The Ranch Girls at Boarding School
Date: 2017-12-02T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Schools -- Juvenile fiction; Friendship -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Boarding school students -- Juvenile fiction; Young women -- Social life and customs -- Juvenile fiction; Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.) -- Social life and customs -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: The Ranch Girls at Boarding School

Author: Margaret Vandercook

Illustrator: Hugh A. Bodine

Release date: December 1, 2017 [eBook #56097]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RANCH GIRLS AT BOARDING SCHOOL ***

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.”

Elizabeth did not pretend that she enjoyed the idea of being left with only the older people, but as Jacqueline Ralston was the only one of the ranch girls for whom she deeply cared, she made no objection, particularly as no one waited for her to speak. For Jean fairly bounced from her chair with relief, Jessica Hunt rose immediately and Olive soon after, feeling that she would surely turn to stone if she were obliged to remain another moment in the room with the old mistress of “The Towers.”

Once out in the hall, the party of young people appeared suddenly to have been released from prison. Jean danced a two-step, Jessica clapped her hands softly together and Olive laughed, while Donald straightway plunged head first up the dark mahogany steps. “Do come on upstairs,” he begged, “for there isn’t much time and Miss Hunt knows the house well enough to tell you that it is the tower room where we have the great view that is most interesting. Please save your breath, for we have rather a long climb.”

Immediately after Donald, Jean climbed and then Olive and then Jessica. Of course, the first two flights of stairs were like those in any ordinary house, but the third was a queer spiral resembling the steps in a lighthouse. About midway up these steps Jessica noticed that Olive paused, pressing her hands to her eyes as though to shut out some idea or some vision that assailed her, and that she wavered as though she felt faint.

“What is the matter, Olive, are you ill?” Jessica inquired, knowing that climbing to unexpected heights often has this effect on sensitive persons. And though Olive now shook her head, moving on again, Jessica determined to watch her.

To Jean’s openly expressed surprise the tower room was not a small, closet-like place as she had supposed, but a big, spacious apartment out of which the little gabled windows winked like so many friendly eyes. The room was fitted up as a boy’s room with a bed apparently just ready to be slept in, there was a trapeze at one end and a punching bag, but the bookcases were filled with books of all kinds and for all ages, French, Spanish and German books and plays from the days of the miracle plays down to the English comedies. Olive looked at these books for a long time and then went over to a far corner of the room which seemed to be a small museum, for rusty swords and old pistols were hung on the walls, a shield and a helmet and the complete figure of a knight in armor stood in one corner. Curious why these masculine trophies should interest a girl, and yet for some reason they did interest Olive, for she waited there alone; Jessica, Jean and Donald having gone over to one of the windows were gazing out over the countryside made famous the world over through its history and legend, “Sleepy Hollow, the Land of Dreams.”

Jean beckoned to Olive. “Come over here, dear, if you wish to see the view,” she begged, “for the sun will be going down in the next few minutes.”

And in a moment, taking tight hold of Jean’s hand, Olive also looked out the window. She saw the little brook and a bit of the bridge over which they had lately passed, with the stretch of woodlands to one side and the autumn-colored hills rising in the background. Very quietly she began to speak:

“Not far from the village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley, or rather lap of land, among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.”

These words Olive repeated with her eyes still on the landscape and her lips moving as though she were reciting a verse of poetry long ago forgotten and now brought back to mind by the objects that inspired it.

It was so utterly unlike Olive to be drawing attention to herself by reciting that Jean stared at her in blank amazement, but neither Donald Harmon nor Miss Hunt appeared in the least surprised and after a moment, as though again striking the strings of her memory, the young girl went on: “If ever I should wish for a retreat, whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.” And then her recitation abruptly ended.

“What on earth are you spouting, Olive Ralston?” Jean demanded; “or tell us, please, if you are composing an essay on the spur of the moment to impress your English teacher?”

Jessica laughed. “Ignorant child, not to know what Olive is repeating! I should have taught it you before now, but Olive seems to have gotten ahead of me and learned it first.”

“But what is it?” Jean insisted. “The idea of Olive’s memorizing a thing like that and then waiting for a critical minute to recite it so as to impress her audience. I never should have suspected her!”

But as Olive made no answer to her friend’s teasing, Jessica said in explanation: “Why, Olive has just recited Washington Irving’s description of this countryside, which he gives in his ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’ and when you get back to school, Jean, I advise you to ask Olive to lend you her book.”

Downstairs the little party broke up and on the way back to Primrose Hall, Olive walked close beside Miss Winthrop. At first both the woman and the girl were silent, but as they neared the school Olive spoke suddenly:

“Miss Winthrop, I suppose most everybody in the world knows the feeling of coming to a strange place and all at once thinking that you have been there before, seen the same things or people and even heard the same words said?”

Miss Winthrop nodded, trying to study Olive’s face closely and yet not appearing too deeply interested, although the girl’s expression was both puzzled and intent.

“Why, yes, Olive, it is a very usual experience,” she answered. “No one can understand or explain it very well, but the impression is more apt to come to you when you are young. I can recall once having gone into a ballroom and there having had some one make a perfectly ordinary speech to me and yet I had a sudden sensation almost of faintness, so sure was I that at some past time I had been in the same place, under the same circumstances and heard the same speech, and yet I knew at the time it was impossible.”

“But can one remember actual words that may have been spoken in a certain place? I don’t see how a thing can suddenly pop into one’s mind without our remembering where we have learned it before,” Olive persisted.

Miss Winthrop took the girl’s hand in hers. “My dear,” she said quietly, “I think there are many wonderful things in the world around us that we do not believe in because we do not yet understand them, just as long years ago men and women did not believe that our world was round because it had not then been revealed to them. And so I do not understand about these strange psychical experiences about which we have just been talking. But I recall a remarkable book by Du Maurier, one of the most remarkable novels I have ever read, called ‘Peter Ibbetson.’ In this story there is a song whose refrain is ever repeated in the hero’s mind from the time he is a little boy all through his life. He does not understand why he remembers this song, but by and by it is explained to the reader that this song had played an important part in the life of one of Peter Ibbetson’s ancestors. And just as we can inherit the color of our eyes, the shape of our nose, a queer trait of character from some far-off ancestor, so Du Maurier wrote that we might inherit some mental impression, like the lines of this song. It is a difficult thing to understand, but the idea is interesting.”

“It is very,” Olive replied. “I think I should like to read the book.”

Miss Winthrop again turned to study Olive’s face, but the darkness of the late fall afternoon had now fallen completely.

“May I ask if you have had any queer experience, Olive? Have you ever felt that you have been in a certain place before, where you know you could never really have been, or have you thought suddenly of something that you did not remember having in your mind before? But please do not answer me if you would rather not, for I know that these queer experiences most of us would rather keep to ourselves.”

“Thank you,” was Olive’s unsatisfactory answer as the four women started up the outside steps of Primrose Hall.

CHAPTER XII
WINIFRED GRAHAM AND GERRY

While Jean and Olive were having tea at “The Towers” and Frieda and Mollie were engaged in a confidential talk in the ranch girls’ sitting room, school politics were playing an important part in the precincts of Primrose Hall, for Winifred Graham and Gerry Ferrows were devoting that same Saturday afternoon to canvassing their class in order to discover whether Jean or Winifred might hope in the following week to be elected president of the Junior class. Gerry was electioneering for Jean, while Winifred was conducting a personal investigation. Indeed, the situation between these two girls was a peculiar and a difficult one, for having once been intimate friends, they had now become violently estranged from one another and yet continued to be room-mates. For no other reason than because Winifred suspected Gerry’s political intentions on that Saturday afternoon did she arrange to bring her own followers together and with their aid to outclass Gerry, for Jean had positively refused to work for herself, having turned over her cause to her two best friends, Gerry and Margaret Belknap.

But before leaving for “The Towers” very early on that morning Jean and Gerry had had a long and intimate talk over the chances for her election and Gerry had been perfectly frank about the whole situation.

Olive was still the obstacle standing in the way of Jean’s success. If even at this late date Jean would allow herself to be elected into one of the sororities and thus proclaim her independence of the girl whose presence in the school her classmates resented, she might yet win their complete allegiance; if not—well, it was just this state of the case that Gerry was trying to fathom. For Jean absolutely declined to turn her back on her adopted sister and yet longed with all her heart for the honor of the class presidency. Gerry’s own position on this question of Olive was an exceedingly anomalous one; while she was too good a sport to be unkind to any one in adversity, yet she did not herself care to associate with Olive on terms of perfect equality, although she had never mentioned this fact to Jean. And lately she had felt her own decision waver, for since her father had written her that he had charge of Jack Ralston’s case at his hospital and found her the pluckiest girl he had ever seen, Gerry longed to take all the ranch girls under her protection, and yet her prejudice still held out against Olive.

Being but human and entirely devoted to Jean, this prejudice grew deeper on the afternoon that Gerry went from one room to the other of her classmates, asking them point-blank whether they intended to cast their votes for Winifred or for Jean at the coming election. Some of the girls were quite frank. They had intended voting for Jean, but lately decided that it would be wiser not to have as the representative of their class a girl who claimed as her adopted sister a half-caste Indian. Others of the Juniors hedged, they might or they might not vote for Jean, not having entirely made up their minds between her and Winifred; a number of them were, of course, Jean’s frank and loyal supporters and yet it was with a feeling of discouragement that Gerry at the close of her canvass returned to her own room. She had taken a note book with her and written down each girl’s position in regard to the election, and yet she could not now decide whether Jean’s prospects were good or bad. So it was peculiarly irritating on bouncing angrily into her sitting room to find Winifred already there before her, with her long blonde hair down her back, and, while she was pretending to cut the pages of a magazine, wearing a particularly cheerful and self-satisfied expression.

Winifred Graham was a very beautiful girl and perhaps not an agreeable one, and yet she represented a type not unusual in a certain portion of American society. As long as Winifred could remember she had been taught these two things: By her brains and her beauty she must some day win for herself the wealth and the position that her family had always longed to have and yet never had quite succeeded in attaining. For always her mother and father had been spending more money than they could afford in trying to keep up with their friends who were richer and more prominent than themselves. Indeed, Winifred’s presence at Primrose Hall was but another proof of their extravagance, for they could by no means afford the expense of such a school, yet their hope was that there Winifred would make so many wealthy and aristocratic friends that later on they might help her to a wealthy marriage.

But Winifred was not only ambitious socially; she had a good mind and longed to succeed in her classes as well as in her friendships, so it was hardly to be wondered at that she should cordially dislike the two older ranch girls, who, coming out of nowhere and pretending to nothing, seemed likely to prove her rivals. For, while Jean might stand in the way of her being chosen to fill the highest position in the Junior class, Olive was seeking to wrest from her the Shakespeare prize which the old lady at “The Towers” offered each year to the Junior students in Jessica Hunt’s class. Gerry Ferrows was also competing for this prize, but as it represented a fairly large sum of money, sufficient to cover a year’s tuition at Primrose Hall, Winifred felt that in any case it must be hers.

She looked up and laughed mockingly as Gerry flung herself down on their couch, closing her eyes as though she wished to take a nap.

“What luck for the fair Jean at the coming election, friend Gerry?” she asked in an irritating fashion.

“Better luck than for the fair Winifred,” Gerry answered, none too truthfully, but enraged at her companion’s air of calm assurance.

Winifred laughed again. “That isn’t the truth, Gerry, and you know it, and I thought you always spoke the truth no matter if it half killed you, being anxious to prove that women are as honest as men, as brave and as straight-forward and as clever, and therefore should be entitled to equal suffrage.”

Gerry now sat up on her couch challenging her foe, her homely face crimsoning. “You are right, Winifred, I wasn’t quite truthful; I am afraid that your chance for the presidency is better than Jean’s. But you know that it is all because the girls here think that Olive isn’t a fit associate for the rest of us, or else Jean would have won in a walkover. I wonder if the story of Olive’s not knowing anything of her parentage is true and if she is a half Indian girl? You told it me. Where did you get the information? Perhaps after all it isn’t so!”

“Oh, the story came through the Harmons, who were out West and heard the tale and Elizabeth’s repeating it to one of the younger girls she knew in this school. I don’t suppose Elizabeth meant any harm in telling, for she seemed to think that we would be pleased to have an Indian enliven us at Primrose Hall. You may be very sure, however, that Olive and Jean and Frieda have been very quiet about the whole question of this objectionable Olive, but if you don’t believe the story, Gerry, why don’t you inquire of Miss Winthrop?” Winifred ended.

Again Gerry flushed. “I have,” she answered shortly, “and Miss Winthrop treated me with her most frozen manner. ‘If there is any mystery about Olive Ralston’s parentage, that is her private affair,’ she said. ‘But kindly remember that she is a student at Primrose Hall and if I thought her unfit for the companionship of my other girls, she would not be among you.’ You can imagine that I felt about the size of a small caterpillar when she got through with me.” And Gerry bridled, still sore from Miss Winthrop’s snubbing.

“You can count on Katherine Winthrop to recommend you to mind your own business,” Winifred interposed with secret satisfaction, knowing from Gerry’s report that Miss Winthrop had heard of Olive’s past and glad to have the truth of the story that she had been repeating confirmed.

“But don’t you think perhaps it is unkind to be so unfriendly to a girl for something she cannot help?” Gerry questioned, not so anxious to have Winifred’s opinion as to clear things up in her own mind.

Winifred shook her head. “I don’t know how you feel, Gerry, but honestly, I couldn’t be friends with an Indian girl and I don’t think she ought to be in so exclusive a school as Primrose Hall, If Miss Winthrop were anyone but Miss Winthrop I believe some of the girls’ parents would have complained of Olive before this, but that lady is just as likely to fire us all out and to keep just this one girl, as she seems to have such an unaccountable fancy for her. Look here, Gerry, you and I used to be good friends and Jean Bruce can’t be elected, so why don’t you give up working for her and come over to my side and not mix yourself up with this other business? You may be sorry for it some day and Jean hasn’t a ghost of a show.”

