one of the new girls from Primrose Hall and I have been out for a walk, but as I am not very familiar with these woods, I am not just sure where I am. Would you mind—” Her request came to an abrupt end because of the expression of surprise and disapproval on the older girl’s face.

“A student from Primrose Hall and outdoors alone at this hour of the morning! How on earth did Miss Winthrop happen to give you permission?” she asked in the positive fashion that Olive was to learn to know so well later on.

The first consciousness of possible wrong-doing now swept over the truant. Could it be that in taking a walk without asking permission she had broken a rule of her new school? The idea seemed ridiculous to Olive, and yet—were not all things different than in the old days? “I am so sorry, but no one gave me permission to take a walk. Was it necessary to ask?” she inquired. “You see, we only arrived at Primrose Hall yesterday and we—I—why, we often stay out hours before breakfast at home, riding over the plains!”

Olive’s innocence of offense and her distress were so plain to the older girl that straightway she slipped her arm through hers and without delay hurried her along toward school, talking as she went.

“I am Jessica Hunt, the teacher of English and elocution at Primrose Hall, and I have been spending the night with some friends.” Jessica gave a reassuring pressure to the hand in hers. “You must not be frightened, child, if Miss Winthrop seems rather terrifying on your return. I used to be a pupil at Primrose Hall before I started in with the teaching and I’m really very fond of her. Miss Winthrop isn’t so severe as she looks, but I expect I had better tell you that it is after breakfast time now and, as the school girls are never allowed to go out alone and never without permission, why she may scold you a bit.”

If only she might at this moment have dropped down in the path to weep like a naughty child about to be punished for a fault, Olive would have felt it a great relief, and only the thought of her age prevented her doing this. Could she ever live through the embarrassment of facing fifty strange girls, more than half a dozen teachers and Miss Winthrop while she was being reprimanded. Why, yesterday just on being introduced to Miss Winthrop, with Ruth and Jean and Frieda with her for protection, had she not felt as tongue-tied and frightened as a silly baby? And now must she face this stern woman alone and under the shadow of her displeasure?

Never as long as she lived (and the circumstances of Olive Ralston’s life were always unusual and romantic) would she ever forget the next half hour’s experience at Primrose Hall, nor the appearance of the great hall as she entered it, with girls and teachers grouped about, and towering above everything and everybody, the tall, commanding presence of its principal, Miss Katherine Winthrop.

Almost without her own volition Olive found herself standing in front of Miss Winthrop, Jessica’s arm still through hers, heard the teacher of mathematics say, “Here is your new runaway pupil with Miss Hunt,” and realized that this teacher, whom she had disliked yesterday because she wore round spectacles and dressed like a man, wished not so much to get her into trouble as to involve Jessica in her disgrace.

But Jessica was not in the least disturbed, being the only teacher at Primrose Hall not afraid of its owner. “Miss Winthrop,” she now began coaxingly, “I have brought our new girl home. She was only taking a walk in the woods near by, but I am sure she would rather explain to you herself that in going out without permission she did not know she was breaking a school rule. You see, she has lived always in the West and been accustomed to such perfect freedom—” Jessica was continuing her case for the defendant, realizing that Olive was still too frightened to speak for herself. But suddenly Miss Hunt was thrust aside by a small, plump person, with the longest yellow braids and the biggest blue eyes in the school, and without the least regard for either teachers or principal, Frieda Ralston now flung her arms about Olive.

“For goodness sake, why didn’t you tell Jean and me where you were going?” she demanded. “We have been so frightened about you.”

And then before Olive could reply, another girl stood at her other side, a girl with dark brown hair, a pale skin and demure brown eyes, whose nose had the faintest, most delicious tilt at the end of it. Jean Bruce said nothing, but she looked ready and anxious to defend her friend against all the world.

Surrounding the little group of ranch girls and the three teachers were numbers of other students, most of whom were casting glances of sympathy at the new pupil who had so soon fallen into disgrace. Breakfast just over, they were supposedly on their way upstairs to their own rooms, but Olive’s entrance with Jessica had interrupted them and until Miss Winthrop spoke no one had stirred.

“You may go to your own apartments now, girls,” she said quietly. “Miss Ralston will explain her absence to me in my private study.” As her words and look included Jean and Frieda, they also were compelled to follow the other students up the broad mahogany stairs, leaving Olive to face her fate alone. Only one girl with short curly hair and a freckled nose actually had the courage to stop in passing and whisper to the offender:

“Fare thee well, light of my life, farewell. For crimes unknown you go to a dungeon cell,” she chanted. Then while Olive was trying to summon a smile in return, a beautiful girl with pale blonde hair joined both of them, and drawing the other girl away, said loud enough for a dozen persons near by to overhear: “Oh, do come on upstairs, Gerry. When will you learn not to be friendly to objectionable persons whom no one knows anything about?” And so cool and indifferent did her expression appear as she made her unkind speech that it was hard to believe she understood that her words could be overheard. But Olive Ralston heard them and in spite of her gentleness never in after years forgot or forgave them.

A minute or so later, when everybody else had disappeared, Olive found herself alone in Miss Winthrop’s study, seated in a comfortable leather chair facing a desk at which Miss Winthrop was writing.

“I will talk to you in a few minutes,” she had said as they entered the room, and at first the prisoner had felt that waiting to hear her sentence would be unendurable. Of course she would be expelled from Primrose Hall; Olive had no other idea. And of course Ruth and Jack would understand and forgive her, but there would be no going back on her part to be a burden and disgrace to them. Somehow she must find work to support herself in the future!

But as time passed on and Miss Winthrop continued with her writing, by and by Olive’s attention wandered from her own sorrows and she busied herself in studying her judge’s face. Miss Winthrop’s expression was not so stern in repose, for though the lines about her mouth were severe and her nose aquiline, her forehead was high and broad and her dark eyes full of dignity and purpose. And then her figure. Olive felt obliged to admit that though she was taller and larger than almost any woman she had known, her grace and dignity were most unusual and the severity of her simple black silk gown showed her to great advantage.

Weary of scrutinizing the older woman, Olive’s eyes next traveled idly to the top of Miss Winthrop’s desk, resting there for an eager moment, while in her interest she forgot everything else. For the first time in her life this young girl, who had seen nothing of the World of art, had her attention arrested by one of the world’s great masterpieces.

On Miss Winthrop’s desk there stood a cast of an heroic figure of a woman with broad, beautiful shoulders and wonderful flowing draperies. The figure was without head or arms and yet was so inspiring that, without realizing it, Olive gave a sigh of delight.

Straightway Miss Winthrop glanced up. “You like my cast?” she asked quickly. “Do you know that it is a copy of the statue of ‘The Winged Victory,’ ‘The Nike’? The real statue now stands at the top of the stairs in the Louvre in Paris and there you will probably see it some day. But I like to keep the figure here as a kind of inspiration to me and to my girls. For to me ‘The Victory’ means so much more than the statue of a woman. It stands, I think, as the emblem of the superwoman, what all we women must hope to be some day. See the beauty and dignity of her, as though she had turned her back on all sin and injustice and was moving forward into a new world of light. I like to believe that the splendid lost arms of the Nike carried the world’s children in them.”

Of course Miss Winthrop realized that she was talking above the head of her new pupil, but she wished an opportunity to study the girl’s face. Now she saw by its sudden glow and softening that she had caught at least a measure of her meaning.

“Girls, girls, girls.” Sometimes Miss Winthrop felt that the world held nothing else and that she knew all the varieties, and yet one could never be too sure, for here before her was a new type unlike all the others and for some reason at this moment she attracted her strongly.

To Miss Winthrop alone at Primrose Hall Ruth Drew had thought it wise to confide as much as they knew of Olive’s extraordinary history, pledging her to secrecy. Now to herself Miss Winthrop said: “It is utterly ridiculous to believe this child has Indian blood, for there is absolutely nothing in her appearance to indicate it. I believe that her history is far more curious than her friends suppose.”

But to Olive, of course, she said nothing of this, for after her first speech her manner appeared to change entirely. Sitting very erect in her chair, she turned upon her pupil “You may go,” she said coldly, “for I understand that by your action this morning you did not deliberately intend to break one of my rules. But kindly be more careful in the future, for I am not accustomed to overlooking disobedience, whatever its cause.”

With a sigh of relief Olive straightway fled into the hall, wondering if she could ever like this Miss Winthrop, who could be so stern one moment and so interesting the next. For her own part Olive felt that she much preferred their former chaperon, Ruth Drew, for if Ruth were less handsome and perhaps not so cultivated, she was at least more human. If only they were all back at the Rainbow Ranch with Ruth to scold and pet them for their misdoings all in the same breath.

CHAPTER III
“GERRY”

The three ranch girls had their set of apartments toward the front of the house on the second floor at Primrose Hall, so in order for Olive to reach her room it was necessary that she should pass along a long corridor into which various other apartments opened. She was not interested in anything but the one thought of finding Frieda and Jean, and yet, hurrying by an open door, she was obliged to overhear a conversation between two girls who were talking in rather loud tones.

“I don’t care, Winifred Graham, whether you like it or not,” one of the voices asserted, “but I certainly intend to be as nice to these new Western girls as I know how. They are strangers and I think it horrid to try to snub them just because you think perhaps they are not so rich and fashionable as the rest of the Primrose girls. I suppose you will try to turn as many of the other Juniors against them as you can twist around your finger, but kindly don’t include me in your list. Perhaps you think I don’t know why you have had me for one of your chums for so long. Goodness, child, I am not so foolish as I look; it is because I am homely as a mud fence, so when I’m around you’re more the stately beauty than ever in contrast with poor little me. But maybe you won’t always be thought the prettiest girl in the school, for this queer looking Olive, what’s her name, is as good looking as you are in an odd, foreign way, and the brown-eyed one named Jean Bruce goes you a close second. If you are angry with me, why you need not have me for a roommate, for I am going this very second to call on the new ranch girls and welcome them to Primrose Hall.” And with a flounce the same short-haired girl who had stopped to tease Olive earlier that morning, now ran along the hall after her, slipping her arm through hers in the friendliest of fashions. “Please’m, may I come and make you a call?” she inquired, “for I have been several years at Primrose Hall and know the place like an old shoe. Besides, I think that you and the older one of your sisters or friends, I can’t guess your relation, must be going to be in our Junior class, and I tell you we Juniors have to stick close together these days.”

By this time the two girls had arrived before Olive’s door, but hearing queer noises in another room, they followed the sounds, discovering Jean and Frieda in the adjoining chamber, which was to be the ranch girls’ sitting room. An immediate introduction was difficult because both Jean and Frieda were apparently standing on their heads inside the trunk of their Indian curios. They were not alone, for two sisters, Mollie and Lucy Johnson, from across the hall, had come in to lend them hammer and nails and were now watching them with deep absorption.

“Jean, Frieda,” Olive exclaimed, “this is—” and then she stopped in some confusion, remembering that she had not yet heard their new friend’s name.

The two ranch girls came forth from the trunk in time to see their new visitor smiling at them. “I am Geraldine Ferrows, at your service,” she explained, “but I’m better known to the world as Gerry. See I have brought your Olive safe back from the lion’s den and, as she is no more eaten up than was the prophet Daniel, why it proves that she’s a saint to start with. I wonder if you would care to have me tell you about Primrose Hall and what we are expected to do and what not to do?”