Gerry jumped several feet off her couch. “Don’t you be so plague-taked sure, Winifred Graham, that Jean Bruce hasn’t a chance for the election! And not for anything would I go back on her now! Besides, I have a plan that, has just come into my mind this very second that may straighten things out for Jean most beau-ti-fully.”

CHAPTER XIII
THE APPEAL TO OLIVE

And Gerry’s plan was nothing more or less than to make a direct, personal appeal to Olive, asking her to aid in the fight for Jean by making a sacrifice of herself. True, Gerry did not know that Olive was as yet completely in the dark about Jean’s refusal to join the Theta sorority because of the failure of the girls to include her in the invitation, but even with this knowledge Gerry would hardly have been deterred from her plan. For how could it help Olive to have Jean wreck her own chances on her account nor how could it alter her classmates’ attitude toward her?

The Monday following her talk with Winifred, Gerry overtook Olive, as both girls were leaving their class room, and coming up close behind her leaned over and whispered in her ear: “Oh, Olive, I wonder if you could have a little talk with me this afternoon on strictly private business; I wish to talk to you quite alone.”

Although Gerry had never been so rude and cold to her as some of her other classmates, at this attitude of unexpected intimacy, Olive appeared surprised. She had no idea that Gerry could be wishing to speak to her of the class election, for Jean had carefully excluded all mention of this subject from the conversation in their own rooms and no one else had seen fit to mention the subject to Olive.

“Oh, certainly, I shall be delighted to see you at any time,” Olive nodded, pleased that Gerry should wish to be with her alone. “Why not come up to our sitting room right now, as our lessons are over for the afternoon?”

But with a great appearance of secrecy Gerry shook her curly head. “No, I am afraid Jean might be bobbing in there at any minute,” she confided, “and I particularly don’t want her to know just at present what I wish to say to you.”

“Suppose I ask Miss Hunt to let us take a walk together without any one else?” Olive next proposed; “I am sure she will.”

Half an hour later the two girls, well away from Primrose Hall, were walking through the nearby woods and yet Gerry had not mentioned the subject of conversation they had come forth to discuss.

Curious why she should find it difficult; she was perfectly sure of having right on her side in this suggestion she was about to make, and yet there was a quiet, unconscious dignity in Olive’s manner that made her companion a little fearful of approaching her with advice or entreaty. Perhaps it might have been just as well to have laid this matter before Jessica Hunt or, as a last resort, Miss Winthrop, before forging ahead. But Gerry was an ardent suffragette in the making and, as she had determined to follow in the footsteps of her brilliant father, she knew that indecision must never be a characteristic of the new woman. However, it was just as well to have this stranger girl recognize her entire friendliness before she made known her mission.

Having talked of many things together, of their love of the outdoors, of Jack’s condition, after all it was Olive who at last opened up the way for her companion’s disclosure.

“I am sorry to have talked so much,” she said suddenly, “for I have not yet given you a chance to say what you wished to me. What is it?”

And all at once her face flooded with color, her eyes widened and she looked at Gerry with a half-spoken appeal. Up to this moment it had not occurred to Olive that her classmate’s desire for a private interview with her could have any serious import, but noticing Gerry’s hesitation and apparent embarrassment, Olive suddenly believed that she intended questioning her about her past. And what could she say? Ruth and Jack had advised her not to reveal her story, and yet if her schoolmate now asked her for the truth she would not lie. Gerry had always been kinder than the other girls and possibly thinking the gossip about her false, her desire now might be to disprove it.

With a kind of proud humility Olive faced the girl whom she hoped for the minute wished to be her friend. “What is it?” she asked again.

Evasion was not Gerry Ferrows’ strong point. “Do you want Jean to be elected Junior Class president?” she demanded abruptly.

Olive stared and then laughed happily. “Well, I should say I do, rather,” she answered. “What a funny thing for you to ask me. And I am awfully grateful to you for the help you are giving Jean, for she is awfully ambitious and Ruth and Jack and Jim Colter and all of us would be so proud of her if she should win after being so short a time at school.”

“Well, if you are so anxious for her to win, why don’t you do something to help her instead of standing in her way?” This question was even more blunt than the first. And it hurt, because Olive bit her lips.

“I help her? I stand in her way?” she repeated, stopping in her walk and turning to face the other girl squarely. “Tell me, please, how I can help her and how I stand in the way of her election?”

At this, Gerry Ferrows felt extremely uncomfortable, still she was not of the kind to turn back. “Well, you can help Jean a whole lot by making her join our Theta Sorority at once and not hold back any longer because you have not been invited to join also.”

There could be no doubt that Olive’s amazement was perfectly genuine. “Do you mean to tell me that Jean isn’t a Theta already with the girls tormenting her every minute for weeks to come into the society? Why, I thought that Jean had joined long ago and simply had not mentioned the matter to me because of not wishing to talk of a thing that might make me uncomfortable. I can see now that the girls may not want a class president who isn’t a member of a sorority, and also that if Jean stays out of the societies because of me, it makes us seem more like real sisters instead of just a girl whom Jean’s family is befriending.”

Gerry nodded, mute for once because Olive had put the case too plainly for her either to add to it or to contradict.

“Dear Jean, it is awfully good of her and awfully foolish and just what I should have expected,” she went on. “Please understand that I am very sorry both for Jean’s and Frieda’s sakes that I ever came with them as a student to Primrose Hall and I would have gone away before now only I could not worry Jacqueline Ralston, who is so ill, or our chaperon, Ruth Drew, who must give all her time and thought to Jack. But you see none of us realized that the girls at Primrose Hall would care so much because my birth and past were so different from theirs. In the West these things do not count to so great an extent.”

To her own surprise Gerry Ferrows’ eyes, which were seldom given to this proceeding, suddenly filled with tears. Like Ishmael of old, Olive seemed to her to be cast out into the desert for a crime in which she had no part.

But if this Indian girl had always been shy and sensitive in her attitude before the hurt of her schoolmates’ coldness toward her in times past, at this moment her manner greatly changed. Perhaps because Olive was so quiet and gentle it had looked as though she had no pride, but this is not true, for her pride was of a deeper kind than expresses itself in noise and protest: it was of that unconscious kind associated with high birth and breeding, the pride that suffers wrong and hurt with dignity and in silence.

Now she drew herself up, facing her companion quietly, her dark eyes quite steady, her lips fixed in a firm line and two bright spots of color glowing in her dark cheeks. “I cannot tell you how much I thank you for telling me this about Jean,” she said “and please believe I did not know of it. Of course you wish me to make Jean see the foolishness and the utter uselessness of her sacrifice of herself for me and I surely will. I suppose you must have wondered why I did not do this before.”

And still Gerry continued to find conversation increasingly difficult, though fortunately Olive was saying for her the very things she had intended to say. Shyly Gerry slipped her arm in school-girl fashion across Olive’s shoulder, but the other girl drew herself away, not angrily in the least, but as if she wished neither sympathy nor an apology.

“Do let us go on back to the house at once,” she suggested, “for I must not waste any time before I see Jean, as the election is to take place so soon. If her connection with me should make her lose it I simply don’t know what I should do!”

And forgetting all about the presence of Gerry, Olive started for home, walking with that peculiar grace and swiftness which was so marked a characteristic of her training.

Almost panting, Gerry, who was herself exceedingly athletic, tried to keep up. “You must not be foolish, Olive,” she begged, “and you are a brick! Whatever happens it can’t be your fault if we girls at Primrose Hall are narrow and hateful and blind.” For somehow at this late hour in their acquaintance Gerry Ferrows had begun to realize that whatever unfortunate past Olive Ralston may have had, somehow she had managed to breathe a higher atmosphere than most other girls. In their first intimate talk together Olive had shown no anger against her classmates for their cruelty, no envy of Jean’s popularity or desire to claim her allegiance as a defense against their unkindness. No, she had only been too anxious to sacrifice herself, to make the way straight for Jean. And at this moment quite humbly Gerry would have liked to have begged Olive to allow her to be her friend, only at this time she did not dare. And as they walked on together in silence some lines that she had learned that morning in their Shakespeare class in their reading of “The Winter’s Tale,” came suddenly to her mind.

“Nothing she does or seems, but smacks of something greater than herself,

Too noble for this place.”

CHAPTER XIV
“TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE”

Fortunately the two girls had not to spend a minute in looking for Jean, for no sooner had they entered the front hall of the school than she was seen talking with a group of friends.

“Hello,” she cried, pleased to find that Gerry and Olive had been out together for a walk and grateful for what she thought Gerry’s friendliness to Olive.

Olive went straight up to her, too much in earnest to be abashed by the presence of others. “Come on up to our sitting room, Jean,” she begged, “for Gerry and I have something to talk to you about that must be decided at once.”

It was a pity that Olive must be in such a hurry, Gerry thought a little impatiently, and also a pity that she had used her name in speaking to Jean and plainly wished her to be present at their coming interview, for there was, of course, a possibility that Jean might be a good deal vexed at her interference. But as Jean left her other friends immediately, slipping one arm through Olive’s and another through Gerry’s and propelling them as rapidly as she could up the broad stairs, what was there for Gerry to do but to surrender and let things take their course?

“Whatever weighty problem there is on your mind, Olive Ralston, that you wish me to help you solve,” Jean exclaimed gaily, as they reached their own door, “kindly remember that three heads are better than one, even if one is a dunce’s head, else I should never have allowed Geraldine Ferrows to be present at our council.” And giving each of the girls an added shove, the three of them plunged headlong into the sitting room.

Frieda was not to be seen, but to their surprise there before their open fire Jessica Hunt sat peacefully, holding a large open box of flowers on her lap, with her cheeks a good deal flushed, possibly from the heat of the fire.

“I beg your pardon, children, for having taken possession of your apartment in this way,” she explained, “but I happen to have a present for you sent through my care and it seemed to me that the surest way to find you was to wait at your own hearthstone until you chose to appear.” While Jessica was speaking she was holding out the box of flowers toward Jean and Olive. “Mr. Drummond has sent you these with a note to me asking me to see that you get them.”

With cries of delight the two ranch girls, pouncing on the great box, which was brimful of violets, buried their noses in its fragrances.

“They are just too lovely and too Rainbow ranchy for anything,” Jean exclaimed, thrusting a bunch into Gerry’s hand. “Won’t Frieda be homesick for her violet beds when she sees them, even if she is so enraptured with boarding school that she hardly talks of home any more?”

While Jean was speaking Olive was busily lifting the flowers from the box. Just toward the last she discovered a separate bouquet, wrapped in white paper and bearing a card with a name inscribed upon it.

“This is for you, Miss Hunt; it has your name upon it,” Olive announced, trying to look entirely unconscious, although she and Jean both guessed at once that the gift of the large box of flowers to them had been made largely in order to include the smaller offering inside it.

Jessica, assuming a far-away expression of complete indifference, took the flowers; they were lilies of the valley encircled with violets and it was difficult for any girl to conceal her delight in them.

Watching her with her head slightly to one side and a dangerously demure look on her face, Jean said suddenly, “I wonder, Miss Hunt, how long you have known our Mr. Drummond? You see, we are awfully fond of him and he has been very good to all of us, especially to Jack. Sometimes I have wondered if he could think you and Jack look a little bit alike? Olive and I think you do. But we don’t know anything about Mr. Drummond except that he is terribly rich and terribly good looking and very kind. Can’t you tell us something more?”

Jessica shook her head gravely. “I am afraid that is all I can tell you about Peter, I mean Mr. Drummond, that is of any importance. Just that he is rich and good looking and kind. He is so rich that he has never done anything or been anything else, and I have known him a great many years, since I was a small girl and he was a big boy and we used to live near one another in Washington Square, before my father died and we lost some of our money.”

“Well,” Jean returned reflectively, “it seems to me that it is a good deal to be just rich and good looking and kind, for there are lots of people who are not one of those three things.”

And though Jessica was not feeling especially happy at the moment, Jean’s words made her smile. “That is true, dear,” she returned, “but I am afraid that I want a man to be more and to mean more in this world than just that.” She was about to leave the room when Olive put her hand on her arm. “Don’t go, Jessica, Miss Hunt I mean,” she apologized, “but I so often think of you as a girl like the rest of us. I want to talk to Jean about something and I wish you to stay to help me make her behave sensibly.”

Still unsuspicious of what Olive had in mind, but realizing now that it was important, else she would not have called in so many persons to her assistance, Jean put down her flowers and coming up to her friend placed one hand on each of her shoulders, looking closely with her own autumn-toned brown eyes into her friend’s darker ones.

“Out with it, Olive Ralston. What on earth is it that you wish me to do that requires so much persuasion?”

And Olive, equally in earnest, likewise put her hands on Jean’s shoulders, so that the two girls made an unconscious picture illustrating the old proverb: “United we stand, divided we fall.”

“I want you, Jean, please not to be a goose,” Olive pleaded.

Gay laughter rang out in response. “I knew, Olive, from the first that you were going to ask me something I could not grant,” Jean returned plaintively. “Has any one in this world ever heard of a goose who chose to be one?”

Her listeners could not help smiling, but Olive’s mood was too intense for interruption. Without allowing Jean another opportunity for a moment’s speech she began her request, imploring her to join the Theta Society at once and not to put it off a day longer than necessary. “For how, dear, can you do me the least good by not belonging when the girls want you so much and when if you don’t you may lose your chance at the Junior election,” she ended.

“And who, Olive, has been telling you that I am not already a member of the Theta Society and that my chance for the presidency will be influenced if I am not?” Jean inquired angrily, although she did not glance toward any one for her answer save Olive.

But Gerry Ferrows was not in the least a coward, neither did she feel in any sense a traitor either to Jean or to Olive, so now she moved quietly forward.

“I told Olive, Jean,” she answered, “and you may be angry with me, but I have no intention of playing a sneak. For the life of me I cannot see how it will hurt Olive for you to join the Thetas without her and it will hurt you very much in your election if you don’t. Olive is not going to be invited to become a member if you stay out and you may lose the class presidency if you are so obstinate.”