Olive, Frieda and Mollie and Lucy Johnson nodded thankfully, but Jean closed her lips and hardly appeared to have heard the question. She was not accustomed to feeling out of things as she had this morning and was not sure she cared to have strangers making an effort to be kind. Suppose this Geraldine Ferrows was one of the old students and said to be one of the cleverest if not the cleverest of the girls, well even that gave her no right to be patronizing to them!

But Gerry, apparently not observing Jean’s unfriendliness and having already taken a fancy to her, as strangers usually did, now seated herself cross-legged on the floor, beckoning to the others to follow suit. “All Gaul, my children, is divided into three parts, as we learn in our Latin book,” she said gayly, “but Primrose Hall, I regret to say, is divided into only two parts, the girls Winifred Graham likes and the girls she docs not. I used to belong to the first class, but now I probably belong to the second. I was kind of in love with Winifred last year and let her boss me around, but during the summer I thought things over and decided to strike. When she was so horrid to a stranger this morning it seemed to me the time was ripe. She won’t care a snap about my desertion, for she never cares for people unless they are rich and I’m not a bit, only my father is a famous surgeon in New York and I’m going to be a doctor myself some day, since I’m too homely for any kind gentleman to marry. I suppose it is because Winifred thought you girls didn’t look rich that—” And instantly Gerry bit her lively tongue, pretending not to be able to say anything more, although Jean was gazing at her in a more encouraging fashion than she had worn at the beginning of her speech.

All the way across the continent from Wyoming to New York City the four ranch girls, Ruth, and their English friend, Frank Kent, had discussed this question: Should the girls on arriving at boarding school speak of their new-found gold mine to their new acquaintances? Ruth and Jack advised against it, Olive had no pronounced opinion, Frieda and Frank thought they might as well mention it now and then, while Jean was determined to speak of their gold mine whenever the chance offered and to make the biggest impression she possibly could. So now it was surprising to hear Jean say with a slight flush in the healthy pallor of her clear skin: “No, we wouldn’t wish any one at Primrose Hall to care for us because of our wealth—or lack of it,” she answered demurely; “so I am afraid Miss Graham and her friends will not like us any too well. You see, we are simply ranch girls and will have to stand or fall by that. I suppose this Miss Graham decided that we were poor because our clothes are so simple and we haven’t thirteen trunks apiece as most of the girls here have. Olive and I were laughing yesterday because on our arrival we were given United States lock boxes for our jewels. Jewels! why we haven’t any except a few trinkets and two or three keepsakes that belong to Olive!” And Jean frowned and shook her head warningly at Frieda, whose eyes were bigger and bluer than ever and whose lips were about to form the name of the Rainbow Mine. Jumping up in order to divert her attention, Jean ran across to their trunk of Indian relics and diving down into it again, came forth with three pretty Indian baskets. “Won’t each one of you take one of these baskets to remind you that you were our first callers at Primrose Hall and we hope our first friends,” she said prettily, handing a basket to Gerry and then the others to the two sisters. But all the while Jean was talking and acting this little pantomime, inside of her something kept repeating: “Jack was right and we don’t want to be liked for our money. We will find out who the really nice girls are at Primrose Hall and then—” Well, it was comfortable to recall that in Jim’s last letter, written after they had left the ranch, he had said the pot of gold from the end of their Rainbow Mine had yielded five thousand dollars within the month just past and that there appeared to be plenty more gold where that had come from.

Suddenly a great bell sounded close by and five girls started with surprise, only Geraldine Ferrows remaining perfectly calm. Getting up from the floor, however, she stuck her Indian basket on her head for a hat, using the handle as a strap.

“Tidy your hair, young women, and come along over to the recitation hall. That was not an alarm of fire that just sounded, only a gentle reminder that we are to assemble within the next ten minutes to meet our teachers and to get ready our schedules of work for the next quarter. I can only hope that all of you are as wise as you are beautiful, for Primrose Hall is no cinch.” Gerry was marching out of the room to the tune of “Tommy Atkins,” when Jean called after her: “You were awfully good to come in to see us and we are obliged to you, so please help us out whenever you can. I am afraid that the things we know, such as riding bareback and raising cattle and shooting straight, won’t be considered accomplishments at boarding school.” And Jean looked unusually humble and particularly pretty.

Gerry laughed. “Don’t worry, we are none too learned ourselves at Primrose Hall, for we keep all varieties of insects here, butterflies as well as bookworms. But I will say for Miss Winthrop, that though this is a fashionable school, she does try to make us mind our Q’s as well as our P’s.”

Frieda was never born to understand a joke. “Please, what does it mean ‘To mind our P’s and Q’s?’” she inquired solemnly.

“Oh, P’s stand for parties and politeness and primping and how to enter a room and what to say when you get there and all the things that mean Society with a big S, Miss Frieda Ralston,” Gerry returned. “But Q’s, Q’s are dreadful things called Quizzes, and you will pretty soon find out what quizzing means, particularly if you happen to be in the mathematics class taught by the female who rejoices in the delicious name of Miss Rebecca Sterne. But really, Frieda, if you want to know the truth about the meaning of the old expression, ‘mind your P’s and Q’s,’ the Century Dictionary tells us that the expression alluded to the difficulty in the early days of discerning the difference between the two letters.” And with this last bit of wisdom and a shake of her curly head, Gerry really vanished from the ranch girls’ room.

CHAPTER IV
GETTING INTO HARNESS

Two weeks had elapsed since the arrival of the three ranch girls at boarding school and so many changes appeared to have taken place in their lives that already the weeks seemed as many months. One of the changes they themselves did not realize, but nevertheless it was a serious one, for Jean, Frieda and Olive were no longer so intimate as they had been in the old days at Rainbow Lodge. Each girl was going her own way, keeping her own confidence, forming new friendships and apparently forgetting the importance of past ties.

And of the three girls it was Frieda who had become the most emancipated. Having conceived a tremendous devotion for Mollie Johnson, the two girls were rarely apart. Lucy Johnson was a good deal older than Frieda, but Mollie was a year younger than the youngest Miss Ralston and looked up to her as the most wonderful person in the world, insisting that the stories Frieda told of her life on the ranch made her appear like a heroine in a book. Now Frieda was tired of being treated like a baby by her family, and besides, as no one had ever told her before that she was in the least like a heroine, she found the idea distinctly pleasant. The two Johnson sisters were from Richmond, Virginia, and had vivacious manners and soft southern voices. Mollie was small and dark and fluttered about like a little brown bird, such a complete contrast to Frieda’s fairness and slow movements that it was small wonder the two girls were drawn together by their very unlikeness and that already their schoolmates were calling them the Siamese twins, because they went everywhere together with their arms locked about one another, wore one another’s clothes when their different sizes permitted, and were never without true lover’s knots of blue ribbon tied in their buttonholes, knots made from a sacrificial division of all Frieda’s best hair ribbons. Not that hair ribbons interested their owner any further, for the fifth day after Frieda’s arrival at boarding school, and in spite of Jean’s and Olive’s objections, her long braids had disappeared and in their place a Pysche knot of huge proportions could be seen at the back of her head. The Psyche knot was not becoming, because its wearer did not have a Greek face, but it was grown up and the latest fashion and of course nothing else really matters. As Frieda’s school work was not the same as Jean’s and Olive’s, on account of her age and the fact that she never had cared much about books, the division of her time was different from theirs, so perhaps it was but natural that in the excitement of her first independence and without Jack’s influence, she should be for the first time in her life “ganging her own gait.”

But with Jean Bruce the change was even more subtle and more unconscious. Why, Jean and Olive had actually laughed together over Frieda’s desertion of them and all the while they were laughing, though she had said nothing, Olive was wondering if Jean did not know that she saw almost as little of her as she did of Frieda these days. Without realizing it or having made any special effort, Jean Bruce, two weeks after her arrival at Primrose Hall, was one of the most popular girls in the school. As a proof of it she had already been invited to join both the two sororities and had not made up her mind which one she should choose. The fact that Winifred Graham belonged to the “Kappa” sorority certainly influenced Jean in the direction of the “Theta,” for from the hour of Geraldine Ferrows’ revelation of Winifred’s character there had been open war between Winifred and Jean. Of course, Winifred’s rudeness to Olive was the first cause of Jean’s offense, but now Olive was almost forgotten and overlooked in their personal rivalry. It was an open discussion that the choice for Junior class president, which must be made before the Christmas holidays, would lie between these two girls. For though Jean had continued her masquerade of poverty, the best girls in the school had not been influenced by it. Indeed, Jean’s closest friend, Margaret Belknap, belonged to one of the oldest and wealthiest families in New York City, people who looked down upon the Four Hundred as belonging to the dreadful “new rich.”

But while school life was apparently moving so pleasantly for Jean and Frieda, Olive, for some unexplained reason, was making no friends. Though it was customary to invite the new girls at Primrose Hall into one or the other of the secret societies almost immediately upon their arrival at school, Olive had not yet been chosen for either sorority. Too shy and sensitive to mention it even to her best friends, she did not dream that Jean was unaware of the slights put upon her. Only in secret Olive suffered tortures, wondering if her blood showed itself so plainly that her classmates disliked her for that reason or if she were more unattractive than all other girls. Still her beloved Jack, who was finer and more beautiful than anybody in the world, had cared for her and if only the doctors would say that Jack was strong enough to join them at Primrose Hall, nothing else would make any difference! Letters from Ruth Drew and now and then one from Peter Drummond had assured the girls that Jack was doing as well as could be expected, but as yet there had been no definite report from the surgeon?

However, if Olive Ralston had so far made no friends among her classmates, there were other persons in the school interested in her, who were more important. Among them was Jessica Hunt, the young teacher whom Olive had met on the morning of her unfortunate walk. There was something in the strange girl’s shyness and gentle dignity that made a strong appeal to Jessica, and though she had so far no opportunity to reveal her friendliness, she had noticed the slights put upon Olive and was trying her best to discover their cause. Some secret story might possibly be in circulation about the newcomer, but so far Jessica had not been able to find it out.

One Friday afternoon Olive had been alone in their sitting room for several hours. Always books had been her consolation for loneliness since the days when her only white friend had been the teacher in the Indian school in her village, yet nevertheless, hearing an unexpected knock at the door, her face brightened. “Jean is sending for me to join her somewhere perhaps,” she thought happily, but on opening the door her eyes had widened with surprise.

“Please, may I come in? I’m not a teacher this afternoon: I am a visitor,” Jessica Hunt had said at once. “I have been looking for you everywhere in the garden and at the sorority houses and on the verandas. To quote Mr. Kipling, ‘over the world and under the world and back at the last to you,’ here in your sitting room. Why aren’t you with the other girls?” Knowing what she did, perhaps Jessica’s question to Olive may seem cruel, yet she asked it hoping that Olive might confide in her the unfriendliness of her classmates. Then they might talk the matter over sensibly together and she might be able to help. But alas for Olive! Though Ruth had warned her to try to overcome her reserve that day of the flower fortunes in Yellowstone Park, she was yet unable to give her confidence to any one but Jack! So now she only answered Miss Hunt quietly: “It is because I am stupider than the other girls that I have to stay in my room to study more. But I am through with my work now and awfully glad to see you,” and Olive’s rather misty smile of welcome revealed more of her real feeling than any number of words.