Olive turned to Jessica Hunt. “Won’t you please tell Jean that Gerry is perfectly right and that there is no other way of looking at this matter?” she entreated. “She will just break my heart if she does not, and I can’t see a bit of sense in her position.”

“I can,” Jessica answered briefly, “but I would rather not say anything at all until I have heard just how Jean feels about this whole business.”

A grateful look was flashed at her, but Jean moved first toward Gerry.

“I am awfully sorry I was cross, Gerry,” she murmured, “because of course I know you are being good as gold to me and only acting for what you believe to be my good, but I don’t think either you or Olive in the least understand my position. I am not staying out of the Theta Society for Olive’s sake; I am staying out for my own.”

“But that can’t be possible,” both the other girls urged.

“Gerry Ferrows,” Jean said, “I want you to do me a favor. I want you to think quietly of what your opinion of another girl would be (leaving me out of the case entirely) if that girl should win out in a big matter like a class election by turning her back on her best friend and more than her friend, her almost sister. And you, Olive, suppose you had no part in this business at all, or suppose you and I had changed places, what would you think of a girl who would say to another group of girls, ‘Yes, thank you, I am very grateful indeed to you for permitting me to enjoy your superior society, even if you do think the people whom I love and who belong to my family are not worthy of association with you?’ I, of course, am humbly delighted to be a renegade and a traitor if you will just let me play with you.” And Jean’s brown eyes were flashing and her face was pale, yet she laughed a little at her own fierceness.

“Oh, I won’t pretend that I didn’t think at first of doing just this thing that you girls are begging me to do,” she went on, “and I argued it all out in my own mind that I wouldn’t hurt Olive by joining the Theta’s, but I never could persuade myself that such an action would not hurt me. See here, dear,” and Jean’s usually merry lips were trembling as she spoke again directly to Olive. “How could it injure you for me to forget our friendship and happy years together at the ranch, for wouldn’t you still be true and loyal and devoted to me? But poor little me, and what would I be? Wouldn’t I have to live with myself day time and night time knowing exactly what kind of a wretch I was? No, sir-ee,” and here Jean struck a highly dramatic attitude, pretending to slip her fingers inside an imaginary coat. “In the words of that famous gentleman, whether Henry Clay, or Patrick Henry, or Daniel Webster, I can’t remember, ‘I would rather be right than President!’”

“Bravo, Jean,” called Jessica’s voice from the doorway, “I take off my hat to you! Gerry, Olive, please don’t argue this question any further with Jean, for she has just said something that we all know to be a fact: ‘To thine own self be true. Thou canst not then be false to any man.’”

Gerry cleared her throat, pulling at her short hair rather like an embarrassed boy than a clever girl of seventeen. “All right, Jean,” she conceded; “maybe you are right, and of course you are if you feel as you say you do, so I shall not try to make you change your opinion.”

But Olive, equally miserable and unconvinced, standing alone in the center of the room, said to Jean, “You are dreadfully good, but I don’t care what you say, I simply can’t allow you to sacrifice yourself in the way you are doing for me. I must find out how to prevent it and I warn you now that I shall write to Jack and have her ask you to change your mind.”

Jean only laughed. “It would be so like old Jack to ask a fellow to be a poor sport,” she teased, “but for goodness sake don’t let us talk about this tedious subject any longer and do let us put the kettle on and all take tea, for I have talked so much I am nearly dying of thirst.”

Around a small table the four girls placed themselves, the ranch girls getting out their tins of cakes and chocolates kept for just such occasions, and nothing more of a serious character was said until they were all comfortably sipping their tea. And then Jean turned to Olive.

“Look here, Olive, I want to ask Gerry a question, if it won’t hurt your feelings too much, and while Miss Hunt is here with us it seems to me the best time to ask it. Gerry, of course we have known for some time that there has been some gossip about Olive going the rounds of the school, but we have never known who started it nor just what the story is. Would you mind telling us?”

Instead of answering Gerry hesitated, her homely, kindly face showing nervousness and discomfort.

“Is the story just that Olive does not know who her parents are and that we ranch girls found her several years ago with an Indian woman and that she may be of part Indian blood?” Jean continued inexorably.

Gerry nodded her head. “Yes, and the story came originally through the Harmons, I believe, though they meant no harm.”

“Is that all the tale or has anything else been added?” her questioner continued. And Gerry answered with her eyes on her saucer, “Yes, that is all.”

“Then please tell every girl at Primrose Hall that what they have heard is perfectly true,” Jean blazed, although she was trying to speak calmly. “I can see now that we have made a mistake; it would have been better if we had been perfectly candid about Olive’s past from the first. There never has been a minute when we would have minded telling it, if any one of the girls had come and asked us, but lately I have thought that some extra story must have been hatched up about poor Olive and joined to the true one, for I simply couldn’t believe that any human beings could be so horrid and so stupid as the Primrose Hall girls have been to Olive, unless they had been told something perfectly dreadful about her. Well, I don’t think I care a snap about being class president of such a set of girls,” Jean added impolitely, forgetting one of her guests. “Olive Ralston, I don’t believe you are any more an Indian than I am, but I want to say just this one more thing and then I positively promise to stop talking: For my part I would rather have good red Indian blood in my veins than the kind of thin white blood that must run in the veins of such a horrid set of snobs. Gerry, dear, I do beg your pardon and of course I don’t mean you, but if I hadn’t been allowed to speak this out loud, I should certainly have exploded.”

Gerry’s head dropped. “Well, perhaps I have belonged to the snobs, too, Jean,” she answered truthfully, “but if Olive will forgive me and make up, perhaps some day we may be friends.”

Slowly the sitting-room door now opened and a languid figure, clothed in a marvelous dressing gown of pale blue silk and lace, with yellow hair piled high on its head, entered the room. “What on earth is Jean preaching about?” the voice of no other person than the youngest Miss Ralston inquired. “I have just been across the hall with Mollie and Lucy Johnson and I declare she has been talking steadily for an hour.”

Jessica Hunt made some laughing explanation, but Olive and Jean could only stare in amazement at Frieda. Where on earth had she gotten so marvelous a kimono? It really looked like a stage affair. But at this instant, beholding the violets, Frieda, forgetting her grown-up manner for a moment, jumped at them. “Aren’t they too beau-ti-ful?” she said like the small girl who once had taken care of her own violet beds at The Rainbow Lodge.

CHAPTER XV
THE DANGER OF WEALTH

The truth of the matter was that Frieda Ralston would have been somewhat happier and certainly a great deal better off in many respects could she now have turned back the pages of her existence for a few months and been again that same little yellow-haired girl who was the beloved of every man, woman and child within the thousand acres of the Rainbow Ranch, for Frieda had lately been getting into a kind of mischief that is of a serious nature, whether practiced by a young girl or by very much older persons. She had been spending far too much money.

After the trip to New York and the purchase of the blue silk gown and velvet coat a number of weeks before, the desire for beautiful clothes awoke in Frieda. Remember that she was only a Western ranch girl and had never dreamed of such splendors as the New York shops afforded, neither did she have any very clear idea of the real value of money. Because gold had been discovered on their ranch and because Jack was sending her fifty dollars as pin money each month, Frieda considered that their wealth must be fabulous and so she had contracted the very dangerous habit of buying whatever she wished without considering the cost, and the way she managed to do this was by making bills!

Earlier in the season, when the girls had found it difficult to go into town for every little purchase it became necessary for them to make, Ruth had opened a charge account for the three ranch girls at one of the best of the New York shops, but the bills were expected to be sent to the girls and to be paid out of their allowances. Jean and Olive had made only a few necessary purchases, but though no one else knew of it, Frieda had lately been buying with utter recklessness.

Indeed, the gorgeous kimono which had just electrified the other two ranch girls was only one of a number of articles that had arrived that very afternoon and been delivered in the care of Mollie Johnson. Hanging up in Mollie’s closet at the same instant was an equally charming garment, almost of the same kind as Frieda’s, save that it was pink and but lately presented by Frieda to her best friend.

So it would appear that even though Frieda might be keeping the letter of the law in not speaking of their wealth at Primrose Hall, she was certainly not obeying it in spirit, and indeed she had broken her promise altogether on the afternoon when she and Mollie had been alone together, while Olive and Jean were drinking tea at “The Towers.”

Not that she had meant to do this when Mollie came in; far from it. The story had just leaked out quite innocently at first. For Frieda naturally began the conversation with her friend by telling her that Jean and Olive had gone to tea with the Harmons, and then that they had learned to know the Harmons because they had rented their ranch to them the summer before. From the ranch the speaker traveled very naturally to the Yellowstone and the story of Jack, told many times before, and coming back again to the ranch ended with Mr. Harmon’s effort to buy the Rainbow Mine.

When this word “mine” popped out, Frieda had stopped suddenly, but it was soul satisfying to observe how her friend Mollie’s eyes had grown wider and bigger with admiration and surprise at her words. “Why, Frieda Ralston,” Mollie had reproached at once, “you don’t mean to tell me that you are an heiress as well as everything else that is interesting! Why, you have let me think that you were poor before, though I have wondered sometimes about the lovely things you have been buying. Do please tell me whether your mine is copper or silver or pure gold?”

To Frieda’s credit it must be stated that when Mollie thus began her very natural investigation of her story, she felt at once both sorry and frightened. “It is a secret, Mollie,” she began; “that is, I don’t see any sense in its being, but I have promised Jack and Jean and Ruth Drew not to talk about our money at Primrose Hall, since we would rather have our friends just know us as ranch girls, but we really have a gold mine. Do you see why I shouldn’t talk about it?”

Earnestly Mollie shook her head.

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t, so long as I have promised,” Frieda conceded; “but now I have told you of it without meaning to, I am glad, for I do just want to talk about it with somebody and you are my dearest friend and I wish you to know everything about me.”

Frieda might have said that she wished Mollie to know all the nice things about her, for it really is not our faults that we long to pour into the ears of our friends.

The invalid, who had been stretched on the couch with a bad cold for the past hour or so, now curled her feet up under her and rested her chin on her hands. “Want me to tell you every single thing about our mine?” she demanded. “It is quite like a fairy story.”

And of course there is nobody in the world (and certainly not Mollie Johnson) who does not like to hear of the finding of a mine.

“Cross your heart and body that you’ll never betray me; say you wish you may die if you do,” Frieda abjured. And promising everything and making all the mystic signs necessary to eternal secrecy, Mollie then had listened to the unfolding of the fairy tale.

Frieda had not really intended to make her story a fairy tale, but she had no more idea of how much money the Rainbow Mine produced than a baby, and of course with the telling of her tale the size of the nuggets that Jim was getting out of the mine each week naturally grew.

“You see,” Frieda explained, warming with her subject, “we simply don’t know how rich we are. Jim, our overseer at the ranch, who now looks after our mine, says you never can tell at first how much a mine may yield. Perhaps we may be millionaires some day.”

The word millionaire was an entirely new one in Frieda’s vocabulary, which she had learned since coming to Primrose Hall, but certainly it had a magnificent sound and made Mollie blink.

“It sounds just too wonderful,” the little Southern girl sighed, “and I do declare, Frieda, that if I didn’t love you more than most anybody I should feel envious. We aren’t rich a bit; my father is just a lawyer in Richmond and while we have a pretty house and all that, why we have some other brothers and sisters, and father says all he can afford to do is to let Lucy and me have two years apiece at Primrose Hall. He can’t give us money for the wonderful clothes you buy. Won’t I be proud if you can make me a visit in the Christmas holidays to show you and your lovely things to my friends!” And Mollie began twisting into curls the ends of her Frieda’s yellow braids and looking up at her with an even increased admiration.

Such a rush of recklessness and affection then seized hold on the youngest Miss Ralston, that without even discussing the question with Mollie, she immediately arose from her couch and rushing to her desk indited a letter to a New York firm asking that the two kimonos be sent her at once with slippers and stockings to match. For her beloved Mollie was just too sweet and sympathetic for anything and quite unlike adopted sisters and relations, who scolded and put on airs when one’s affairs went a bit wrong. Frieda would have liked at the instant of writing her letter to have poured all her wealth at her friend’s feet, but all that she could do more was to invite her to come into town the next week to be her guest at the matinee and lunch and to help her make a few more purchases.

For Frieda’s December bill had not yet arrived and her check had, and so for the time being, like many another person, she felt fairly well off, although her allowance for the past two months had melted away like wax without her being able to pay back a single cent of the money to either Jean or Olive, which they had advanced to help with her first extravagance, the blue silk dress and velvet coat.

One of the subjects that a great many people discuss, with a good deal more money at their disposal than Frieda had at present, is the way that five-dollar bills have of disappearing in New York City. So by the time Frieda had paid for three tickets to the matinee, as the girls were of course compelled to bring a chaperon into town with them, and three lunches at a fashionable restaurant, there was so little of her money left out of her original amount that again she was obliged to do some charging on her account, in order to get the few more things that she and Mollie decided might be needed in case she paid the visit in Richmond toward the close of December.

On the way back to Primrose Hall, however, seated on the train and feeling a bit weary, Frieda wished that she had not spent this extra money. Now she wouldn’t be able to pay her debts until January, and what with Christmas coming, there would be so many presents for others that she would wish to buy! So once Frieda sighed, but when Mollie, giving her a hug, demanded to know what worried her, she would not say. For how confess that money matters were worrying her but a few days after the time when she had announced herself as an heiress? Of course Jack and Ruth would see that she was supplied with extra money at Christmas time, if they should consent to let her make the trip south, and out of this amount she would certainly save enough to pay her bills, without having to confess her extravagances. For Frieda knew that Jack and Ruth would both be angry and ashamed of her for breaking her promise and for buying things which she did not really need.

CHAPTER XVI
ELECTION DAY

The day for the election of the president of the Junior Class had arrived at last. Lessons were over at noon and from three o’clock until six in the afternoon Jessica Hunt and Miss Sterne would remain in the library at Primrose Hall watching over the ballot box. Immediately after six the box would be opened, the ballots counted and the choice of the Juniors announced.

For December had come with her white frosts and cold, brilliant days and the fields about Primrose Hall were sere and brown. Now and then in the past few weeks a light snow had fallen and the shore waters of the Hudson River would then be trimmed with a fine fringe of ice. Once the election was over the Primrose Hall students would be making plans for the Christmas holidays, but until then nothing else, not even home and family, appeared of so great importance.

Do not think because Gerry’s appeal to Olive to save Jean had gone astray that she had given up the fight for her friend’s cause. Indeed, like many another brave campaigner, she had only worked the harder, rallying Jean’s friends closer around her, exhorting her enemies and trying to persuade the girls on the fence that there was no real point in their antagonism toward Olive. And in all the efforts Gerry had made she had had an able lieutenant in Margaret Belknap, Jean’s other devoted friend.

For herself Jean could do little electioneering, realizing that unless her classmates desired her to represent them by reason of the character she had already established among them, nothing she could do or say at this late day should influence them. And Jean had also never wavered from the attitude she had taken in regard to Olive on the afternoon of their final discussion of the subject. She had not needed that her resolution be strengthened, but if she had, letters from Ruth Drew and Jack Ralston would certainly have accomplished it. For Olive, true to her threat, had written them the entire situation, begging that Jean be persuaded from the error of her ways. Instead of the reply she hoped for, Ruth and Jack had both emphatically declared Jean’s position the only possible one.

All the morning in the hours just before the election Jean had been conscious that Olive’s eyes were fixed on her whenever their presence in one of the class rooms made it possible. Her expression was so wistful and apologetic that Jean began to care more for her own success on Olive’s account than her own. So as soon as luncheon was over and three o’clock had come around, slipping her arm through her adopted sister’s, she drew her along the hall toward the library door.

“Come on, Olive, child, and cast your vote for me and then let us go upstairs and stay hidden away until the election is over. Then Gerry and Margaret will let us know the result. If I were a really high-minded person I suppose I should now vote for my rival, Miss Graham, but as I can’t bring myself up to that point, I’ll just slip in a piece of paper for old Gerry.”

Ten minutes after this conversation Jean and Olive were in their own sitting room for the entire afternoon, having placed a sign outside announcing that no one could be admitted. Of course both ranch girls were excited and nervous, but of the two Olive was plainly the more affected, for while Jean talked and laughed in a perfectly natural fashion, she was pale and silent and oftentimes on the verge of tears.

The day was cold and lovely and outside the sun shone on the bare upturned branches of the trees and on the broad bosom of the earth.

“Silly child,” Jean began, arranging her paper and ink on the writing table before one of their windows, “why should you behave as though the question of my election was the only important thing in the world. On a day like this I only feel desperately homesick for Jack and the old ranch. What wouldn’t I give if we were all there to-day and just starting out on a long, hard ride? Sometimes I am so desperate about never seeing Jack that I don’t know what to do. I think I will write to Jim and to Ralph Merrit this afternoon, for it will help to make the time pass faster than anything else. I am afraid I have treated Ralph rather badly, as I promised to write him often and have only written twice. Then I want to ask Jim if he is really coming east to see how Jack is getting on. I wonder if he will hate to see Ruth again or like it? One never can tell about a person in love.”

Perhaps Jean’s thought of her old friends and affairs at the Rainbow Ranch may have had a cheering influence upon her, for no sooner had she put her pen to the paper than apparently all worry and suspense left her and she scratched away rapidly and clearly for several hours.

But poor Olive found no such distraction or solace; indeed, she kept up such a restless and unnecessary moving about the room that at any other time Jean most certainly would Lave scolded. First she tried studying her Shakespeare, since she was making a special effort to succeed in the Shakespeare class, and before coming east to school had read only a few plays with Ruth and the ranch girls in the big living room at the Lodge. But not the most thrilling historic drama nor the most delightful comedy by William Shakespeare could to-day take her mind from the one idea that engrossed it. After half an hour of merely pretending to read, she flung her book down on the floor, saying petulantly: “Tiresome stuff! I wonder what ever made me think for an instant I could stand any chance of getting the Shakespeare prize?”

Jean smiled. “Oh, I suppose, Olive, because Ruth and all of us thought you had a lot of talent for reciting and acting and you dearly love to read and study at most times. But why don’t you go out for a walk, you can find Frieda somewhere around downstairs and make her go with you. I don’t want to.”

“And I don’t want to either and won’t,” Olive answered with a good deal more temper than usual with her, and flying into her own room, she banged the door behind her. Rummaging about for some occupation, she came across a piece of sewing which she had once started at the Lodge, some white silk cut in the shape of a round cap to be covered over with small white pearl beads.

Slipping back once more into the sitting room, Olive found a low stool by the fire and there tried to see whether sewing would have a more soothing influence upon her than reading for the two more hours that had somehow to be disposed of. Yes, sewing on this occasion was more distracting than reading, for very soon Olive’s fingers worked automatically while her brain began to concern itself with interesting and puzzling ideas. The many hours which she had spent alone at Primrose Hall had not been wholly unprofitable—lonely hours need never be unless we choose to make them so—but Olive perhaps had more to think of and to ponder over than most girls of her age who have not led such eventful lives.

After her afternoon call at “The Towers” and her conversation later with Miss Winthrop, Olive had been reading all the books in the school library that she could find, which might help her explain the curious experience—confided to no one—through which she had passed that afternoon. But it was not just this one experience that had puzzled and worried Olive, for many strange fancies, impressions, memories, she knew not what to call them, had been drifting into her mind since her first sight of that white house on the hill on the morning after her arrival at Tarry dale. The ideas had no special connection with anything that was definite, but Olive was lately beginning to believe that she could recall dim ideas and events having no connection with the years she had spent in the Indian tent with old Laska. But why had these far-off memories not assailed her in the two years at the Rainbow Ranch? Perhaps then the recollection of Laska, of her son Josef, who had treated her with such an odd mixture of respect and cruelty, of the Indian people about her whom she had so disliked, had been too close, too omnipresent in her mind. Had she needed to come far away from the West and its associations to feel that she had come home? No, it was impossible, for Olive felt sure that she had never been east before in her life.

Finally the clock struck five and then half-past and at last six.

Jean, some moments before, had ceased writing and now sat calmly folding up her pile of letters, placing them in their respective envelopes. She looked tired and perhaps a trifle pale but composed. At last she got up from her chair and crossing the floor knelt down in front of Olive, taking the piece of sewing from her cold fingers.

“Olive dear,” she said unexpectedly, “you are looking positively ill from thinking of something or other and worrying over me. For both our sakes I wish that Jack could be with us this afternoon just for the next hour. I know I have not been elected the Junior president. I never have really expected to be, but just as I sat there writing about half an hour ago I knew I had not been. Now see here, Olive, I have been thinking that I have been defeated for more than thirty minutes and yet look at me! Do I look heartbroken or as if I were very deeply disappointed?” And Jean smiled quietly and serenely at her companion. “Promise me that when the girls come in in a few minutes to tell me I have not been elected, that you will take things sensibly and not think that you have had anything to do with my failure.”

Olive shook her head. “How can I promise such a thing, Jean, when I know perfectly well it isn’t true,” she answered, vainly attempting to hide the fact that she was trembling with excitement and that her ears were strained forward to catch the first noise of footsteps coming toward their door.

Sighing, Jean continued, “Oh, you silly child, what shall I say or do with you? Don’t you know if the girls had really wanted me for president nothing and no one could have stood in my way?”

The shove which Olive gave her, slight though it was, nearly made Jean tumble backwards. “Why do you talk as though you knew positively you had not been elected, Jean Bruce, when you really know absolutely nothing about it. I am sorry I pushed you, but I thought I heard some one coming down the hall.”

As Olive had gotten to her feet, Jean now arose also. No one had appeared to interrupt them.

“I know by this time that I have not been elected,” Jean said, “because it must now be some little time after six o’clock and Miss Sterne and Jessica could never have taken so long a time as this to count the few ballots of the Junior class.”

However, there was no doubt at this instant of noises out in the hall approaching nearer and nearer the ranch girls’ sitting room.

It was Olive who rushed to the door and fairly tore it open, while Jean waited calmly in the center of the room.

Outside were Gerry and Margaret Belknap, Frieda and Lucy and Mollie Johnson, and one look at the five faces told the waiting girls the truth. Coming in, Margaret flung her arms about Jean and Gerry took a farm clasp of Olive’s hand.

“I never would have believed it in the world!” she exclaimed.

CHAPTER XVII
CONGRATULATIONS

By this time the usually self-contained Margaret was weeping bitterly in Jean’s arms, while she patted her reassuringly on the back. Gerry looked utterly exhausted, her hair was in a perfect tumble and a smut ornamented one of her cheeks. Frieda had turned toward the wall and Lucy and Mollie Johnson each had an arm about her.

“Well, girls, the game is up, isn’t it?” Jean spoke first, but Olive simply would not accept what her eyes had already told her.

“It isn’t true, Jean hasn’t been defeated, has she Gerry?” she entreated, squeezing the hand that held hers.

“Winifred Graham has just been elected president of the Junior class at Primrose Hall for the coming year!” Gerry announced stoically, and then there was a sudden sound of weeping from all parts of the sitting room.

“Why, goodness gracious, girls, don’t take things like this,” Jean insisted, being the only dry-eyed person on the scene. “Margaret dear, you are positively wetting my shirtwaist. Of course, I am sorry not to have been elected, but I’m not disappointed, as I haven’t thought lately that I could be. And please, this isn’t anybody’s funeral.” Then Jean kissed Margaret and walked over to shake hands with Gerry.

“You have both worked terribly hard for me and I never can cease to be grateful to you, but now that things are all over do let us show the girls that we can take defeat gracefully anyhow. Please everybody stop crying at once and come on with me to shake hands and offer my congratulations to Winifred Graham. Wouldn’t we look a sorry set if the next time she beheld us we should all appear to have been washed away in tears? The first person that looks cheerful in this room shall have a five-pound box of candy from me in the morning.”

Of course Jean’s suggestion that Winifred Graham should not learn the bitterness with which they accepted their defeat had an immediate effect, as she had guessed it would, upon Gerry and Margaret. Both girls stiffened up at once.

“Jean is perfectly right,” Margaret immediately agreed, “for it will never do in the world for us to make a split in our Junior class just because things have not gone as we wanted. Lots of the girls did vote for Jean and if we take our defeat bravely, why Winifred Graham and her set can’t crow over us half so much as if we show our chagrin.”

Gerry made such a funny face over the prospect of Winifred’s crowing that everybody was able to summon a faint laugh.

“Come on at once then, let us go and offer our congratulations to Winifred while we have our courage screwed to the sticking point. For my part I would rather do my duty and remember my manners without delay.”

And Jean opened the door, believing that all her friends would follow her. Once in the hall, however, she soon discovered that Olive was missing and going back called out softly: “Come on, Olive, and help us congratulate the winner. You wouldn’t have us show an ugly spirit now, would you?”

But Olive quietly shook her head. And as Jean was by no means sure how Winifred might receive any attention from Olive, she forbore to insist on her accompanying them. Should Winifred be disagreeable under the present circumstances Jean was not perfectly sure of being able to keep cool; and of all things she must not show temper at the present moment. Besides, her few minutes’ conversation with Olive, before the coming of the girls to announce her defeat, had evidently borne good fruit, for Olive did not appear particularly distressed at the result of the election. After a first moment of breaking down she had entirely regained her self-control. Truly Jean was delighted at seeing her so sensible.

One, two, three minutes passed after the other girls’ departure and an entire silence reigned in the room, Olive standing perfectly still. Had Jean been pleased because she had accepted her failure so sensibly? Sensibly! why Olive had not spoken simply because she could not trust herself to speak. She had not cried, because in the first moments of humiliation and regret, there are but few people who can at once summon tears. Of course, Olive was taking the affair too seriously and Jean’s view was the only reasonable one, but she had not been defeated herself, she had stood in the way of her friend’s victory and this last blow had come to her after months of coldness and neglect on the part of her classmates, which she had borne bravely and in silence. Now Olive was through with courage and with silence.

At last she seemed to have made up her mind to some action, for the relief of tears came. Going into her own room, Olive flung herself face downward on the bed, giving herself up to the luxury of this weakness. When she arose her face wore a look of unusual determination. Whatever her fight, it was ended now. First she walked over to her bureau and there unlocking a small iron safe took out a sandalwood box, a box which all who have followed her history, know to be the single possession she had rescued from the Indian woman before running away from her for the last time.

The girl carried her few treasures to her desk and before beginning the letter she plainly intended writing, she picked them up one by one, looking at them closely, the silver cross and chain worn on the evening of the dance, the small book only a few inches in size, and the watch with the picture of a woman’s face in it, the picture that Ruth and the ranch girls had always believed to look like Olive.

At the face she looked longest, but after a few moments this also was laid aside for the work she had in mind.

“DEAR RUTH” (her letter read):

“I write to tell you that I am not willing to remain longer as a student at Primrose Hall. I am sorry to trouble you with this news and if Jack is too ill to be worried, please do not mention this to her. I have tried very hard to bear my difficulties here and truly I would have gone on without complaining, for I can live without the friendship of other girls so long as you and the ranch girls care for me, but what I cannot bear is to be a drawback to Jean and Frieda and to stand in their way as I do here. I do not know what to ask you to do with me, for I cannot go back to live among the Indians until I know more than I do now and am able to teach them. Can I not go to some little school where the girls will not care so much about my past? But if you are not willing for me to do this, and I know how little I am worthy of all you and the ranch girls have done for me, you must not mind if I find some work to do, so that I can make my living. For no matter what happens, I can remain no longer at Primrose Hall.

“With all love, OLIVE.”

And when the letter was finished Olive, whose head was hot and aching, rested it for a moment on the desk upon her folded arms. When she lifted it, because of a noise nearby, Miss Katherine Winthrop was standing only a few feet away.

“I beg your pardon, I knocked at your door, Olive, but you must have failed to hear me and then I came inside, for I wanted to talk to you.”