Once inside the ranch girls’ sitting room, Jessica Hunt gave a little cry of admiration and surprise. “Why, no wonder you don’t wish to be outdoors,” she exclaimed, “for this is the most charming girls’ room at Primrose Hall! It makes me think of that same poem of Kipling’s which I was misquoting a minute ago, ‘The Gypsy Trail.’ You must read it some day when you’re older, for you look like a Romany maid yourself. And surely in this room at least ‘the east and the west are one.’”

Truly the ranch girls’ sitting room was indeed what they had dreamed of making it in the last days at home, a bit of the Rainbow Lodge in miniature, their own beloved ranch house living room reproduced many miles across the continent. By Ruth’s request Miss Winthrop had allotted to the three ranch girls a large and almost empty room, containing only a divan, a few chairs and low bookshelves. Now the floor was covered with half a dozen gayly colored Indian rugs, bright shawls were thrown over the divan, piled with sofa cushions of leather and silk, and on the walls were prints of Indian heads, one of them a picture of a young girl looking singularly like Olive, and several Remington drawings of cowboys on lonely western plains. Over the open fireplace, about one-fourth the size of the one at The Lodge, was the head of an elk shot by Jim Colter himself on the border of their own ranch, and on the mantel the very brass candlesticks that belonged on the mantelpiece at home, besides several pieces of Indian crockery, the ancient ornaments discovered by Frieda in the Indian cave on the day when Olive had made her first appearance in the ranch girls’ lives.

But when Jessica had seen the beauties of the sitting room she began at once to look more closely at the few photographs which the ranch girls had placed on top of their bookshelves, knowing that there is no quicker way to learn to understand and enter the heart of a school girl than by taking an interest in her photographs. Of course, these must represent the persons nearest and dearest, their families and closest friends.

The ranch girls had not a very large collection of pictures, only an absurd one of Jim, taken at Laramie as a farewell present to them, but as he wore a stiff collar and shirt and his Sunday clothes, it was not in the least like their big, splendidly handsome friend. Next Jim’s was one of Ruth and alongside that one of Frank Kent, but almost instinctively Jessica’s hand reached forth to pick up a photograph of a girl on horseback and at the same instant she touched Olive’s heart.

“Who is this beautiful girl?” she asked quickly. “She is just the type of girl I admire the most, so graceful and vigorous and with such a lot of character. Oh, I hope I haven’t said anything I shouldn’t,” she ended suddenly, seeing that Olive’s eyes had filled with tears.

Olive shook her head. “No, it’s all right, only Jack isn’t vigorous any more.” And then, to her own surprise and relief, Olive poured forth the whole story of Jack’s accident and their reasons for coming east.

Strange, and yet no stranger than the same kind of thing that takes place every day, but just as Olive was on the point of telling Miss Hunt that she expected each day to hear more definite news of Jack, a message was sent upstairs to her from the office. A visitor was in the reception room desiring to see the Misses Ralston and Miss Bruce at once. Would Olive find the other girls and come to the reception room immediately?

With but one thought in her mind, that it must be Ruth Drew who had come to tell them that Jack was better, Olive, with a hurried apology to Jessica, begging her to wait until her return, fled out, of her room down through the lower part of the house and then out into the school grounds to search for Jean and Frieda, for much as she yearned to run at once to Ruth, it would be too selfish not to let the other girls hear the good news with her.

And Jessica Hunt was glad enough to be left alone in the ranch girls’ room for a few minutes longer, for standing near the photograph of Jacqueline Ralston was another photograph whose presence in the room puzzled her greatly. She did not feel that she had the right to ask curious questions and yet she must look at this picture more closely, for the exact, copy of it was at this moment lying in her own bureau drawer between folds of lavender-scented silk.

CHAPTER V
NEWS AND A DISCOVERY

Jean and Frieda were not to be found on either of the two great side porches, where the Primrose Hall girls spent many recreation hours on these warm Indian summer afternoons, but just in front of the sorority house with “Theta” engraved above the door, Olive spied Jean surrounded by a dozen girls. She was talking in a very animated fashion and had her back turned so that she did not see Olive, who started to run toward her and then hesitated and flushed. Each girl in the group was known to her by name, all of them were Juniors and her classmates and yet not one of them, except Geraldine Ferrows, had ever voluntarily held five minutes’ conversation with her. Did she have the courage now to thrust herself among them and to interrupt Jean? Only the thought that Ruth must be waiting for them with news of Jack braced her. “Jean,” Olive called softly and then in a louder tone, “Jean!”

At once Jean swung round, but at the same moment twelve other pairs of eyes stared poor Olive up and down.

“Oh, I am so glad you have come, Olive,” Jean exclaimed, her brown eyes shining with enthusiasm, “for it has all been arranged that I am to join the ‘Theta’ Society and I do hope that you will come in with me. Then we are going to form a dramatic club in our sorority and after a little while give a perfectly stunning play. I am sure the girls will want you to take part in it, for you see Olive can act better than any one of us, or at least she used to when we had charades at Rainbow Lodge.” Jean paused, feeling a peculiar change in the atmosphere about her. Would no one echo her invitation to Olive? And why had her friends drawn away in silence unless something was the matter, for Olive was standing right before them with her cheeks crimson and biting her lips to hide their trembling?

Jean stamped her foot with a flash of her old anger. “If you think for an instant, Margaret Belknap,” she said, turning to her best friend in the little company, a tall, distinguished, but plain-looking girl, “that I will be in things and do things without Olive, why—” But Olive took Jean softly by the arm. “Please don’t say anything, dear,” she whispered, and then as Jean caught the message she had come to give her, without further thought of anything or anybody at Primrose Hall, the two friends hurried off together. Jean was not so conscientious about trying to find Frieda, but leaving word with the maids to send her after them, in a few moments the two girls appeared at the reception room door.

“Ruth, you darling,” they called in chorus and then turned white faces to stare at each other and at the tall figure that rose to greet them holding Frieda’s hand in one of his. “It is Peter Drummond, gooseys; don’t you know him?” Frieda cried happily. “Some one told me we had a caller and I came in here expecting to find some strange, horrid visitor, and when I saw Peter I forgot I wasn’t a little girl any longer and most hugged him. You might say you think it good of him to come to see us,” she ended, rather crossly.

“We thought you were Ruth, Mr. Drummond,” Jean replied, coming to herself sooner than Olive, “but of course we are terribly glad it is you; only—why—the truth is, we expected Ruth to be able to tell us that Jack was better or something. Just think, we haven’t seen old Jack in weeks, ages it seems.” Jean put out her hand to take hold of their friend’s when Olive spoke: “I think Mr. Drummond has come to tell us about Jack instead of Ruth,” she said in a slightly strained voice. “I am afraid that Jack isn’t so well as we hoped she would be and Ruth couldn’t leave her. Won’t she ever be able to walk again like other people? Have the doctors said? Tell us, please, quickly what has brought you to see us, for anything is better than suspense.” And still for a second Peter Drummond did not reply.

The first cause of his silence was that Frieda, entirely surprised at Olive’s interpretation of his visit, had unexpectedly burst into tears.

“Come now,” Mr. Drummond said finally, patting Frieda’s hand, “it isn’t so bad as all this. Olive did guess the truth and I have come to tell you about Jack. Perhaps she isn’t so well as we hoped, for she can’t join you at school just at present or get about very much. The fact is—” Mr. Drummond cleared his throat, “well, the surgeons are not quite sure of Jack’s condition yet and must wait a while longer and keep her very quiet before they can decide. But I saw her a minute the other day and she and Ruth send you their love and Jack hopes boarding school isn’t so dreadful as she thinks it must be and— Why doesn’t some one else say something, for never before in my life have I been with three women and had to do all the talking?” And Peter, with a man’s embarrassment at being the bearer of ill news, looked at the ranch girls with pretended indignation.

“Are you sure you have told us the truth, Mr. Drummond?” Jean asked, and their visitor, not in the least offended by the question, emphatically bowed his head.

Jean turned to the other two girls. “Then Olive and Frieda, I don’t think we need be frightened,” she said stoutly, “though of course we are terribly disappointed at not having Jack here at school with us, I have always felt she would be well some day. Even if the surgeons should say she won’t, my money is on old Jack!”

Instantly Frieda’s face cleared at Jean’s courageous attitude, though Olive looked considerably depressed. But at this minute Mr. Drummond, to divert everybody’s attention, turned toward Frieda. “Will somebody tell me, please, what is the trouble with the youngest Miss Ralston, for if two weeks at boarding school can affect her like this, What will a whole year do?”

Instinctively Frieda’s hand went up to her Psyche knot. “Don’t tell Jack and Ruth,” she begged, and then, tossing her blonde head: “Oh, tell away if you like, Peter Drummond. I haven’t any disease, if that’s what you mean; I am just not a baby any longer.”

Peter’s expression was a funny mixture of gravity and amusement. “If it’s old age that is afflicting you, Frieda,” he said pulling at his own heavy iron-gray hair, “then you’ve got about the worst disease in the world and the most incurable, but I didn’t really think it was apt to overtake one at fifteen.” Seeing that Frieda looked injured, he turned again to Olive and Jean. “The Harmons have been awfully nice to Jack and Ruth and they are coming out here to see you pretty soon. There is a queer old house in this neighborhood where an old relative of theirs lives. The house is supposed to be haunted, or at least there is some mystery about it. I wonder if you girls have seen it?”

“I have,” Olive answered quickly and Jean laughed.

“How on the face of the earth do you know you have seen the place Peter is describing, Olive?” Jean questioned, “for he hasn’t told you the name of it or what it looks like or anything to identify it.”

Olive looked puzzled. “Yes, I know it is funny, but it is a place called ‘The Towers,’ with a high tower at the top of it and a balcony and queer little windows.” Quite unconsciously Olive had closed her eyes, because for some strange reason she seemed to be able to recall the house she had seen on the morning of her early walk better with her eyes closed.

Mr. Drummond smiled at her. “Olive is right, the place is called ‘The Towers.’ I remember now,” he repeated. “I wonder if because Olive is perhaps a gypsy or an Indian, she is going to be a fortune teller.” But because Olive’s face had crimsoned at his speech his tone changed. “My dear Olive, suppose you are half Indian, why on earth should you care? There isn’t the least disgrace in it, is there?” And Olive noticed that Mr. Drummond’s speech ended with a question.

But he had now risen, picking up from the table near him a large box and a small one. The large box he handed to Jean. “You are please to conceal this from the powers that be, if it’s against boarding school laws to eat candy,” he said and then stood turning the smaller box about in his hand, surveying it thoughtfully. “This is a gift to you girls from Jack,” he remarked finally. “Miss Drew tells me it contains a great surprise, and as I haven’t the faintest idea what is inside of it, may I be present at its opening?”

The girls allowed Frieda to tear off the paper covering outside the parcel. Inside a white velvet box was revealed which opened with a spring. Instantly Frieda touched this spring there were three cries of “Oh,” followed by a moment’s silence. On the white satin lining of the box were three crescent-shaped pins as large in circumference as a quarter. The pins were composed of seven lovely jewels shading from red to pale violet. Each girl took her gift from the box, regarding it with characteristic expressions. Jean’s eyes were dancing with delight, the dimple showing at the corner of her mouth, Frieda’s blue eyes were bluer than ever and her cheeks pinker, while Olive’s eyes were overclouded and her face quivered with pleasure.

THERE WERE THREE CRIES OF “OH,” FOLLOWED BY A MOMENT’S SILENCE

“They are the loveliest things I ever saw in my life and the grandest, and now Jean won’t be able to pretend we are poor any more,” Frieda announced.