The fact that Miss Katherine Winthrop in some remarkable fashion seemed always to know, almost before it happened, every event that transpired at Primrose Hall, with the causes that led to it, was well recognized by her pupils. So of course she now knew not only that Winifred Graham had been elected to the Junior Class presidency, but the particular reason why Jean had been defeated.

“I am sorry to have you see that I have been crying, Miss Winthrop,” Olive said, knowing that there was no use in trying to disguise the truth. “I know you think it very foolish and stupid of me.”

Miss Winthrop sat down in a big chair, beckoning the young girl to a stool near her feet. “Well, I suppose I do usually discourage tears,” she answered with a half smile; “at least, I know my girls think I am very unsympathetic about them. But I suppose now and then we women are just obliged to weep, being made that way. What I want to talk to you about is Jean’s defeat at the election this afternoon. You feel responsible for it, don’t you?”

Why be surprised at Miss Winthrop’s knowledge of her feelings, as apparently she knew everything? So Olive merely bowed her head.

“I want to ask you to tear up the letter which you have just written asking your friends to let you leave Primrose Hall because of what has happened.”

Miss Winthrop’s eyes had not apparently been turned for an instant toward the desk on which her letter lay, and even so she could not have seen inside a sealed envelope. Olive stared, almost gasped. “How could you know, Miss Winthrop?”

Miss Winthrop put her hand on Olive’s dark hair, so black that it seemed to have strange colors of its own in it. “I didn’t know about your letter, dear, I only guessed that after the experience you have passed through this afternoon, with what has gone before, you were almost sure to have written it. And I want to ask you to stay on at Primrose Hall.”

Olive shrank away, shaking her head quietly. “I have made up my mind,” she returned; “I have been thinking of it before and now I am quite determined.”

A moment’s silence followed and then in a different voice, as though she were not speaking directly to the girl before her, Miss Winthrop went on. “I believe there are but three types of people in this world, be they men or women, that I cannot endure,—a coward, a quitter and a snob. Unfortunately I have discovered that there are among the girls here in my school a good many snobs. I guessed it before you ranch girls came to me and now that I have seen what you have been made to suffer, I am very sure. But, Olive, I want you to help me teach my girls the weakness, the ugliness, the foolishness of snobbery. And can you help me, if though not a snob, you are one or both of the other two things I have mentioned?”

“A coward and a quitter?” Olive repeated slowly, wondering at the older woman’s choice of these two words and yet knowing that no others could express her meaning so forcibly.

“But I would not be going away on my own account, but for the sake of Jean and Frieda,” she defended.

“I think not. You may just now be under that impression, but if you think things over, does it not come back at last to you? You feel you have endured the slights and coldness of your classmates without flinching and it has hurt. Yes, but not like the hurt that comes to you with the feeling that your presence in the school is reflecting on Frieda and Jean. They do not wish you to go away, Olive, they will be deeply sorry if you do and whatever harm you may think you have done them has already been done and can’t be undone. No, dear, if you go away from Primrose Hall now it is because of your own wounded feelings, because your pride which you hide way down inside you has been touched at last!”

Miss Winthrop said nothing more, but turned and looked away from her listener.

For Olive was trying now to face the issue squarely and needed no further influence from the outside. By and by she put her small hand on Miss Winthrop’s firm, large one. “I won’t go,” she replied. “I believe I have been thinking all this time about myself without knowing it, You made me think of Jack when you spoke of a coward and a quitter, for they are the kind of words she would have been apt to use.”

Miss Winthrop laughed. “Oh, I have been a girl in my day too, Olive, and I haven’t forgotten all I learned. Indeed, I believe I learned those two words and what they stood for from a boy friend of mine long years ago. Now I want to talk to you about yourself.” The woman leaned over, and putting her two fingers under Olive’s sharply pointed chin, she tilted her head back so that she could see in sharp outline every feature of the girl’s face.

“Olive, your friend Miss Drew told me on bringing you here to Primrose Hall what she and your friends knew of your curious story, of their finding you with an old Indian woman with whom you had apparently lived a great many years. I believe that the woman claimed you as her daughter, but though no one believed her, your Western friends have never made any investigation about your past, fearing that this Indian woman might again appear to claim you.”

“Yes,” the girl gratefully agreed.

“Well, Olive, I have seen a great deal of the world and very many people in it and since the idea that you are an Indian worries you so much, I want to assure you I do not believe for a moment you have a trace of Indian blood in you. Except that you have black hair and your skin is a little darker than Anglo-Saxon peoples, there is nothing about you to carry a remote suggestion of the Indian race. Why, dear, your features are exquisitely thin and fine, your eyes are large. The idea is too absurd! I wonder if you could tell me anything about yourself and if you would like me to try to find out something of your history. Perhaps I might know better how to go about it than your Western friends.”

For answer Olive rose and going over to her desk, returned with the sandalwood box containing her three treasures. “This is all I have of my own,” she said, first putting the box into Miss Winthrop’s lap and then tearing up the letter just written to Ruth, before sitting down again on her stool near the older woman. Gratefully she touched her lips to Miss Winthrop’s hand, saying: “I would like very much to tell you all I can recall about myself, for lately queer ideas and impressions have come to me and I believe I can remember a time and people in my life, whom I must have known long before old Laska and the Indian days.”

CHAPTER XVIII
FANCIES OR MEMORIES?

Miss Winthrop nodded. “Tell me everything you can recall and keep back nothing for fear it is not the whole truth or that I will not understand. Whoever your father and mother may have been, you certainly have ancestors of whom you need not be ashamed.”

Then Olive, clasping her fingers together over her knee with her eyes on the floor, began to speak. And first she told the story of the Indian village and of Laska and how she could not recall a time when she had not spoken English as white people speak it, then of her years at the Government school for Indians taught by a white woman, who had always been her friend and assured her that she was not of the same race as the Indian children about her. But in proof of this she had nothing save the ornaments in the sandalwood box, which, in the interest of her story, Miss Winthrop had not yet examined.

Yes, and one thing more Olive could remember. Through all the years she had lived with the Indian woman there had come to old Laska in the mail each month a certain sum of money, large enough to keep her and her son in greater wealth and idleness than any of the other Indians in the village enjoyed. But from what place this money had come nor who had sent it Olive did not know, and so to her this fact did not seem of great value, although Miss Winthrop’s face had shown keen interest on hearing it.

“Was there not a postmark on the outside of the letter, Olive?” she demanded.

Clasping her fingers over her eyes in a way she had when puzzled, the girl waited a moment. “Why, yes, there was,” she said slowly. “How strange and stupid of me never to have thought of this before! The postmark was New York! But New York meant nothing to me in those days, Miss Winthrop, except just a name on a map at school. You cannot guess how strange and ignorant I was until the ranch girls found me and began teaching me a few things that were not to be found in school books. But no one could have sent money to Laska for me from New York. I must have been mistaken and this money did not come for me as I have always hoped. Laska must have received it for some other reason.” And then Olive, either from weariness or disappointment, stopped in her narrative, not as though she had told all that she knew, but because she could not quite make up her mind to go on.

A few moments of quiet waiting and then Miss Winthrop spoke again:

“The money was sent Laska for your care, Olive, I am sure of it. But this story of the Indian woman and your life there you have told to other persons, to the ranch girls and your chaperon, Miss Drew. What I most wish you to confide to me are the ideas and impressions of the years when you may not always have lived in the Indian village.”

Sadly the girl shook her head. “Miss Winthrop, the fancies that I have had lately have been too ridiculous for me to feel I can confide even to you, kind as you are to me. For how can it be possible that a human being can remember things at one time of their life and not have known them always? Why, since my arrival at Primrose Hall, do I seem to recall impressions that I did not have at the Rainbow Ranch?”

The older woman did not reply at once, as she was pondering over the question just asked her. “Olive,” she returned slowly, “I believe I can in a measure understand this problem that troubles you. Half the memories that we have in the world come through association. It is the sight of an object that recalls something in our past which brings that past back to us. Now when you were living at the Rainbow Ranch the memory of your life with Laska, the fear that she might take you away from your friends, was so close to you that you thought of little else. But now you are in an entirely different place, the fear of the woman has gone from you; it is but natural, I think, that new and different associations should bring to life new memories. What is there that you have been recalling in these past few months?”

And still the girl hesitated. “It is so absurd of me,” she murmured at last, “but one of my most foolish ideas is that I have seen the big, white house where Madame Van Mater lives at some time before. Of course, I know I have not seen it, for I have never been in this part of the world before. But the other day, standing at the window, I suddenly remembered a description of the Sleepy Hollow scenery, which I must have read and learned long years ago, though I never thought of it until that moment.”

Miss Winthrop’s face was now more puzzled than the speaker’s by reason of her deeper knowledge of life. “Go on,” she insisted quietly. “Can you recall anything more about the house and do you think that you ever saw Madame Van Mater before the other day?” The strange note in her questioner’s voice was lost upon the girl at her feet.

“No, I never saw Madame Van Mater in my life and I do not like her,” Olive returned quickly. “The furniture inside the house did not seem familiar, only the outside and the tower room and those ridiculous iron dogs guarding the front door. But I want to tell you something that seems to me important—of course, my impression about Madame Van Mater’s home is sheer madness. What I really can remember is this—” Olive stopped for a moment as though trying to be very careful of only telling the truth. “I remember that when I was a very little girl I must have traveled about from one place to another a great deal, for I do not think I ever had a home nor do I remember my mother. My father, lately I have believed I have a real impression of him,” and Olive’s eyes, turned toward her teacher, were big with mystery and hope. “He must have been very tall, or at least he seemed so to me then, and I went about with him everywhere. Finally we came to a place where we stayed a much longer time and there Laska first must have come to take care of us. I think now that my father must have died in that place, for I can not remember anything more of him and ever afterwards I lived on with Laska and the Indians. That isn’t very much to know and of nothing am I perfectly certain,” Olive ended with a sigh, seeing that Miss Winthrop had not spoken and supposing therefore that she considered her idle fancies of little account.

The older woman now sat with one elbow on the arm of her chair, her hand shading her eyes so that it was impossible to catch the expression of her face. Whatever idea had come to her with the hearing of her pupil’s strange story, she did not now mean to reveal.

“It is all very interesting, Olive,” she answered, quietly, “and surely very puzzling, so that I am not surprised at your putting but little faith in your own recollections, for I cannot see any possible connection between your travels in the West as a little child and your idea that you had seen some old house like ‘The Towers.’ But there is one person who can tell us something of your early history without doubt—and that person is this woman Laska! She kept you with her all those years for money and probably pretends that you are with her still, so that she continues to receive the same money each month, else she would have made another effort to get hold of you. Well, if the love of money has made the Indian woman keep your secret, perhaps an offer of more money will make her tell it. We will not speak of this, Olive dear, to any one in the world at present, but I will write to your old teacher at the Government school in the Indian village and perhaps through her aid we may reach this Laska.”

Olive made no answer, for to have expressed ordinary thanks in the face of so great interest and kindness would have been too inadequate. What could she say? Besides, Miss Winthrop was now looking at her few treasures in the sandalwood box.

“I have seen your cross and chain before,” she said, letting it slip through her fingers as once more she examined its curious workmanship, “but this little book—why, it is written in Spanish and is a Spanish prayer book.” Then for a second time Miss Winthrop put her hand under Olive’s chin, studying the unusual outline of her face. “I wonder if you are a Spanish girl, child, for that would explain why you are darker than most Americans and why you have so foreign an appearance?”

Olive, silently opening the watch, lifted the picture inside it to her friend’s gaze.

Miss Winthrop looking at the picture nodded, and then began turning the watch over in her hand; strangely enough, not so deeply interested in the photograph as in the watch itself. “This watch was sold here in New York, Olive, and I have seen one exactly like it years ago.” Her voice trembled a little and she seemed fatigued. “But don’t let us talk of this any more this evening, as it is nearly dinner time. I am going to ask you to trust me with these trinkets of yours, as I want to study them more closely.”

And without another word Miss Winthrop quietly arose and left the room.

CHAPTER XIX
NEW YEAR’S EVE

Several weeks had passed since the interview between Olive and Miss Winthrop on the evening of Jean’s defeat, and now the Christmas holidays at Primrose Hall were well nigh over. For twelve days, save for Olive and its owner, the great house had been empty of all its other pupils and teachers; now in another thirty-six hours they would be returning to take up their work again.

The time had been long and lonely for Olive, of course, for Jean and gone into New York to visit Gerry Ferrows and Margaret Belknap and Frieda had departed south with the two Johnson sisters. The ranch girls had not wished to leave Olive alone and each one of them had offered to remain at school with her, but this sacrifice could hardly be accepted because Olive had made no friends who had wished her to be with them. Jessica Hunt would have liked to have had Olive visit her, but she had no home of her own and her sister’s apartment was crowded with babies; Margaret and Gerry, who had been kinder since their common disappointment, had invited her for week ends, but these Invitations Olive had quietly declined. All she would have cared for in a trip to New York was an opportunity to see Jack, and this privilege was still denied the ranch girls.

Of course, Ruth had been informed that Olive was to be left alone at Primrose Hall with only Miss Winthrop as her companion during the holidays, and one afternoon had hurried out to see what arrangements could be made for her pleasure. However, after a serious half hour’s talk with Miss Winthrop and a shorter consultation with Olive, she had gone away again content to leave the fourth ranch girl in wiser hands than her own.

And though the two weeks may have been long and lonely for Olive, yet they had never been dull, for each moment she was hoping and praying to hear some news from old Laska and each hour being drawn into closer intimacy with Miss Winthrop. For now that the discipline of school life had been relaxed, the principal of Primrose Hall showed herself to her favorite pupil in a light that would have surprised most of her students. She was no longer unsympathetic or stern, but treated Olive with an affection that was almost like a mother’s. Each evening in her private study before a beautiful open fire the woman and girl would sit close together under the shadow of “The Winged Victory,” reading aloud or talking of the great world of men and cities about which Miss Winthrop knew so much and Olive so little. But of the secret of the girl’s past her new friend did not encourage her to talk for the present.

“If you have told me all you know, Olive, then it is better for us not to go into this subject again until we hear from the Indian woman, and then should she fail us, I must try to think of some other plan to help you.”

And so one by one the holidays went by, as days will go under every human circumstance, and yet no word had come from Laska, though it was now the afternoon of New Year’s eve. Olive had been alone all morning and unusually depressed, for although she had not heard what she so eagerly waited to hear, she had learned that the surgeons had at last decided an operation must be performed on Jack. Ruth had written her that there was supposed to be some pressure from a broken bone on Jack’s spine that made it impossible for her to walk, and although the operation might not be absolutely successful, Jack herself had insisted that it should be tried.

The snow had been falling all morning and the neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow had never been more beautiful, not even in its Indian summer mists. If Olive could go for a walk she felt that she might brace up, for certainly she did not intend to let Frieda and Jean find her in the dumps on their return from their holidays. Miss Winthrop would probably go out with her, as she had been attending to school matters all morning, seeing that the house was made ready for the return of her students, and Olive felt the fresh air might also do her good. They had eaten lunch together, but Miss Winthrop had not been seen since.

While Olive dispatched one of the maids to look for her friend she herself went into the rooms where she had been accustomed to find her in the past two weeks, but neither in her study, nor in the library, nor in the drawing rooms, could she be found and by and by the maid came back to tell Olive that Miss Winthrop had gone out and would probably not return till tea time. She had left word that Olive must not be lonely and that she must entertain herself in any way she desired. Well, Olive knew of but one thing she wished to do: she would go for a walk and she would go alone. School was not in session, so school rules were no longer enforced, and by this time Olive had become thoroughly familiar with the nearby neighborhood.

Instead of a hundred-dollar check, which had been Jack’s Christmas present to both Jean and Frieda in order that they might have their Christmas visits to friend’s, she had given Olive a brown fur coat and cap. Olive had not worn them before, but now, with the snow falling and the thought of Jack in her mind, she put them both on. For a minute she glanced at herself in her mirror before leaving the house and though her vanity was less than most girls’, she could not help a slight thrill of pleasure on seeing her own reflection in the mirror. Somehow her new furs were uncommonly becoming, as they are to most people. The soft brown of the cap showed against the blue-black darkness of her hair and in her olive cheeks there was a bright color which grew brighter the longer and faster she trudged through the lightly falling snow.

Olive did not know the direction that Miss Winthrop had taken for her walk, but half guessed that she must have gone for a visit to Madame Van Mater, as she was in the habit of calling on the old lady every few days and knew Olive’s dislike to accompanying her. Indeed, she had not been inside “The Towers” nor seen its mistress since her first and only visit there. But now she set off in the direction of the house, hoping to find her friend returning toward home.

The walk through the woods, Olive’s first walk in the vicinity of Primrose Hall, was now a familiar one and less dark because the trees had long ago cast off their cloakings of leaves and were covered only with the few snowflakes that clung to them. No man or woman who has lived a great deal out of doors in their youth fails to draw new strength and cheerfulness from the air and sunshine, and Olive, who had left school thinking only that Jack’s operation might not be successful and of the pain her friend must suffer, now began to dwell on the beautiful possibility of her growing well and strong as she had been in the old days at the ranch and of their being reunited there some day not too far off. Then she had been weakly believing that she would never hear news of herself, that old Laska was probably dead or had disappeared into some other Indian encampment. Now with her blood running quickly in her veins from the cold and the snow, she determined if Laska failed her to go west the next summer and try to trace out her ancestry herself. Miss Winthrop, Ruth and the four ranch girls she knew stood ready to help her in anything she might undertake.

“It is a pretty good thing to have friends, even if one is bare of relations,” Olive thought, coming out of the woods to the opening where she could catch the first glimpse of the big white house. “I wish Miss Winthrop would come along out of there,” she said aloud after waiting a minute and finding that standing still made her shiver in spite of her furs. “I wonder why I can’t get up the courage to march up to that front door past those two fierce iron dogs, ring the bell and ask for her. I don’t have to go into the house, and as it is growing a little late, Miss Winthrop would probably prefer my not walking back alone. Besides, I want to walk with her.”

Like most people with only a few affections, Olive’s were very true and deep, and now that she had learned to care for Miss Winthrop, she cared for her with all her heart.

Slowly she approached the house, hesitating once or twice and looking up toward the tower room as though she were ashamed to recall her own foolishness on the afternoon of her introduction to it. There was no one about in the front of the house, not a servant nor a caller. For a moment Olive stopped, smiling, by one of the big iron dogs that seemed to guard the entrance to the old place. She brushed off a little snow from the head of one of them and, stooping, patted it. “Isn’t it silly of me to think I remember having seen you?” she murmured. And then Olive’s hand went up swiftly to her own eyes and she appeared to be brushing away something from them as she had brushed the snow from the statue of a dog. “I haven’t seen you before, I have only heard about you. And I haven’t seen this old house, but I have been told about it until I felt almost as if I had seen it,” she announced with greater conviction in her tones than she had ever used before, even to herself, in trying to recall the confused impressions of her childhood.

But now, instead of going up the front steps of the old house and ringing the bell, she hesitated. And while she waited the door was suddenly opened and into the white world outside Miss Winthrop stepped with an expression on her face no one had ever seen it wear before—one of surprise and wonder, anger and pleasure.

“Olive, is it you?” she said just as if she had expected to find the girl waiting outside for her on the doorstep. “Come in to Madame Van Mater. We have something to tell you.”

“I SUPPOSE I CANNOT DENY THE PROOFS YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO ME.”

CHAPTER XX
THE TRUE HISTORY OF OLIVE

In the same high carved chair that she had used on the afternoon of Olive’s first meeting with her, Madame Van Mater now sat apparently waiting for someone, for her hair and complexion were as artistically arranged and she was as carefully dressed as ever. At the stranger girl’s sudden entrance with Miss Winthrop she showed no marked surprise.

“Turn on the lights, please, Katherine, and bring the girl close to me,” she commanded in almost the same tones that she had used on a former occasion, and now for the second time Olive found herself facing the old lady and being critically surveyed by her. Again, with almost unconscious antagonism, their glances met.

“I suppose I cannot deny the proofs you have brought to me, Katherine Winthrop, that this girl is my granddaughter,” Madame Van Mater said coldly, “and I am obliged to confess that her appearance is not what I feared it might be, considering my son’s marriage. However, I do not see the least trace of resemblance in her to any member of my family.” And possibly to hide the trembling of her old hands, Madame Van Mater now picked up a number of papers with which the table in front of her was strewn. “You may sit down, child,” she remarked turning to Olive, “and Katherine Winthrop will explain the extraordinary circumstance of your connection with me. Because I tried to keep you as far away from me as possible, fate has therefore brought you here under my very nose. It has ever been the way of circumstances to thwart me.”

Not understanding in the least what Madame Van Mater was talking about and yet feeling a sudden curious weakness in her knees, Olive dropped into a chair which Miss Winthrop had at this instant placed near her.

“Sit perfectly still a moment, Olive dear,” Miss Winthrop interposed. “Strange and improbable as it may seem to you to hear that you are the granddaughter of Madame Van Mater, it will not take long for me to explain the necessary facts to you. Years ago your grandmother had an only child, a son of whom she was very proud, and as her husband had died some time before, all her great wealth was to be given to this son. She hoped that some day he would be a great lawyer, a statesman, and that he would make his old family name known all over the world. Well, by and by when this son had grown up, he cared nothing for law or any of the interests that his mother wished and one day announced to her and to me that he had chosen the stage as his profession. It is not worth while for me to try to explain to you what this decision meant to his mother and to me then,” Miss Winthrop continued; “but twenty years ago the stage did not hold the position in the world that it does to-day, and even now there are few mothers who would choose it as the profession for their only sons. Well, there were many arguments and threats, but as your father was determined on his own course, he went away from this part of the country to the far west and there after several years we learned that he had married. I knew that your mother had died soon after her marriage and some years later your father, but I was never told that they had left a child. Only your grandmother, of course, has always known of your existence, for since your father’s death she has been paying this Indian woman Laska to have charge of you. The fact that Laska has now sent me papers signed by your grandmother’s own hand makes it impossible for your relationship to be doubted.” Miss Winthrop now paused for a moment.

Olive was not looking at her, but at Madame Van Mater. “You did not wish to recognize me as your granddaughter because you did not believe my mother a lady?” she asked quietly.

“Precisely,” Madame Van Mater agreed.

“I see. It is all strangely clear to me now. I thought I remembered this house because my father had talked of it so much to me that I really believed I had seen it myself, his bedroom in the tower, the old dogs at the front door that he used to play with as a child and all the story of Sleepy Hollow. Well, I am sorry for your sake, Madame Van Mater, that Miss Winthrop has discovered my father’s name and people, but for my own I am very glad.” And Olive’s eyes turned toward the picture of the boy on the wall. “I suppose that when my father was ill he wrote and asked you to care for me and that is how you came to hear of Laska?” she questioned. And again the old woman bowed her head.

Very quietly Olive now got up from her chair. “Shall we be going back to school, Miss Winthrop?” she inquired. “I believe I would rather not stay here any longer at present.”

In ten minutes the two women, the young and the older one, were walking home through the winter dusk together, Olive keeping a tight clutch of Miss Winthrop’s arm, for now that she was well away from “The Towers” and the cold woman who was its mistress, she felt frightened and confused, as though the story she had just heard was a ridiculous dream.

“Yes, it is very, very strange,” Miss Winthrop had reiterated over and over again in the course of their walk, “but I cannot believe that the queer accidents of life are accidents at all. I believe that it has always been intended that you should some day know your own people and for that reason you were brought from your home in the West to this very neighborhood.”

After a while when Olive had found her voice she said, “I do not like my grandmother, Miss Winthrop, and I feel sure that we will never like one another. But I am very glad, because if she had cared for me she might have wished me to leave the ranch girls, and not for all the world can I give up them.”

There was another moment of silence and then Miss Winthrop spoke again: “I cared for your father once very deeply, Olive, and I have cared in the same way for no one else since, but I also felt as your grandmother did about the work he chose to do and so here in the old garden at Primrose Hall we said good-bye one afternoon for all time. I suppose my pride was greater than my love for him, but I have been sorry since. Now I care very much for my old friend’s daughter and hope she will let me be her friend.”

“She has been more than that already,” Olive returned fervently; “no one save Jack has ever been so kind.” And then both women talked only of trivial matters until after dinner time that evening.

In Miss Winthrop’s study from eight o’clock until nine Olive sat with her portfolio on her lap writing a long letter to Ruth Drew, disclosing to her the story of the afternoon and asking her to keep the discovery of the secret of her ancestry from Jacqueline Ralston, if she felt it better that Jack be not informed at present. And at her desk during the same hour Miss Winthrop was also engaged in writing Ruth. Carefully she set forth to her how through the efforts of Olive’s former teacher at the Government school and by the payment of a sum of money (which seemed very large to the Indian woman), Laska had been induced to surrender certain papers proving that the old mistress of “The Towers” at Tarry dale was undoubtedly Olive’s grandmother. Though the news had come as an entire surprise to Olive, her grandmother was not so wholly unprepared for the revelation. For it seemed that Mrs. Harmon had known of the existence of a young girl, the daughter of her first cousin, who was being taken care of by an Indian woman somewhere in the state of Wyoming. On meeting Olive at the Rainbow Ranch the summer before and learning of her extraordinary history she had wondered if the girl could have any connection with her own family. Although she had not really believed this possible, knowing that Olive had come as a student to Primrose Hall, she had confided the girl’s story to her aunt and Olive’s first visit to “The Towers” had been of great interest to both women. However, Madame Van Mater’s first survey of Olive had set her mind at rest. This girl, whom Donald believed to resemble his mother, was to her mind wholly unlike her; neither could she catch the faintest resemblance to her son, who had been supposed to be like his cousin, Mrs. Harmon. Then Olive’s quiet beauty and refined appearance had also satisfied Madame Van Mater that this girl could not be her granddaughter, for she believed that Olive’s mother had been of too humble an origin to have had so lovely a daughter. Besides, did not old Laska continue to receive the allowance sent her each month for her granddaughter’s care?

In a few lines at the close of Miss Winthrop’s letter of explanation to Ruth she added the only apology that could ever be made for Madame Van Mater’s behavior. The proud old woman had not understood how ignorant this Indian woman Laska was, nor had she dreamed that Olive was being brought up as an Indian. She had simply told the woman to continue as Olive’s servant until such time as the girl should reach the age of twenty-one, when she intended settling a certain sum of money upon her. She had not wished that this child of her son’s should suffer, only that she should not be troubled with her nor compelled to recognize her as her heiress and the bearer of her name.

By and by, however, both Olive and Miss Winthrop grew weary of their long letter writing and Olive, coming across the room, placed herself on a low stool near her companion, resting her chin on her hands in a fashion she had when interested. Both women talked of her father; they could recall his reading aloud to them hour after hour and Olive believed that she must have learned by rote Washington Irving’s description of Sleepy Hollow valley when she was only a tiny girl and that her first look out of her father’s bedroom window had suddenly brought the lines back to her recollection.

Till a little before midnight there were questions to be asked and answered between the two friends, but just as the old year was dying with the twelve strokes of the clock in the hall, Olive said good night. She was half way out the door when she turned back again and Miss Winthrop could see by the color in her cheeks that there was still another question she wished to ask.

“Do you think,” she asked finally, “that my mother could have been such a dreadful person? I do not think I ever saw a lovelier face than her picture in my father’s watch.”

Miss Winthrop looked closely at Olive, remembering how her strange and foreign beauty had always interested her. “No, my dear, your mother could most certainly not have been dreadful,” she answered. “I think I heard that she was a Spanish girl and these curios you have and your own appearance make me feel assured of the fact. It was because your grandmother was informed that your mother was a singer or an actress, that she felt so deep a prejudice against her. But the real truth is that she never forgave her son and wished never to hear his name mentioned as long as she lived.”

With a little shiver at the thought of such a nature as the old woman’s at “The Towers,” Olive went on up to her own room to bed.