“Ah, but maybe Jack is a fairy godmother, and even poor girls may have fairy godmothers,” Jean teased.

“I think none of us have guessed yet what Jack intends our gifts to suggest,” Olive added slowly, her eyes still resting on the glowing colors of the jeweled pins. “Don’t you see, Mr. Drummond, that our pins represent rainbows? I have been repeating the rainbow colors to myself—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. And here are seven jewels of the same colors in our pins.”

Peter Drummond took Olive’s pin in his own hand. “Right you are, and Jack has beaten me at my own game. For I have been collecting jewels all my life and never thought of so pretty an idea as this. Here is a garnet to start with for the red, then a topaz for the orange, a yellow diamond next, an emerald for the green, a sapphire for blue, a blue opal for indigo and last of all an amethyst for the last shade of violet.”

“They are to make us think of the ranch and the lodge and the mine and all the good things that have come to us through a rainbow,” Jean said thoughtfully and then more huskily, “I guess Jack is pretty homesick.” Frieda made a dive toward the floor at this moment, rising up with a piece of paper in her hand. “This fell out of the jewel case when I opened it, but I hadn’t time to pick it up then,” she announced. “Oh, goodness gracious, Jack, of all people, has written us a poem!” And Frieda read:

“Here are seven colors in nature and art,

What I think they mean I wish you from my heart;

Here’s red, that good courage may fill you each day

And orange and yellow to shine on your way.

Here’s green for the ocean to bear us afar

To some lovely blue land ’neath an opal star.

And yet to the end shall we ever forget

Our own prairie fields of pale violet?”

“It is a rather hard poem to understand, but it rhymes pretty well,” Frieda ended doubtfully.

Olive’s loyalty left no room for criticism. “It’s beautiful, I think. And I know what Jack means at the end. If we ever do go to Europe, as we sometimes have planned, we must never forget the Rainbow Ranch. You know, Frieda dear, that the alfalfa clover is violet and not pink and white like the clover in the east.”

But the poem could not be further unraveled because Mr. Drummond had now to tear himself away in order to catch his train back to New York. Hurrying out into the hall, with the three ranch girls close behind him, he suddenly came to an abrupt stop. He had nearly run into a young woman, who also stood still, staring at him with reproachful blue eyes and a haughtily held head.

“Peter, that is, Mr. Drummond, how could you come down here when I told you not to?” the girls heard Jessica Hunt say with the least little nervous tremor in her voice.

Mr. Drummond bowed to her coldly. “I am very sorry, Jessica, Miss Hunt,” he returned coldly, “but I had not the faintest idea of seeing you at Primrose Hall. You do not know it, but the ranch girls are my very dear friends and my visit was solely to them.” Peter was moving majestically away when a hand was laid for the briefest instant on his coat sleeve. This time a humbler voice said, “Forgive me, Peter, I might have known you would never trouble to come to see me again.”

That evening as the ranch girls were dressing for dinner Jean poked her head in Olive’s room. “Olive Ralston, has it ever occurred to you that Peter Drummond may have recommended Primrose Hall to us because a certain young woman named Jessica Hunt taught here? Men folks is deep, child, powerful deep, but as the book says, ‘we shall see what we shall see.’ I wonder, though, why girls and men can’t fall in love and get married without such a lot of fussing and misunderstanding. Think how Ruth is treating poor Jim! When I fall in love I am not going to be so silly and tiresome. I am just going to say yes and thank you too and let’s get married next week.” Jean’s face was very serious for the moment and also very bewitching.

But Olive answered her with the voice of prophecy. “Jean Bruce, you will have the hardest time of us all in making up your mind when you are in love.”

CHAPTER VI
HER TEMPTATION

Face to face with her first serious temptation stood Jean Bruce. Always beyond anything else had she desired to be popular, even in the old days at the ranch when the only society in which she had a part was composed of the few neighbors in riding distance of the Lodge. But here at Primrose Hall was her first real opportunity to gratify her heart’s desire, and would she for the sake of another be compelled to give it up? For how could she accept the honor that might be bestowed upon her of being chosen for Junior class president without turning traitor to Olive. After her friends’ treatment of Olive in front of the “Theta” house on the afternoon of Peter Drummond’s visit, Jean could no longer shut her eyes to Olive’s unpopularity. What was the cause of it? Try as she might she could not find out, yet the prejudice was certainly deeper than any one could suppose. Suspecting Winifred Graham to be at the bottom of the mischief, Jean kept a close watch upon her, but if she had circulated any story against Olive no one would confess it. “Miss Ralston is so shy and queer, her appearance is so odd, I do not think she enjoys being with other girls,” these evasions of the truth were all Jean could get hold of. But in the meantime there was no doubt that Olive’s classmates absolutely refused to have her in either of the two sororities and that this insult was almost unprecedented in the history of Primrose Hall. Of course, Jean might have appealed to Miss Winthrop or one of the other teachers, asking that their influence be exerted in Olive’s behalf, but this for Olive’s own sake she was unwilling to do. For even if Olive should be forced into one of the sororities, how would it change her classmates’ attitude toward her? Would it not make them more unkind than ever? No, there were only two courses open to Jean, either she must join the sorority she had chosen without any question of Olive’s being a member or else she must decline to be admitted herself until such time as the girls should come to their senses and voluntarily desire the election of them both.

Of course, if membership in one or the other of the two sororities had been Jean’s only dilemma there had been small excuse for her hesitation. But a larger issue was at stake. Unless she became a member of a sorority and as one of its leaders could influence new girls to her cause, she might lose the Junior presidency and Winifred Graham, the head of the Kappa organization, would surely be chosen in her stead.

Jean had won her way to her present popularity in a very charming fashion, just by the power of her own personality, which is after all the greatest force in the world. She had no prominent family connections, as so many of the Primrose Hall girls had, and she continued to act as though she had no money except what was necessary for very simple requirements. Indeed, she behaved as she must have done had the ranch girls come east to boarding school before the discovery of the gold mine of Rainbow Creek. But it was a hard fight and many times the young girl longed to break faith with herself.

Before setting out on their journey, after a careful reading of the Primrose Hall catalogue, Ruth Drew had ordered the three ranch girls’ school outfits, but now these clothes seemed so simple and ordinary that at least two of the girls hated the wearing of them.

Each one of them had several pretty school dresses of light weight flannel and serge, two simple silks for afternoon entertainments and dinner use and a single party dress for the monthly dances which were a feature of Primrose Hall school life. Their underclothes were plentiful but plain. Indeed, until Jean saw her friend Margaret Belknap’s lingerie, she had supposed that only brides, and very wealthy ones at that, could have such possessions. Just think of a single item of a dozen hand-made nightgowns at fifteen dollars apiece in a school girl’s outfit; and yet these were among Margaret’s clothes. Jean openly expressed her wonder and yet managed quietly to refuse to receive a gift of two of them without hurting her new friend’s feelings.

To a girl brought up in the conventional and moneyed atmosphere that Margaret Belknap had been, Jean was a revelation. She seemed not to know the meaning of snobbery, not to care who people were so long as she liked what they were. Her manners were as charming to one person as to another and her interest as sincere. Margaret had already asked Jean to visit her in her home in New York during the Christmas holidays, as she longed to introduce her to her own family in order that they might lose their prejudice against western girls. But more especially Margaret desired to bring her Harvard College brother, Cecil, and Jean together so as to find out what they would think of one another. She was only awaiting the first opportunity. In the meantime, although Jean would not accept other gifts from her wealthy friend, she could not refuse the flowers Margaret so constantly sent her. Indeed, she went about school so much of the time with a pink carnation tucked in her hair that she soon became known as “the pink carnation girl.”

One of Jean’s greatest self-denials was not being able to send flowers to Margaret in return, but in order to retain her masquerade of poverty, most of the time she had to refrain. Only now and then she did relieve her feelings by presenting Margaret a bunch of Violets or roses regardless of cost. And occasionally a box of roses or chrysanthemums would find their way into the room of a teacher who had been especially kind to Olive, Frieda or her.

With Olive there was apparently no self-denial in failing to spread abroad the news of their wealth and in spending no pocket money, but with Frieda the case was very different. It is quite certain that Jean would never have had her way with Frieda except by appealing directly to Jack for advice and assistance. When the letter from Jack came begging her little sister to keep the secret of their wealth and to agree to Jean’s plan, Frieda’s rebellion had weakened. Not that she saw any sense in her sacrifice or was in the least reconciled to it, but simply because under the circumstances, while Jack was still so ill, she could refuse her nothing. And this self-restraint was particularly hard on both the ranch girls, because never before in their lives had they had any money of their own to spend and now Jack was sending each one of them fifty dollars a month for pin money. Think of the fortune of it, if you have had only one-tenth of that amount per month for your own use before!

And yet so far only once in all the weeks had Frieda yielded to temptation. Going up to New York one Saturday for her first visit to the grand opera, she had drifted into a big department store with half a dozen of the other school girls and their chaperon in order to buy herself a pair of gloves.

Late that same afternoon Jean and Olive, who happened at the time to be dressing for dinner, received a shock. An elegant young woman, arrayed in a dark blue velvet coat and a hat encircled with a large, lighter-blue feather, entering Jean’s room, dropped exhausted on the bed. A cry brought Olive to the scene, but either because Frieda looked too pretty in her new clothes to scold, or because she pretended to be ill from fatigue, no word of reproach was spoken to her, not even when a pale blue silk followed next morning by the early express and twenty-five dollars had to be borrowed from Olive and Jean to pay for it.

Possibly both of the older girls were secretly pleased at Frieda’s extravagance, because, while saving money is a virtuous act, it certainly is a very dull one. And while Olive was storing her income away in a lock box, wondering if it were possible to return it some day in a gift for Jack, Jean was also hoarding hers in the same fashion, but intending finally to spend it all in one grand splurge.

While Jean often regretted having taken the vow of poverty at Primrose Hall, she was always convinced of its wisdom. That there could be so much talk and thought of money as she had lately heard among the set of girls of whom Winifred Graham was leader, was repellant to her and, as Jean already had developed strong class feeling, one of her chief reasons for desiring to be elected Junior class president was in order to prove that this snobbish set was not really in control of Primrose Hall. Would Ruth and Jack and Jim Colter, the overseer of their ranch, who had always said money would be the ruination of Jean, not feel proud of her if they could hear that she won out in her battle without its help. And yet what would they think of her if she turned her back on Olive? Surely if Jean had not been so harassed and torn between the twin enemies, ambition and love, she would hardly have accused Olive of being the cause of her own unpopularity and certainly not at so unpropitious an hour as she chose. But the time for Jean to make up her mind one way or another was drawing close at hand and so far Olive had no idea of her friend’s struggle, naturally supposing that Jean had already entered the “Theta” society without mentioning it to her in order to spare her pride.

Monthly dances were an institution at Primrose Hall and it was now the evening of the first one of them. Of course, dances at girls’ boarding schools are not unusual, but the dances at Primrose Hall were, for Miss Winthrop allowed young men to be present at them. Her guests were brothers and cousins of her students or else intimate friends, carefully introduced by the girls’ parents. Miss Winthrop regarded Primrose Hall as a training school for the larger social world and desired her students to learn to accept an acquaintance with young men as simply and naturally as they did the same acquaintance with girls. If young girls and boys never saw or spoke to one another during the years of their school life, it was Miss Winthrop’s idea that they developed false notions in regard to one another and false attitudes. Therefore, although no one could be more severe than the principal of Primrose Hall toward any shadow of flirtation, she was entirely reasonable toward a simple friendship. It was because most of her girls had respected Miss Winthrop’s judgment in this matter that her monthly dances, at first much criticized, had since become a great success. Watching her students and their friends together, the older woman could often give her students the help and advice they needed in their first knowledge of young men. So when Olive sent down an imploring message asking to be excused from attendance at these monthly dances, Miss Winthrop had positively refused her request. No excuse save illness was ever accepted from either the Junior or Senior girls.

It was a quarter before eight o’clock and the dance was to begin at eight that evening, when Olive, already dressed, strolled slowly into Jean’s and Frieda’s room, pretending that she wished to assist them, but really longing for some word of sympathy or encouragement to help her in overcoming her shyness.

Frieda had slipped across the hall to show herself in her new blue gown to the Johnson sisters, therefore Jean was alone. At the very instant of Olive’s entrance she was thinking of her with a good deal of annoyance and uncertainty and now the very fact that Olive looked so charming in a pale-green crepe dress made her crosser than ever. When Olive was so pretty how could the school girls fail to like her?

But Olive immediately on entering the room and entirely unconscious of Jean’s anger, stood silent for a moment lost in admiration of her friend’s appearance. In truth, to-night Jean was “a pink carnation girl,” for Margaret Belknap had sent her a great box of the deep rose-colored variety and she wore a wreath of them in her hair. Quite by accident her frock happened to be of the same color and the rose was particularly becoming to her healthy pallor and the dark brown of her hair, while to-night the excitement of attending her first school dance made Jean’s brown eyes sparkle and her lips a deep crimson.

“I do wish Ruth could see you to-night,” Olive said wistfully, “for I think she has already cared more for you than even for Frieda or Jack.”

“And not for you at all, Olive, I suppose,” Jean answered ungraciously. “I do wish you would get over the habit of depreciating yourself. Didn’t Miss Winthrop say the other day that we generally got what we expected in this world and if you don’t expect people to like you and are too shy and proud to let them, why how can they be nice to you?”

Olive colored, but did not reply at once.

“I do wish Jack were here,” Jean continued, “for she would have some influence with you and not let you be so pokey and unfriendly. I am sure I have tried in vain to stir you up and now I think I’ll write Jack and Ruth how you are behaving. Really, you are spoiling Frieda’s and my good times at school by being so stiff and touchy.” And Jean, knowing that Olive did not yet understand how her failure to be invited into either sorority was influencing her chance for the class election, yet had the grace to turn her face away.

For Olive had grown white. “Please don’t write to Jack or Ruth, Jean,” she asked quietly, “I do not wish them to know I am not a success at school and if you tell them that no one here likes me they will then know that I am unhappy and will be worried, and Jack must not have any worry now. It isn’t that I don’t try to make the girls like me. You are mistaken if you think I don’t try; but oh, what is the matter with me, Jean, that makes me so unpopular?”

In an instant Jean’s arms were about Olive and she was kissing her warmly. “Don’t be a goose, dear, there is nothing the matter with you and you are not unpopular really; it is just some horrid, silly mistake. Now promise me that to-night you won’t be frightened and you will be friendly with everybody.” In this instant Jean made up her mind that in some unexplainable way Olive must be standing in her own light or else her classmates must see how charming she was.

Olive promised with a quaking heart, knowing that many eyes would soon be upon her to-night, including Miss Winthrop’s, who would be noticing her unpopularity. And would she know a single guest at the dance?

Frieda and Mollie Johnson had already disappeared, so that Jean and Olive went down to the big reception rooms together, holding each other’s hands like little girls.

CHAPTER VII
CINDERELLA

To Miss Katherine Winthrop’s credit it must be stated that she desired her students at Primrose Hall to grow into something more useful than mere society women. Her ambition was to have them fill many important positions in the modern world now offering such big opportunities to clever women. Miss Winthrop was herself an unusually clever woman, cold perhaps and not sympathetic with most of her girls, but just always and interested in their welfare. But then none of her girls knew the story of her youth nor realized that the last life she had ever expected for herself in her rich and brilliant girlhood was that of a mistress of a fashionable boarding school. Years before, Katherine Winthrop had been the belle and beauty of the countryside, a toast in New York City and in the homes of the old Dutch and English families along the Hudson River, until she had let her pride spoil the one romance of her life. By and by, when her father died and her family fortune disappeared, she had then opened up her old home as a girls’ boarding school and her aristocratic connections and old name immediately made Primrose Hall both fashionable and popular, until now its mere name lent its students an assured social prestige. Nevertheless, Miss Winthrop wished her school to be something more than fashionable. Indeed, this thought had been in her mind when she had chosen the ranch girls for her pupils from among a list of fifty or more applicants whom she had been obliged to refuse. There was little in the life of her school which she did not see and understand, and now her hope was that Jean and Olive and Frieda, with their freedom from snobbery, their simplicity and broader way of looking at things, would bring the element most needed into their mere money-loving and conventional eastern atmosphere. Though no one had mentioned it to her, she had already observed Jean’s great popularity with her classmates, Frieda’s good time among the younger girls and Olive’s failure to make friends. What was the trouble with this third ranch girl?

Although Miss Winthrop had been particularly busy for the past month in getting her school into good working order, she had not forgotten the peculiar emotion that Olive had awakened in her at their first meeting. Because the child was unusual in her manner and appearance was scarcely a sufficient reason for the universal prejudice against her, and to-night, at the first dance of the school season, Miss Winthrop had determined to watch Olive closely and find out for herself wherein lay the difficulty. Jessica Hunt was receiving with Miss Winthrop to-night and had also wondered how Olive would stand the ordeal of their first evening entertainment. For the dances at Primrose Hall were not informal, it being a part of the principal’s idea that they should train her girls for social life in any part of the world where in later years circumstances might chance to take them.

Miss Winthrop, her teachers and students, always appeared in full evening dress at these entertainments, and this evening Miss Winthrop wore a plain black velvet gown with a small diamond star at her throat, a piece of jewelry for which she had a peculiar affection. Jessica Hunt, who was standing next her, was in pure white, so that her blue eyes and the bronze-gold of her hair (so like Jack’s, Olive had thought) made a striking contrast with the darker, sterner beauty of the older woman. Though there were a dozen or more of the Primrose Hall girls grouped about the two women when Jean and Olive entered the reception room together, both of them immediately saw and watched them as they came slowly forward.

The eyes of Jean, the flush and sparkle of her, spoke of her anticipation of unutterable delights. Yet who should know, as she moved through the room with an expression of fine unconsciousness, that this was the first really formal party she had ever attended in her life. Neither her blush nor her dimple betrayed her, although she was perfectly aware that a number of youths in long-tailed coats and black trousers, wearing immaculate white gloves and ties, had stopped talking for several moments to their girl friends in order to glance at Olive and at her. She even saw, without appearing to lift her lids, that a tall, blonde fellow standing near her friend, Margaret Belknap, was deliberately staring at her through a pair of eyeglasses. And at once Jean decided that the young man was extremely ugly in spite of his fashionable clothes and therefore not to be compared to Ralph Merrit or other simple western fellows whom she had known in the past.

Perhaps five minutes were required for this list of Jean’s passing observations in her forward progress toward Miss Winthrop, and yet in the same length of time Olive, who was close beside her, had seen nothing “but a sea of unknown faces.” Even her school companions to-night in their frocks of silk and lace looked unfamiliar. And yet somehow, with Jean’s assistance, she also managed to arrive in front of Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt and to pay her respects to them. Then, still sticking close to Jean, she was soon borne off for a short distance and there surrounded by a group of Jean’s girl friends.

Half a dozen or more of them, Gerry Ferrows and Margaret Belknap in the number, had come up with their cousins, brothers and friends to meet Jean Bruce and to fill up her dance card. They were, of course, also introduced to Olive, but as she did not speak, no one noticed her particularly and no one invited her to dance. Jean had not intended to desert Olive, but when the music of the first waltz began she forgot her and marched off with an enthusiastic partner, who had asked Gerry Ferrows to introduce him to the most fascinating girl in the room, and Gerry had unhesitatingly chosen Jean.

There were two or three other girls and young men standing near Olive when Jean had turned away, but a few seconds later and she was entirely alone.

Is there greater anguish than for a shy girl unaccustomed to society to find herself solitary in a crowded ballroom? At first Olive felt desperate, knowing that her cheeks were crimson with shame and fearing that her eyes were filling with tears. Then looking about her she soon discovered a group of palms in a corner of the room not far away and guessed that she could find shelter behind them. Slipping across she came upon a small sofa hidden behind the evergreens, and with a little sigh of thanksgiving sank down upon it. Soon after Olive began to grow serene, for from her retreat she could watch the dancers and see what a good time Jean and Frieda were having without being seen herself. Once she almost laughed aloud as Frieda waltzed by her hiding place—Frieda, who had been a fat, little girl with long plaits down her back just a few weeks ago, now attired in a blue silk and lace, was whirling about on the arm of a long-legged boy who had such a small nose and ridiculous quantity of blonde curls that he might almost have been Frieda’s twin brother. Five minutes later Olive decided that Jean was the belle of the evening and that she would write the news to Jack to-morrow, for apparently every young man in the ballroom was wishing to dance with her. Even the supercilious fellow with the eyeglasses, whom Olive recognized as Margaret Belknap’s much-talked-of Harvard brother, could be seen dancing attendance on Jean.

Twenty minutes, half an hour must have passed by in this fashion until Olive felt perfectly safe in her green retreat, when unexpectedly a hand was laid upon her shoulder and a voice said sternly, “What in the world, child, are you doing hiding yourself in here? When I said you could not stay up in your room to-night it was because I desired you to take part in the dancing; there really isn’t much difference between your being concealed up there or here.”

And then to Olive’s discouragement an absurd catch in her breath made her unable to answer at once.

Olive’s retreat behind the palms had not been unnoticed as she had thought, for both Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt had seen first her embarrassment at being left alone and next her withdrawal. In much the same fashion that Jack would have followed, Jessica had wished to rush off at once to comfort Olive, but Miss Winthrop had held her back.

“What is the difficulty about this girl, Jessica, what makes her so unpopular?” she had asked when every one else was out of hearing. “I wish you would tell me if you know any explanation for it.”

But Jessica had only been able to shake her head, answering, “I can’t for the life of me understand. There are a good many little things that Olive does not seem to know, and yet, as she studies very hard, I believe she will soon be one of the honor girls in my class. I have a friend in New York, or an acquaintance rather,” and here Jessica blushed unaccountably, “who seems to know the ranch girls very well. Perhaps I had best ask him if there is anything unusual about Olive.”

But the older woman had interrupted, “No, I had rather you would ask no questions, at least not now please, Jessica, for I have heard at least a part of the girl’s history, and yet I believe the real truth is not known to any one and perhaps never will be. It may be happier for Olive if it never is found out, but I wish we could teach her not to be so sensitive.” And then when the opportunity arrived Miss Winthrop had moved across the room to where Olive was in hiding. As the girl’s startled brown eyes were upturned to hers Miss Winthrop, who was not poetic, yet thought that her pupil in her pale green dress with her queer pointed chin and her air of mystery, somehow suggested a girl from some old fairy legend of the sea. And she wondered why the girls and young men in the ballroom had not also seen Olive’s unusual beauty, forgetting that young people seldom admire what is out of the ordinary.