CHAPTER XXI
JEAN AND FRIEDA RETURN TO PRIMROSE HALL

In less than forty-eight hours after the close of the last chapter Primrose Hall was once more emptied of its silences and loneliness and gay with the returning of its students now that the holiday season was well past.

Most of the girls came back in groups of twos and threes, since trains at Tarrydale were numerous, but every now and then the school carryall would be loaded up with girls, hanging on to the steps, sitting in one another’s laps. And it happened that in one of these overloaded parties Jean and Frieda arrived at Primrose Hall together.

There was so much excitement, of course, in the arrival of such a number of students at one time and so much kissing and embracing among some of the girls tragically separated from their best chums for two weeks, that in the general hubbub Jean and Frieda noticed no special change in Olive. If Jean thought at first that she had looked a little tired she forgot about it in a few minutes. The girls had so many stories to tell of their own experiences, there was so much running back and forth from one room to the other, so much unpacking of trunks and bestowing of forgotten gifts, that the three ranch girls really saw very little of each other without outside friends being present until almost bedtime that night.

Then at nine o’clock, with only an hour to spare before their lights were turned out, they met before their sitting-room fire, wearing their kimonos, their hair down their backs, prepared at last for the confidential talk to which for different reasons they had all been looking forward for some time.

A sign with “No Admittance” printed on it hung outside their door and on the floor in convenient reach of the three girls sat two large boxes of candy, one presented to Frieda upon leaving Richmond, Va., and the other a farewell gift to Jean from Cecil Belknap in New York.

For the first moment so great was the satisfaction of the three girls at being reunited that nobody spoke, and then all at once they began talking in chorus.

“I think I ought to have the first chance to tell things, as I am the youngest and have been the farthest away,” Frieda protested.

Of course Jean and Olive were glad enough to give Frieda the first chance, but now as she began to speak, very naturally both of them turned their attention full upon her. It was strange, for of course Frieda had had a wonderful visit—what girl in a southern city fails to have—and yet in spite of all her accounts of dances and dinner parties and germans given for the school girls in Richmond during the holidays, both Jean and Olive noticed that she did not look as cheerful as usual, but that, if it were possible to believe such a thing, a fine line of worry appeared to pucker her brow.

“Frieda Ralston, you have been going too hard and seeing altogether too much of life for such a baby,” Jean insisted when Frieda had triumphantly cast a dozen or more pretty trinkets received as favors at germans at their feet.

But Frieda had only obstinately shaken her head, “I haven’t either, Jean,” she declared, “Mrs. Johnson says it does not hurt girls to have a good time in the holidays if they only study hard and behave themselves properly at school.”

“Well, perhaps you are just tired, Frieda,” Olive suggested.

And again the youngest Miss Ralston disagreed. “I am not tired. Why should you girls think there is anything the matter with me?” And she turned such round, innocent blue eyes on her audience that it became silenced. For five, ten minutes afterwards Frieda continued to hold the floor, and then in the midst of an account of a party given at the Johnson home she had suddenly stopped talking and thrown herself down on the floor, tucking a sofa pillow under her blonde head. “Maybe I am tired to-night on account of the trip home,” she confessed; “anyhow I don’t want to talk any more just now. I suppose, Olive, you haven’t anything special to say, just having stayed here at school with Miss Winthrop. So Jean, you tell us what you did in New York.”

Because Jean took up the conversational gauntlet so promptly, both the older girls failed to notice that before Frieda had even ceased talking her eyes had filled with tears.

The story Jean told of her visits to Gerry and Margaret in New York City was not exactly like Frieda’s, for though Jean was several years older than her cousin, in New York school girls are never allowed the same privileges that they enjoy in the South. But Jean had been to the theatre many times and to luncheons and twice Mrs. Belknap had taken Margaret and Jean and Gerry to the opera in her box. “Yes, Cecil Belknap had been very nice and she had liked him a little better, though she still thought him horribly vain,” Jean confessed, in answer to a leading question from Frieda. Then she, too, abruptly concluded her story. “There is just a weeny thing more I have got to tell everybody when the lights go out,” she concluded, “but I am not willing to tell now.”

Frieda reached out for comfort toward her box of candy, popping a large chocolate into her mouth.

“Now, Olive, you please tell us what you did while we went away like selfish pigs and left you for most two weeks. You must have had a dreadfully dull time!” Frieda suggested indulgently.

Olive laughed quietly. “Well, I didn’t have exactly a dull time; at least, not lately.”

Another chocolate passed from the box to the youngest girl’s lips.

“Oh, I suppose you mean that Miss Winthrop was kind to you and you took long walks together and things like that. I believe Miss Winthrop is really fond of you, Olive, even more than she is of Jean and me. I wonder why?”

At this both the girls laughed. “Oh, I suppose it is because she thinks Olive the most attractive of ‘The Three Graces.’ Baby, of course you and I are the other two,” Jean interrupted. “But I hope, Olive dear, that she was good to you.”

And at this simple remark of Jean’s, Olive’s face suddenly flushed scarlet. “Yes, Miss Winthrop has been good to me, better than any one else in the world except you ranch girls,” she replied.

Struck by something unusual in her friend’s face and expression, Jean’s own face suddenly sobered. “What do you mean, how can she have been so unusually kind to you?” she questioned. Then with a sudden flash of illumination. “Olive Ralston, you have something important on your mind that you want to tell us. I might have guessed that you have been keeping it a secret ever since we returned, letting us chat all this nonsense about our visits first. Don’t you dare to tell us that Miss Winthrop wants to adopt you as her daughter and that you have consented, or none of us will ever forgive you in this world!”

Still Olive hesitated. “Truly, I don’t know how to tell you yet,” she murmured, “though I have been planning a dozen different ways of starting in the last two days.”

“That is it, then, Jean has guessed right,” interrupted Frieda darkly. “I suppose it has happened just as a punishment to us for having left you alone at Primrose Hall during the Christmas holidays. Of course Miss Winthrop decided that we really do not care much for you and for all her coldness to the other girls she needn’t try to deceive me; she is just crazy about you, Olive!” Frieda now began really to shed tears. “But whether you like Jean and Ruth and me or not, I never could have believed that you would be so cruel as to turn your back on poor Jack when she is too ill to speak for herself,” she finished.

“Hush, Frieda,” Olive returned sternly. “That is not what I want to tell you. Of course Miss Winthrop has asked me to live with her if you should ever wish to stop taking care of me, but I don’t want to live with her if you ranch girls want me. I was only trying to explain——”

“What, for heaven’s sake, Olive?” Jean demanded, now nearly as white and shaken as her friend, seeing Olive’s great difficulty in making her confession.

“Jean, Frieda,” Olive began, speaking quietly now and in her accustomed voice and manner, “it is only that since you have been away Miss Winthrop has found out for me that I am not an Indian girl. I am not even a western girl, or at least my father was not a Westerner. You remember the day we went to see the Harmons at ‘The Towers’ and old Madame Van Mater stared at me so strangely and scolded Donald for thinking I was like his mother. She did not wish me to look like Mrs. Harmon because Mrs. Harmon was my father’s first cousin and——”

“Oh, Olive, what are you talking about? You sound quite crazy!” Frieda interposed.

And then Olive went on, even more clearly and rapidly telling the other girls the history of her father and of herself as far back as she had learned it. “Oh, I know you can’t believe what I have told you all at once, girls, for it does sound like a miracle or a fable and we never would have believed such a story had we read of it in a book. But Miss Winthrop says that every day in the real world just such wonderful things are happening as my coming here to Primrose Hall in the very neighborhood where my father used to live and finding my grandmother alive. In any newspaper you pick up you can run across just such an odd coincidence.” As Olive had been allowed to talk on without interruption, of course she believed by this time that both Jean and Frieda understood the news she had been trying to make plain to them. Frieda had risen to a sitting posture and was staring at her with frightened eyes, Jean was frowning deeply.

“You mean?” said Jean helplessly. “You don’t mean?” said Frieda at the same moment, and then, to relieve the tension of the situation the three girls giggled hysterically.

“Please begin right at the beginning and tell the whole story over again, Olive, and I will try to understand this time,” Jean had then commanded and patiently Olive went through the whole tale again.

Therefore it was small wonder that they forgot about the bedtime hour, until a knock at the door startled them. Jessica Hunt was preceptress of their floor for the evening and, as Miss Winthrop had already told her something of Olive’s history, she readily allowed the ranch girls a half hour’s extra talk. She could not help their lights going out at ten o’clock, however, but the ranch girls did not really care. A candle under an umbrella makes an excellent light and no one outside can be any the wiser!

Perhaps it was their two weeks of separation, perhaps it was Olive’s strange story, for rarely had the three girls felt more devoted to one another than they did to-night. They were sitting with their arms about one another when Olive jumped up. “Please lend me the candle a minute,” she begged unexpectedly, “I have been talking so much about myself that I forgot I had some letters for you. They may be important.”

In another moment, coming back from her desk, she dropped several envelopes in Jean’s and in Frieda’s hands. “I suppose if they are Christmas cards you can see them by this light,” she said carelessly, “but if they are letters you had best wait till morning.”

With a quick gesture Frieda tore open one of her envelopes and the paper enclosed was neither a card nor a letter. “Oh, my goodness gracious, what ever am I going to do?” she asked desperately, seeing three large black figures staring at her even in the dark. “I have but ten cents in all this world and I owe a bill of one hundred and fifty dollars!”

The reason for the line in Frieda’s brow was now disclosed. Instead of having saved any of her hundred-dollar Christmas present during her Christmas visit she had spent every cent of it. Now, without waiting for her to find out what she could do to get the money for her dreadful bill, the wretched, unkind shop people had sent it her on the very first day of the New Year.

“I don’t like to borrow money of you and Olive, Jean, when I haven’t paid back the last,” Frieda said, after a slight, uncomfortable moment of surprise on the part of the other ranch girls, “but what can I do? I suppose I have just got to write to Ruth and Jack, asking them to pay it for me.”

“How could you ever have made such a bill, Frieda?” Jean demanded, looking over her cousin’s shoulder in the flicker of the candle light.

“Clothes,” the answer came back in a weak, small voice.

Unexpectedly Jean laughed. “Oh, well, I need not preach, baby. What I wanted to tell you myself, when the lights went out, is that I became a backslider in New York and with Ruth’s consent told Gerry and Margaret that we were not absolutely paupers. I just had to spend some of the money I had saved, the things in New York were so fascinating. So I haven’t much left to lend you, Frieda, and I am awfully sorry, for Ruth says the mine is not yielding quite as much as it formerly did and we must all be economical, for such a dreadful lot of money is needed right away for Jack. I am pretty glad we did not tell the girls at Primrose Hall that we were rich, because it may turn out that we are not after all; gold mines are often uncertain.”

“Then I suppose I will have to go to prison for debt,” Frieda murmured. And both older girls were heartless enough to laugh. “Oh, no, it need not go as far as that, Frieda,” Olive assured her, “for I have hardly spent a cent since coming to Primrose Hall, so I have nearly enough to help you out, so you need not worry. Besides Miss Winthrop says that however much I may dislike my grandmother and she me, I cannot refuse to allow her to do for me now that she has discovered my whereabouts, for the money that is now hers should rightfully have come to my father even though she did not wish him to have it.”

“Remember the fortune the old gypsy told you, Olive,” Jean repeated, just as they were separating for the night. “‘And a fortune untold, Shall make for your feet a rich pathway of gold.’ I used to think she meant our mine.”

CHAPTER XXII
READJUSTMENTS

In the weeks that followed the discovery of Olive’s connection with the wealthy old patroness of Primrose Hall a student of psychology would have had an interesting opportunity in the study of the changed attitude of her schoolmates toward her. In the first place, from being an Indian girl of uncertain origin, Olive had suddenly become a heroine of romance and also there was the possibility that she might in time be an heiress, should her grandmother change in her feelings toward her and disinherit the Harmons. In any case, the law would certainly allow her some portion of the old estate. So you see that instead of being looked down upon as the most undesirable student at Primrose Hall, the fourth ranch girl had suddenly become exalted upon a pedestal, and perhaps it is just as deceptive in this world to look up to other people as it is to look down upon them, since a fair judgment can only be attained by standing face to face.

Truly Olive had no more desire for this second false position than she had for the first, but now her shyness, once regarded as ill breeding, was called haughtiness and her classmates stood a little in awe of her. The position was indeed a trying one for everybody concerned in it, for scarcely could the girls who had been unkind to Olive, now throw themselves about her neck begging her forgiveness, simply because so unexpected a turn had come in her fortunes. Of course, some of the unwise girls did do this, but not those with better judgment and taste, for they understood that Olive must be approached more slowly and with greater tact.

Among this second class of girls was Winifred Graham. Now no one could be more vexed than she was with herself for her persistent snubbing of Olive from the first day of her entrance into Primrose Hall, not because she liked Olive any better than she had at first, but because Winifred only cared for persons who might be useful to her, and now this ridiculous Olive with her romantic history, might be very useful indeed. The point at issue was the bestowal of the Shakespeare prize of several hundred dollars, given each year by Madame Van Mater to the Junior students in Jessica Hunt’s class. Mention has been made before that the three girls who stood closest in line for this prize were Winifred, Olive and Gerry. Now Winifred supposed that Olive would of course withdraw from the contest, since she could hardly take a prize presented by her own grandmother, but what Winifred feared was that Olive might throw the balance of her influence in Gerry’s favor. Very carefully she now undertook to show her change of feeling toward the ranch girls without offending them or making them suspicious by too great haste. A confidential talk with Jessica Hunt, who had always been their friend, was one of the methods Winifred first employed, but there was little assistance to be had from Jessica. For in the first place Jessica declared immediately that Olive was not to give up her effort to win the Shakespeare prize. Jessica had talked the matter over both with Olive and Miss Winthrop and they had decided in council that Olive need not give up her cherished ambition on account of her altered connection with Madame Van Mater. The prize had been freely offered without reservations to whatever girl in the Junior class should have the best yearly record, write the best Shakespeare essay at the close of the school year and give the best recitation from any one of the Shakespeare plays.