Some impulse after her first speech to Olive made the older woman quickly put out her hand, clasping Olive’s slender brown fingers in hers. “Don’t be afraid of me,” she said in a voice that was gentler than usual, “for I understand it is timidity that is making you hide yourself. Don’t you think though that you would enjoy dancing?”

Olive’s face was suddenly aglow. “I should love it,” she returned, forgetting for the instant her shyness, “only no one has invited me.” Then as her teacher suddenly rose to her feet, as though intending to find her a partner, with a sudden accession of dignity and fearlessness Olive drew her down again. “Please don’t ask anyone to dance with me, Miss Winthrop,” she begged; “if you will sit by me for a little while I am sure it will be delightful just watching the others.”

While the woman and girl were quietly gazing at the dancers, Miss Winthrop happened to notice a silver chain with a cross at the end of it, which Olive was wearing around her throat. Leaning over she took the cross in her hand. “This is an odd piece of jewelry, child, and must be very old; it is so heavy that I wonder if there is anything concealed inside it.”

Olive shook her head. “No, that is, I don’t know anything about it, except that I hope it once belonged to my mother,” she replied. For some strange reason this shy girl was speaking of her mother to a comparative stranger, when she rarely had spoken the name even to her best beloved friend, Jacqueline Ralston.

But before Miss Winthrop had time to reply a new voice startled both of them. “Why, Olive Ralston,” it exclaimed, “what do you mean by hiding yourself away with Miss Winthrop when I have been searching the house over for you.”

Turning around, to her intense surprise, Olive now beheld Donald Harmon standing near them, the young fellow whose father had rented the Rainbow Ranch from the Ralston girls the summer before and whose sister had been responsible for Jack Ralston’s fall over the cliff.

“I wonder why you would not tell Olive that I was to be one of your guests to-night, Miss Winthrop,” he continued, “and that my aunt is your old friend and lives near Primrose Hall.”

While Miss Winthrop was laughing and protesting that she had no idea that Olive and Donald could know each other, Donald was trying to persuade Olive out on the ballroom floor for her first dance with him. By accident it happened to be a Spanish waltz and Olive had not danced it before, but she had been watching the other girls. Donald was an excellent partner and in five minutes she might have been dancing it all her life.

Now dancing with Olive and with Jean was quite a different art, although both of the girls were beautiful dancers. Jean was gay and vivacious, full of grace and activity, keeping excellent time to the music, but Olive seemed to move like a flower that is swayed by the wind, hardly conscious of what she was dancing or how she was dancing it and yet yielding her body to every note of the music and movement of her partner.

By and by, as Olive and Donald continued their dancing, many of the others stopped and at once the young men demanded to be told who Olive was and why she had been hidden away from their sight until now? Whatever replies the girls may have made to these questions, they did not apparently affect their questioners, for from the time of her first dance until the close of the evening Olive no longer lacked for partners. She did not talk very much, but her eyes shone and her cheeks grew crimson with pleasure and now and then her low laugh rang out, and always she could dance. What did conversation at a ball amount to anyhow when movement was the thing, and this stranger girl could dance like a fairy princess just awakened from a long enchantment?

Donald Harmon grew sorry later in the evening that he had ever brought Olive forth from her retreat, but just before midnight, when Primrose Hall parties must always come to an end, he did manage to get her away for a moment out on the veranda, where chairs were placed so that the young people could rest and talk.

CHAPTER VIII
SHADOWS BEFORE

The veranda was prettily lighted with Japanese lanterns and shaded electric lights and Donald found chairs for Olive and himself in a corner where they could see the dancers and yet not be interrupted, for he wished to talk to her alone for a few moments, never having forgotten the impression she had made upon him at their first meeting, nor the peculiar likeness which he still saw in her to his mother.

But though Olive could not forget the Harmons, she had never really liked them nor could she forgive the hurt which Elizabeth had innocently brought upon her beloved Jack. And yet, as she knew that this attitude on her part was hardly fair, she now turned to Donald. “I hope your mother and Elizabeth are quite well,” she inquired with unconscious coldness.

Donald felt the coldness, but answered at once. “Yes, they are both unusually well these days, and if Beth could only hear that your friend Miss Ralston was going to get quite well, why she would brace up a lot. But she worries about her a great deal, so she and my mother have just come out here to Tarrydale for a short visit to my aunt. I got away from college for a few days to be with them and to see you ranch girls again,” he ended honestly.

“You are very kind,” Olive murmured, watching the passers-by for a glimpse of Jean or Frieda.

“Elizabeth and mother wish you to come over very soon and have tea with them,” the young man urged, appearing not to notice his companion’s lack of interest. “My aunt’s place is very near Primrose Hall, so you can easily walk over.”

Olive shook her head. “I don’t believe Miss Winthrop would care to have us go about the neighborhood making visits,” she announced, glad of what seemed to her a reasonable excuse.

Donald laughed, although he did feel somewhat hurt by Olive’s manner. “Don’t try to get out of coming to see us for any such cause, Miss Olive,” he protested, “for Miss Winthrop is one of my aunt’s dearest friends and she and my mother have known one another since they were girls. Why, my aunt is one of the shareholders in this school and is always offering prizes to the girls, a Shakespeare prize and perhaps some others that I don’t know about. You see, I was going to ask Miss Winthrop to bring you and Miss Bruce and Frieda over to us, as she always comes to see my aunt every week, now that Aunt Agatha has grown too old and too cranky to leave her place.”

Olive was essentially gentle in her disposition and knowing that Donald had always been their friend in all family difficulties, she was sorry to have seemed unkind. “I’ll tell Jean and Frieda,” she replied with more enthusiasm, “and if Miss Winthrop is willing, why of course we will be happy to come. You are staying at ‘The Towers,’ aren’t you, the white house at the end of the woods with a tower at the top of it and queer gabled windows and two absurd dogs on either side the front door?”

The young man nodded. “You have seen the place, haven’t you? We are dreadfully ashamed of those dogs now, but we used to love them as children; I suppose a good many generations of the children in our family have had glorious rides on their backs.” Olive frowned, a wave of color sweeping over her face which even in the glow of the artificial lights Donald was able to see. “I wonder,” she said, “about that tower room. Isn’t it very big, with guns and swords and things around the walls, and books, and a man in armor standing in one corner?”

Donald stared, as Olive’s face went suddenly white again. “I am sorry I made such a silly speech. Of course your tower room isn’t like that. I think I must just have read of some such a room at the top of a house somewhere that looks like yours. Only I want to ask you a few questions.”

At this instant a pair of hands were suddenly clasped over Olive’s eyes and a voice asked:

“Oh, tell me, lady, fair and blind,

Whose hands about thee are entwined?”

The voice there was little difficulty in recognizing, for Jean had come up quietly behind Olive and Donald with Cecil Belknap and with Gerry Ferrows and one of her friends. Jean promptly began a conversation with Donald; Gerry and her friend, after being properly introduced to the others, continued their discussion, so there was nothing for poor Olive to do but to try to talk to Cecil.

Rather more sure of counting on Jean’s interest in his invitation than Olive’s, Donald Harmon had promptly repeated his request to her, so that for five minutes or more they were deep in questions and answers, Jean laughingly reproaching Donald for not having asked her to dance all evening, while he assured her that in vain had he tried to break through the wall of her admirers. When a truce was finally declared Jean smilingly accepted his invitation to tea and then turning stood for a moment with her eyes dancing as she watched Olive’s struggle to keep up a conversation with Cecil Belknap. The subject of the weather had evidently been exhausted, also the beauty of the moon even now peeping over one of the ridges of the Sleepy Hollow hills, and still Olive was struggling bravely on without the least assistance from her superior companion, who merely stared at her without volunteering a single remark.

Jean’s laugh rang out mischievously. “I do ask your pardon, Olive, for having left you to talk to Mr. Belknap so long. Just think,” she turned to look up at the young man with her most demure expression, “I used to think the sphinx a woman, but now I am entirely convinced that he or she is a Harvard student, for surely nothing else could be so equally silent and inscrutable.”

Cecil Belknap’s glasses slid off his nose. Could it be that this small ranch girl, whom he had been trying to be nice to all evening on account of his sister’s affection for her, was actually poking fun at him, a Harvard Senior and heir to half a million dollars? The thing was impossible! Had she not realized that his mere presence near her had added to her social distinction all evening? Could it be that she had also expected him to chatter with her like any ordinary schoolboy? Winifred Graham would have had no such ridiculous ideas and Cecil now hoped it was not too late to reduce Jean to a proper state of humility.

However, Jean at this moment, asking pardon for her rudeness, drew Olive aside. “Olive,” she whispered in her friend’s ear in rather anxious and annoyed tones, “have you seen anything of Frieda Ralston for the past hour? I told that young lady to come and speak to one or the other of us every half hour all this evening and she has never been near me a single time. Has she spoken to you?”

Olive laughed, shaking her head. “No, Frieda has never spoken to me,” she replied, “but once in dancing by me she did deign to smile as though we had met somewhere before. Isn’t she funny?”

But Jean was not amused. “She’s perfectly ridiculous with her grown-up airs and I wish Ruth were here to send her upstairs to bed. You know it is nearly twelve o’clock, Olive, and our dance will be over at exactly twelve and then Miss Winthrop expects each one of us to come up and personally say good-night to her. Suppose Frieda and that Johnson child should not be around, for I can’t find Mollie either. I wonder if they have gone off anywhere with that long-legged grasshopper of a boy?”

“You take Frieda too seriously, Jean,” Olive murmured, “she is sure to be in the parlor and will say good-night with the rest of us. You see, we are so used to thinking of her as a baby that we can’t get used to her independence.”

But the two ranch girls could not continue indefinitely to talk of family matters with strangers waiting near them. Anyhow, just at this moment the big clock in the hall, the same clock that Olive had listened to so long on that first night at Primrose Hall, now slowly began to boom forth the hour of midnight and at the same moment the music began to play the farewell strains of the “Home, Sweet Home” waltz.

Cecil Belknap straightway offered his arm to Olive, not that he desired her as a partner, but that he wished to punish Jean. A moment later Gerry and her friend entered the ballroom, so that naturally Donald and Jean were compelled to have this last dance together. Of course Donald would have preferred Olive, but any ranch girl was sure of being second best. However, Donald need not have worried over Jean’s being forced upon him, for no sooner had they come into the parlor with the other dancers, than two young fellows, seizing hold of Jean, declared she had promised the “Home, Sweet Home” waltz to both of them, and almost forcibly bore her away to divide the dance between them.

So with nothing better left to do, Donald stood for a moment watching Olive and Cecil Belknap. They were having a conspicuously sad time, for Cecil could not dance and so Olive was miserable. Rushing to the rescue, Donald bore his first partner away and now Cecil had the desire of his heart. For Jean’s benefit he spent the closing moments of the evening in the society of her rival, Winifred Graham. However, the young man would have been better satisfied could he have known whether or not the western girl noticed his desertion. His sister had asked him to be nice to Jean in order that the mere influence of his presence near her might induce her classmates to vote for her, and yet she had not appeared particularly grateful. It is the old story with a girl or a woman. Strange, but she never seems to care for a man’s attention when he makes a martyr of himself for her sake!

However, in these last few minutes of the dance the older ranch girls were concerned only with thoughts of Frieda. Nowhere about the great room could she be seen, not even after the young men guests had gone away and the girls had formed in line to say good-night to Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt. Olive and Jean were separated by several students and yet the same questions traveled from one face to the other. “Suppose Miss Winthrop asks us what has become of Frieda, what must we say, and what will she do if, after trusting Frieda and Mollie, they have gotten into some kind of mischief?”

Two steps at a time, the two girls, when their own good-nights had been said and no questions asked, rushed upstairs to their bedrooms. But outside Jean’s door Olive suddenly stopped and laughed. “Frieda is such a baby, she has only gone upstairs to bed. Of course she has said good-night long ago.”

Cautiously they thrust open the door; a dim light was burning inside the room and a maid had turned down Frieda’s bed, but that young lady was not in it, neither was there any sign of her presence about the place.

Jean slipped across the hall to the Johnson girls’ room. “Lucy says Mollie hasn’t come upstairs either,” she reported immediately, “so what on earth shall we do? Miss Sterne has charge of our floor to-night and will be around in a few minutes to see that we are ready for bed. Then if Frieda isn’t here, won’t she just get it?” Jean was almost in tears from nervousness and vexation, having always tried to keep Frieda a little bit in order. Now that Frieda no longer paid any attention to her, she was both angry and frightened.

“I will slip downstairs and look for her,” Olive suggested faintly, knowing that she could never get downstairs and back again before Miss Sterne’s appearance and feeling that the vanishment of two girls might be even more conspicuous and draw greater wrath down upon their heads than the disappearance of one.

“Miss Winthrop or one of the other teachers would surely see you prowling around and would have to know the reason why, so that wouldn’t help the present situation,” Jean answered. “Surely Frieda will be here in a few minutes.” All up and down the hall the opening and shutting of bedroom doors could now be heard and the voices of the other girls bidding Miss Sterne and each other good-night.

CHAPTER IX
FRIEDA’S MISTAKE

Jean had on her blanket wrapper and had taken down her hair, but Olive, still fully dressed, kept darting from her own bedroom to Jean’s and Frieda’s, peering out both doors for a sign of the wanderer.

Finally Jean turned to her. “Come on, Olive, I don’t care in the least what Miss Winthrop does to Frieda when she finds out how she has behaved, but you and I must go to look for her.”

Jean and Olive were half-way out in the hall, where the lights were now being turned low, when a figure brushed by them. “Please let me get into my own room,” a voice said peevishly, and nothing loath, the three figures returned inside the room. “Begin undressing at once, Frieda Ralston,” Jean commanded, “and don’t say one word in explanation or excuse until Rebecca Sterne has gone by our room, for it is just barely possible that she may not have seen you sneaking along the hall.”

Jean spoke in tones of the utmost severity and even Olive gazed upon the youngest ranch girl with an expression of disapproval.

The preceptress’s knock came at this very instant.

“Whatever are you doing in your ball gown, Frieda?” Miss Sterne inquired, with her head on one side, gazing about through her large horn spectacles that Olive had so promptly disliked, like a wise old owl.

“And you, Miss Ralston, why aren’t you in your own room?” she continued, “you know you are not expected to enter another girl’s sleeping apartment after the hour for retiring.”

Without replying Olive promptly slipped back into her own room and rapidly began making ready for bed, not returning to talk to Jean or to Frieda even when Miss Sterne’s retreating footsteps were far out of hearing.

And only once in the next ten minutes did she understand what the other two ranch girls were saying and then it was Jean’s tones that were the more distinct.

Frieda was quietly slipping off a pale blue silk stocking and slipper, keeping her eyes fastened conscientiously on the floor, when Jean, now in her night gown, planted herself before her. “Where have you been all this time, Frieda Ralston, and why didn’t you and Mollie Johnson say good-night to Miss Winthrop when the rest of us did?”

Frieda looked up, her eyes, almost the color of her blue stockings, swimming in tears. “I was in the back hall, Jean, and I didn’t dream of its being so late. Do you think Miss Winthrop noticed?” the culprit faltered.

Jean cruelly bowed her head. “What is there that goes on in this school, Frieda, that escapes Miss Winthrop?” she inquired. “I suppose you will be able to explain to her in the morning why you were in the back hall instead of in the parlor with her guests, as you never seem to care to tell anything to Olive or to me any more. Please hurry to bed.”

Frieda was very angry at Jean’s superior air, but her own heart was quaking and her lips trembling, so that she could not answer back in the cool fashion she desired. “Mollie Johnson was with me,” she managed to say, “and two boys.”

Jean might have been the late Empress Dowager of China or the present Czarina of Russia, so majestic was her manner as she sat up in bed with her arms folded before her.

“I had no idea you were alone, Frieda,” she said firmly, “but will you please tell me why you went to the back hall when you knew perfectly well that Miss Winthrop was trusting you to behave like a lady and remain in the rooms where she was receiving her guests. I don’t know what Ruth and Jack will say.”

Frieda began to cry softly. “We were so hungry, Jean,” she murmured, struggling to braid her long locks of flaxen hair. “You see, we had only ices and cake for the party, and about eleven o’clock Tom Parker, the boy I was with, said he wished he had a sandwich, and I was just as hungry for one, so we found Mollie and another boy and slipped out of the dining room. Mrs. White, the housekeeper, was up and back in the pantry and she gave us cheese and pie and all sorts of good things.” And now Frieda’s courage returning in a small measure, she turned out the electric lights, hopping into bed. “I am not going to be treated like a criminal, though, Jean Bruce, so I shan’t tell you anything more,” she ended, burying herself under the cover.

So half an hour passed and supposedly the three ranch girls were sound asleep, though in reality the three of them were still wide awake.

Jean and Olive were both worrying over Frieda, not yet understanding the real facts of her escape, and Frieda was longing with all her might for some one to sympathize with her and help her in her scrape, some one who would let her cry herself out.

By and by Olive crept softly from her room to Jean’s bedside. “Jean, has Frieda explained things to you?” she whispered.

Jean sighed. “She said they were hungry, she and Mollie and two boys, and that they went into the pantry and had something to eat, but she didn’t say why they stayed in the back hall afterwards. They couldn’t have kept on eating pickles and cheese for over an hour.” And both girls giggled softly in spite of their worry, for was it not like little greedy baby Frieda to have required extra food just as she was constantly doing on their long trip through the Yellowstone the summer before?

“Well, it all sounds pretty simple, Jean,” Olive comforted, “and I don’t think Miss Winthrop will be very angry when she hears that the pantry was the difficulty, for she knows how good the housekeeper is to all the little girls.”

“It isn’t the pantry that worries me; it’s the back hall.” Jean’s voice became low and impressive, “What do you suppose that Frieda Ralston could have to talk about to a—boy?”

A stifled sob at this moment shook the bed-clothes and both older girls started, guiltily. Reaching over, Olive patted the outside of the blanket.

“Were you talking to the boy, Frieda?” she inquired in a sterner manner than was usual to her, “or were all four of you just sitting around having a jolly time together?” Now that Frieda’s sobs assured the other two girls that she was awake, they were glad enough to be able to go on with her cross-examination.

“I was talking to the boy all by myself,” Frieda’s reply was unhesitating though somewhat choked. “Mollie and the other boy were sitting on a higher step and the servants were around, but no one told us how late it was.”

“Well, what were you talking about that you found so interesting that you could not hear the clock strike twelve, or the ‘Home, Sweet Home’ waltz, or the good-byes being said?” Jean demanded fiercely.

This time Frieda made not the least effort to restrain her sorrow, for the bed fairly shook with her weeping. “We were talking about worms!” she sobbed.

“Worms!” Olive and Jean repeated in chorus, believing that they could not have heard aright.

“Oh, yes, worms and flies,” the culprit continued. “You see, we got to talking about fishing and Tom Parker said he loved it better than most anything he ever did and some summers he goes way up into the Maine woods and fishes in the lakes for trout. He uses flies for bait always, but I told him that we fished with worms in Rainbow Creek and sometimes when it wouldn’t rain for a long time we used to have to dig way down under the ground to find them. I told him too how once I started a fishing worm aquarium and kept all the worms I could dig up in a glass bowl to sell to Jim and the cowboys whenever they wished to go fishing.”

Frieda did not further endeavor to outline her grown-up conversation with her first admirer, feeling too angry and too puzzled to go on for the minute, for her former irate judges were now holding their sides and doing their level best to keep from shrieking with laughter.

“And I was afraid she was talking sentiment instead of fishing worms,” Jean whispered in Olive’s ear.

Around to the other side of the bed Olive went to tuck the covers more closely about Frieda. “Go to sleep, baby, and dream of Jack,” she comforted, “and perhaps Miss Winthrop will never hear of your mistaking the time for saying good-night.”

“And if she does hear, you’ll ask her to forgive me,” Frieda returned sleepily, “for I believe she likes you, Olive, better than most any of the girls. I have seen her looking at you so strangely every now and then.”

In another half minute Frieda was fast asleep, not feeling so penitent over her escapade as the two older ranch girls supposed. But Frieda had always been a good deal spoiled and, as Miss Winthrop had not noticed her failure to say good-night, no further scolding impressed her fault upon her mind. Perhaps this was unfortunate, for it is better that both little girls and big receive their punishment for a fault so soon as the fault is committed, in order not to keep on growing naughtier and naughtier until Fate punishes us for many sins at once.

CHAPTER X
THE HOUSE OF MEMORY

After lunch the day following the dance, as it chanced to be Saturday afternoon, Jean came into the ranch girls’ sitting room looking for Olive and Frieda. She had been playing basketball for the past two hours and in spite of having known nothing of the game on her arrival at school, was already one of its acknowledged champions. But although Jean’s cheeks were glowing and her hair in a tumbled mass above her face, her expression was uncommonly serious and in her hand she held a bundle of letters. One she tossed to Frieda, who was curled up on a sofa nursing a small cold due to her frivolity, and two to Olive, keeping two for herself.

Olive quickly tore open the letter addressed to her in Jack’s handwriting and Frieda followed suit. When Jack had first been taken to the hospital and there compelled to lie always flat on her back, her handwriting had been difficult to read, but now that she had gotten used to this method of writing, her stroke was again as vigorous and characteristic as of old.

Frieda, after reading a few lines, smiled up at the other girls. “Jack says she is getting on very well and we are to see her in a few weeks—perhaps,” she announced.

Olive looked over at Jean. “It is worse than Jack writes, of course, isn’t it?” she asked. “I suppose Ruth has written you, for Jack never tells anything but the best news of herself.”

“There may be an operation or something of the sort later on,” Jean conceded, “Ruth does not say positively, for it may not be for some months yet. Only if the operation does have to take place Jack has demanded that Jim come on from the ranch to New York, leaving Ralph Merrit to look after things at the mine. Jim would come now, but things are in a bit of a tangle. I wonder how Ruth will behave if Jim does come?” And Jean sighed.

An interested expression, crossed Frieda’s face. “Why should she behave in any special way?” she inquired, sitting straight up on the couch to gaze from Olive to Jean.

Quickly the subject of conversation needed to be changed, for Frieda was the only one of the four ranch girls who knew nothing of what had happened at the ranch between Jim Colter, their overseer, and Ruth Drew, their chaperon. What had come between the two lovers only Jack Ralston understood, but Olive and Jean were both perfectly aware that Jim and Ruth had seemed to care a great deal for one another and then some mysterious misunderstanding had suddenly parted them.

“I wonder if old Jack looks very badly,” Jean suggested, knowing this would surely divert Frieda’s attention to one theme. “Sometimes I wish for Jack’s sake that we were all back at Rainbow Lodge, for there she was able to be out in the air a part of the time and now—” The vision of Jack lying helpless at the hospital was too much for the three girls, so that there was a moment of painful silence in the room. Then Jean said more cheerfully after re-reading the latter part of Ruth’s letter: “Jim says that Ralph Merrit is doing perfectly splendid work at the mine and that he is a trump. Do you know I am rather vain of having discovered Ralph that day in the wilderness, considering how well he has turned out; Jim likes him a lot better than he does Frank Kent.”

The young lady on the sofa with the cold had not yet forgiven Jean for last night’s scolding. Now she turned up her small nose a trifle more than usual. “Oh, you just say that because Ralph likes you best and Frank Kent is more fond of Jack,” she answered scornfully. And Jean flushed.

“That is not true, Frieda. Of course it is only natural that Jim should like Ralph better because Ralph is poor and has to make his own way in the world just as Jim has; and Frank Kent, though he is awfully simple and a thorough good fellow, is the son of an English Lord and may have a title himself some day.”

“Then wouldn’t it be splendid if Jack should become an English lady and own country estates and ride to hounds?” Frieda suggested more peacefully, gazing across the room at Frank Kent’s photograph, which ornamented the bookshelf. “I think I should love to be introduced into English society and talk to earls and princes and things,” she ended lamely.

A fine sarcasm curled Jean’s lips, though her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Talk to earls and princes and things about fishing worms, baby?” she queried with studied politeness.

And promptly Frieda, flushing quite up to her ears, hurled a sofa cushion at Jean, which Olive caught, saying gently:

“Please don’t let’s quarrel, children, we never used to at the Lodge. What would Ruth think of us?” And picking up a second letter that Jean had brought to her, she began to read it.

Jean sat penitently down on the sofa trying to kiss Frieda, who resolutely covered up her head. “Come on and get dressed, infant; no, your cold isn’t too bad for you to come. Olive is reading a note of invitation from Mrs. Harmon for us to come over to ‘The Towers’ to have tea and Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt are to go with us.”

But the rôle of invalid was too precious a one and too seldom enjoyed by the youngest Miss Ralston for her to surrender it easily.

“I am too sick, please tell Mrs. Harmon,” she protested resolutely; “only if they have any candy or cake and happen to mention sending me some you might bring it along. And I do wish both you girls would go out for a while, for Mollie is coming to spend the afternoon with me after she finishes her music lesson and we would love to have the sitting room to ourselves.”

“I hope, Olive, that you know when you are not wanted without being actually knocked over by the broadness of the hint,” Jean said, seeing that Olive was hesitating about what she should do. “Come along, it will do us both good to get away and not to sit here thinking about what we can’t help,” she ended.

While both girls were putting on their best afternoon frocks preparatory to starting forth on their visit, in the silence of her own room Olive was trying to persuade herself that her hesitation in going for the call upon the Harmons was because she dreaded to be reminded by the sight of Elizabeth of the old tragedy to Jack. But there was something more than this in her mind, for actually she dreaded entering the big white house which had given her such an uncomfortable sensation the moment her eyes had rested upon it. Yet what connection could she have ever had with an old place like “The Towers,” or any house resembling it? Her impression that she must have seen the house somewhere before was sheer madness, for was it not an old Dutch mansion, perhaps built hundreds of years ago, and certainly wholly unlike any of the ranch houses out West?

Olive resolutely put all the ridiculous ideas that had annoyed her out of her mind and with Jessica Hunt, Miss Winthrop and Jean started gayly forth on their walk. It was about four o’clock in the late November afternoon and instead of following the path through the woods, the little party set out along the lane that led through an exquisite part of the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood. Crossing a little brook they climbed a short hill and from the top of it could see at some distance off the spire of the old Sleepy Hollow church and on the other side the Hudson River with the autumn mists rising above it like breath from its deep hidden lungs.

Jessica and Olive were together, Jean and Miss Winthrop. As Olive was particularly silent, Jessica drew her arm through hers. “This is a land of legends and of dreams about here, dear, and some day I must take you western girls about the country and show you the historic places nearby. Do you know anything about them?” she asked.

But Olive was dreaming or else stupid, for she only shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered, “the country does seem somehow familiar, yet it did not at first. Don’t you believe that all the world, at least the world of outside things, of hills and trees and valleys and water, somehow belongs alike to all of us and once we have seen a landscape and moved about in it, why we are at home. There isn’t any strangeness in nature, there can’t be; it is only people and houses and streets that are odd and unlike and fail to belong to us.”

Donald Harmon met his four guests some yards up the road on their approach to the house. As he was holding a great St. Bernard dog by the collar and as it bounded away from him all of a sudden, nearly upsetting Olive and Jessica in the rapture of its welcome, the little party entered “The Towers” with too much laughter and excitement for Olive to feel any self-consciousness or emotion. Indeed, she quite forgot all of her past foolishness in meeting Mrs. Harmon and Elizabeth again after so many eventful months. Elizabeth was able to walk about the room quite easily and of course her first inquiry was for Jack.

Without a chance for exchanging views, Jean and Olive both decided at once that the drawing room at “The Towers,” in spite of its magnificence, was one of the darkest and most unattractive rooms either of them had ever seen. For everything was very stiff and formal and without life or fragrance. Carved black furniture sat stiffly against the walls, which were hung with old portraits of men and women in high fluted ruffs, with gorgeous embroidered clothes and hard, cold faces. Over in one corner stood a tea table piled with silver and white linen and having a large arm chair near it carved like a throne. And behind this chair was a portrait of a beautiful boy of ten or twelve, who looked a little like Donald Harmon.

“My aunt will be down in a few minutes, Katherine,” Mrs. Harmon had said as soon as her guests were seated. “She has asked us to wait tea for her.” And Jean and Olive both noticed that Mrs. Harmon’s manner was a little constrained and that she kept looking at Olive as though she intended asking her some question, but as the question was never asked, the girls must have been mistaken. However, the conversation in the little company did not become general, for no one except Miss Winthrop seemed to feel at ease, until by and by the tap, tap, tap of a long stick was heard coming along the hall and with a low bow the butler flung open the drawing room door.

Everybody sat up straighter in their high-back chairs; Jean could not forbear a slight wink at Donald, but Olive felt her heart rise up in her throat. Why on earth was the old mistress of “The Towers” so formidable that the entire neighborhood felt an awe of her? Olive was rather sorry that she was competing for one of her prizes offered to the Junior students at Primrose Hall.

“Madame Van Mater,” the butler announced very distinctly and at the name of the owner of the white house, which Olive now heard for the first time since her arrival at Primrose Hall, the young girl caught at the sides of her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. Then when no one was looking at her, smiled at herself and turned her gaze curiously on their ancient hostess.

CHAPTER XI
“SLEEPY HOLLOW, A LAND OF DREAMS”

For the first time in her life she now beheld a lady for whom there is no English expression so good as the French, “a grande dame.”

There was still daylight in Madame Van Mater’s drawing room, but she stood for a moment in the center of her doorway staring with brilliant, hard, black eyes from one guest to the other and slightly inclining her head. Then she walked over to the high, carved chair near the tea table and sat down under the picture of the little boy. Feeble from old age, she was yet of too determined a spirit to accept help from any one, for when Donald tried to slip a cushion under her feet, she calmly motioned it away. Her hair, which was snow white, was piled high on her head by a careful maid; her skin, showing the remorseless touch of age, was yet as delicately powdered and rouged as if she had been an actress about to make her debut, and she was carefully dressed in a gown of deep purple silk with lace at her throat and old amethysts. And yet no art or effort could hide the ravages of age and of sorrow in the face, though the coldness of her air and expression suggested that she would have repelled grief as well as love whenever she was humanly able.

The atmosphere of the old drawing room was not any more cheerful after its hostess had entered. Indeed, no one in the room seemed to be able to speak except Miss Winthrop, for Mrs. Harmon was plainly ill at ease and even Elizabeth had been taught to treat this wealthy old aunt, whose fortune she expected some day to share with her brother, with more respect than she showed to any one else in the world.

Unconsciously the young people, including Jessica Hunt, had huddled close together, solemnly drinking their tea but having little to say to one another.

Finally a cold voice made the five of them jump and Jean was barely able to suppress a giggle. “Donald,” Madame Van Mater said, “bring the girl, whom you tell me you met in the West and who bears so strange a resemblance to your mother, closer to me. I think all resemblances are ridiculous and yet you have made me curious.”

Why on earth should Olive be made the center of all eyes when of all things she most hated it, and yet what else was there for her to do in this instance but to arise and allow Donald to lead her across the room to his aunt? Donald’s eyes begged forgiveness for the old woman’s peremptory manner, and yet he showed no sign of disobedience.

“Turn on the electric light,” Madame Van Mater ordered, for the dusk was creeping into the big room. And under the light, facing her hostess, Olive waited with Mrs. Harmon only a few feet away.

It was unlike this shy, delicate girl on meeting with strangers even to raise her eyes to theirs, and yet she now stared straight at Madame Van Mater with a gaze as fixed and direct as hers and almost as searching and haughty. For Olive’s emotion was immediately one of the deepest antagonism toward this woman, however old she might be, who summoned her as a queen might summon a subject.

Beginning at the girl’s feet, Madame Van Mater surveyed her slowly through a pair of gold-rimmed lorgnettes, her eyes, of course, resting longest on Olive’s face. And was the sigh she drew one of relief as she turned again to Donald and to Mrs. Harmon? “I do not see the least likeness in this girl to any member of my family,” she announced. “Whatever her name may be, her appearance is quite foreign and I should prefer never to have the subject of this resemblance mentioned again.” And nodding her head, the old lady apparently dismissed Olive to her seat.

But Miss Winthrop caught at her pupil’s hand as she passed her drawing her down toward her. “Let me look at you, Olive,” she murmured. “I had not heard of this fancy of Donald’s, but it has seemed to me that I have seen some one a little like you somewhere, I fancied in some old picture.” Then smiling she shook her head. “No, Donald, I can’t say I see any likeness to your mother, and yet, after all, perhaps there is enough of a suggestion of her for you not to be altogether snubbed.”

And now at last Olive was permitted to return to her chair, where she sat down pretending to look out of the window, though all the time she was feeling hot and rebellious at the scene in which she had just been compelled to play an unwilling part. Why, because she was so uncertain of her ancestry, should she be forced to go through these moments that made the fact more bitterly painful to her?

Donald guessed at Olive’s feelings, for though the ranch girls had tried their best to keep her story from the ears of the Harmons during their stay at Rainbow Lodge, a part of it Donald, his sister and mother had learned through Aunt Ellen, through the cowboys on the ranch and through one or two of their closest neighbors. And for this reason the young fellow was perhaps even more interested in this half Indian girl. Now he wished very much to help her escape from the unpleasant situation into which his own idle talk had led her.

Donald turned to Jean and Jessica Hunt. “I wonder if you and Miss Ralston would care to come and look over the old house with me?” he asked “It is so old that it is quite worth seeing and I am sure that Elizabeth will excuse us.”