Not approving of Olive’s continuance in the contest, Winifred had then freely expressed her opinion to Jessica and afterwards to Olive, but though her manner was now entirely friendly, her protest had not the least effect upon Olive’s decision. Indeed, when things had settled down into routine again Olive continued to work harder than ever during the following winter and spring months. Of course, her position among her classmates had altered somewhat; Margaret and Gerry were both her friends as well as a number of other girls who had never been actively disagreeable, but with Winifred, Olive could not keep up more than a faint pretense of friendliness. At heart the two girls did not like one another and no amount of veneering can ever cover a real antagonism of temperament. They exchanged greetings in their class rooms and several times Winifred called on the ranch girls, but as her visits were never returned, she had to try other methods of softening the hostility her own unkindness had created, hoping that before the school year was over something would give her a chance to win their liking.

One month after the return of the Primrose Hall students from their Christmas holidays the Theta Sorority had solemnly and with distinguished rites received Olive and Jean into their mystic order. When finally the invitation, so much discussed, had been extended to the two ranch girls they had not known what to do in the matter. Of course, they had not wished to show continued ill feeling, so with Jessica’s advice, had joined the society, afterwards greatly enjoying the pretty club house and the frequent informal entertainments which the sorority gave during the rest of the school year.

So month after month rolled pleasantly and less eventfully on at Primrose Hall. Weekly visits at the command of her grandmother were still made by Olive to “The Towers.” At first Miss Winthrop had been in the habit of accompanying her and later Jean and Frieda, but there were times when pilgrimages had to be made alone. Why they had to be made at all Olive did not understand, for Madame Van Mater still showed but little liking for the granddaughter whom circumstances and Miss Winthrop had surely thrust upon her. If she liked any one of the three ranch girls it was Jean, for as usual Jean had not really felt the least fear of her and when they had made their first call it was with difficulty that she refrained from giving her hostess a piece of her mind in regard to her treatment of Olive. Perhaps Madame Van Mater’s age prevented her from receiving the scolding and perhaps her manner. For instead Jean told her the story of the ranch girls’ discovery of Olive and of how much she had previously suffered. And perhaps this story worked as well as the scolding, since the old mistress of “The Towers” abruptly invited Jean to tell her nothing more of this woman Laska, but of their life at the Rainbow Ranch. Although all three girls could be eloquent on the subject of the ranch, Jean was allowed the floor and three times in the course of the conversation Madame Van Mater actually had laughed aloud, a proceeding most unusual with her. Perhaps after all, in spite of her hardness and pride, the old woman had not been altogether happy over her treatment of her son’s child, even though she believed that her son had forfeited her love and consideration by his own actions. But whatever her reasons, thus far kept to herself, Olive was forced to continue the weekly calls.

One afternoon in April, when Miss Winthrop was busy with school matters and Jean and Frieda were engaged in a game of basketball, Olive found herself compelled to go alone to see her grandmother. And she was particularly vexed over this special visit, as she had wished to join the other girls in their game.

Always until this afternoon Olive had been received by Madame Van Mater with entire formality in the old drawing room, where they had had their two memorable meetings, but to-day she found the drawing room empty and while she waited a maid came to say that she was kindly to walk upstairs.

Anything was better than the stiffness and coldness of the old drawing room! Because the spring day was cool, Olive on going upstairs found her grandmother before an open fire wrapped about with silk shawls and comforts. Her hair was, of course, piled as high as usual and her costume as handsome, but it was plain to see that she was not so well.

“Kindly don’t come near me, as I am suffering from a severe cold,” she announced, as Olive approached to shake hands with her, never having at any time offered her any more intimate greeting.

Olive sat down, trying to look properly interested, but really feeling bored and uncomfortable at the thought of the next half hour. These calendar-like visits and the fact that Jack Ralston was still a prisoner in New York were the only worries she now seemed to have at Primrose Hall.

“I am sorry you are ill,” she began politely, only to have her remark waved aside.

“I am not ill,” Madame Van Mater returned, “only not well; but if I were there are other more important matters than my health which I wish to discuss with you this afternoon; therefore am I very glad to see you alone.”

There was no answer to be made to this statement. Olive had never attempted to be hypocritical with her grandmother by pretending to feel any affection for her. She now simply sat perfectly still and respectful, waiting to hear what was to be said next. But rarely had she looked more attractive than on this afternoon. In the first place, her walk had given her a bright color and she was wearing a particularly becoming frock.

Miss Winthrop had insisted that Olive always dress with great care on these visits to her grandmother, so this special frock, which Ruth lately had sent from New York, was now worn for the first time. It was of some soft material of silk and wool made with a short waist and softly clinging skirt of a bright golden brown with a girdle of brown velvet. Olive was very slender always and of only medium height, but her dark coloring was rich and unusual and now her expression was gayer and in some unconscious way she seemed more confident and less timid in her manner than formerly.

For several moments after her first long speech Madame Van Mater continued to study the appearance of the young girl sitting opposite her, and then, without the least warning of her intention, said abruptly: “Olive, I suppose you have not understood why I have insisted on your coming to see me so regularly and constantly since my discovery of your connection with me. You may, of course, have guessed, but if you have not I am prepared to tell you this afternoon. I have been studying you and I am now willing to say that I have in the past done you a great injustice. However much my son disappointed me by his choice of an occupation and by his marriage to your mother instead of Katherine Winthrop, I had no real right to cast off from me all responsibility in regard to his child. You are not altogether what I would have you to be, you have less social ease of manner and less conversational ability than I desire in my granddaughter; but I am prepared to overlook these faults in you now, Olive, or at least to give you time to conquer them. What I am coming to is this. I have recently decided to make reparation to you by having you come here to live with me when your year at Primrose Hall is passed, and if I find you as refined and as capable of being managed as I now suppose you to be, I am prepared to change my will, making you heir to the greater part of my estate and giving my grand-niece and nephew, Donald and Elizabeth Harmon, only the portion formerly intended for you. You need not thank me; I am doing this simply because I wish to do it. And also because it will please Katherine Winthrop, who is one of the few persons for whom I have always cared.”

Olive smiled, although the smile did not really cross her lips, but seemed somehow to drift across her entire face. “I had no intention of thanking you, grandmother,” she returned quietly, “only of refusing your offer. It may be very kind of you to desire me to live with you, but I thought you understood that nothing and no one in the world could ever persuade me to stop living with the ranch girls so long as they wish me to be with them. And even after we are grown up and they marry or anything else happens, why, even then, I have plans of my own.”

“Ranch girls, fiddlesticks,” exclaimed Madame Van Mater, far more inelegantly than one would have thought possible to her. “Of course, I wish to say nothing against these friends of yours; under the circumstances I am even prepared to be grateful to them for their kindness to you, but surely you cannot expect to live forever on their bounty, and what can they offer you in the way of social opportunity? I believe they have no parents to introduce them into society, only this chaperon named Ruth Drew and some man or other who manages their ranch.”

Olive flushed and then smiled. “I don’t believe I am very anxious or very well fitted for social opportunity,” she answered, “but I don’t think you need worry about the ranch girls, for when the time comes for them to take any part in society I am sure they will find opportunities enough. I wrote Jack only a few weeks ago, ten days after her operation was over, that as soon as she was well enough and whenever she wanted me to, I would go back with her to the ranch or we would travel or do whatever was best for her. Of course, we don’t any of us know yet whether Jack’s operation was successful, but Jean and Frieda and I have positively made up our minds that nothing will induce us to be separated from her after this year.”

“You are talking school girl nonsense,” Madame Van Mater returned coldly, “but naturally I do not care to argue this question with you. I shall have Katherine Winthrop put the matter before you. But you can rest assured, Olive, of these two things: In the first place, that if at any time you displease me I can leave my money to any one whom I may select, as my husband’s will gave his estate entirely into my hands; and in the second place, that if I desire to control your actions, you are not yet of age and I, and not the ranch girls, am your natural guardian.”

Very few times in her life had Olive ever known what it was to be violently angry, and yet no matter how gentle one’s nature anger must get the best of all of us now and then. Quickly the girl now got up from her chair and crossing the room faced Madame Van Mater with an expression as determined as her own. “Please understand that I do not want to defraud either Donald or Elizabeth Harmon of the money you have always promised them. They have been very kind since the discovery of my connection with them and of course you must be more fond of them than you can ever be of me. The truth of the matter is that though I don’t want to be rude or unfair, I do not like you, grandmother, nor do I feel that I can ever forgive the years of your neglect of me. Do you think it is quite fair for you now to speak of being my natural guardian when for so many years you desired nothing so much as that my name should never be mentioned to you? Please don’t let us talk of this ever, ever any more, but understand that I shall never leave the ranch girls.”

Plainly Madame Van Mater was amazed at Olive’s unexpected anger, for until this moment her granddaughter had always seemed to her rather too gentle and shy. Now the old woman simply shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “You may go,” she replied, “but of course, Olive, I shall decide later what course in regard to you I shall consider it advisable to take.”

So with scarlet cheeks and feeling more obstinate than ever before in her life, Olive, finding herself dismissed, rushed for consolation to Primrose Hall.

CHAPTER XXIII
“MAY TIME IS GAY TIME”

May had arrived and with it the first warm spring weather along the Hudson River valley. Now the river was often crowded with sail boats dipping their white and gray canvases toward the sky and toward the water like the wings of a seagull; motor boats chugged along, making more noise than automobiles; while the steam yachts, ever the aristocrats among all water craft, sailing into their own harbors up and down the Hudson shores, ever and anon put forth again as though intending to leave home behind for adventures on the open sea. All the hills beyond and near by the neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow were like mammoth bouquets with their fragrance and beauty upturned to the sun, while within the meadows and fields and gardens were a greater variety of wild-flowers than can be found in many other places in this land.

Now at last the ranch girls understood why Miss Katherine Winthrop’s old home had been called “Primrose Hall” long before ever the school was thought of. For wild primroses blossomed everywhere, although the season was late, until the garden about the old place looked like the famous field of “The Cloth of Gold.”

As much as possible on these bright May days the students at Primrose Hall lived out of doors, but with the school year drawing to a close it was not always easy to desert lessons and the thought of approaching examinations.

One afternoon Jean and Frieda had arranged themselves in a corner of one of the big verandas with a table between them and a screen carefully set up to protect them from interruption. The girls were not talking, indeed an utter silence had reigned between them for the last ten minutes, broken only by the squeak of Frieda’s pen writing its last essay for the present term and by an occasional sigh from Jean from the depth of an oration by Cicero.

Stealing along outside the defensive wall of this screen a short time later mysterious footsteps might be heard, not of one pair of feet but of several, and yet not a single head appeared above it.

Frowning, Jean listened and then went on with her work, determined not to be lured from the strict path of duty.

“Whatever geese are outside the screen,” she thought to herself, “seeing our sign on it, ‘Positively No Admittance, Studying,’ will go away and leave us in peace.”

But when a screen falls to the floor with a bang only a few inches from where one is seated, certainly no degree of devotion to the study of literature and the classics will prevent one from jumping up with a scream. And this Jean and Frieda did at the same instant, and behold, there, with only the prostrate screen dividing them, were Gerry and Margaret, Lucy and Mollie Johnson, besides several other members of their Junior class!

“The city has fallen and the prisoners are ours!” Gerry announced, pointing a pen at Jean’s heart as an improvised dagger.

Jean tried not to look cross. “Look here, girls, what do you want with us?” she demanded. “You know it isn’t fair to come interrupting a fellow at his labors, and Miss Winthrop——”

“Oh, Miss Winthrop be—any old thing,” Gerry answered saucily. “Do you suppose that when school is nearly over that we care half so much for the views and wishes of our lady principal as we do earlier in the year, when we might have to live on under the shadow of her displeasure? However, on this one occasion the fear of that august personage need not darken our young lives, since she has given her consent to what I am now about to propose. Oh, well, since it is Margaret’s party, I suppose I had best let her extend the actual invitation, while I beg you to accept it beforehand.”

Jean put up two protesting hands, but Frieda showed no such moral hesitancy. “Please don’t ask Frieda and me to do anything agreeable this afternoon,” Jean pleaded, “for we simply can’t accept any invitation, and yet if you ask us we may.”

Margaret Belknap laughed. “Of course you will when you hear what it is. You must get your coats and hats at once and come and drive with us for a mile or so to the nearest landing pier and there father and Cecil will be waiting for us in our yacht to take us for a sail.”

“Oh, my goodness gracious me!” exclaimed Frieda ecstatically, gathering her school paraphernalia into her arms, “and to think that I have never been on a yacht or even a sailboat in my whole life!”

Apparently there was to be no further question of their studies this afternoon, for Jean and Frieda now fairly leaped over the overturned screen in their efforts to get up to their room for hats and coats without delay.

However, but two minutes had passed, a not sufficient time for Jean to have made preparations for the trip, when she was seen slowly returning toward her group of friends.

“Margaret, Gerry,” she begged, “if the other girls will please excuse us, I want to speak to you privately for half a minute.”

Jean’s face was flushed and her manner embarrassed. “Please don’t think I am ungrateful for your invitation, Margaret,” she said softly, “but really I don’t believe I had better go with you this afternoon after all. Frieda says she will go,” and unconsciously the speaker put an added emphasis on the verb will.

Margaret, hurt at her friend’s attitude, did not answer at once, particularly as Gerry hardly gave her the opportunity.

“Will you kindly tell us, Jean Bruce, what has happened to make you change your mind in the distance between the veranda and your bedroom door?” she inquired. “You need not tell me that you won’t go for a sail on the Hudson for the first time in your life because you love your Cicero so.”

Jean shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. “Well, not exactly.”

“Oh, Margaret, for heaven’s sake explain to Jean that we have asked Olive too, but that Olive says she positively can’t join us. Of course she is working on that plagued old Shakespeare essay of hers. And to think that once I believed I had a chance at that Shakespeare prize.”

At Gerry’s first words Jean’s face had magically cleared. “Oh, if Margaret wants Olive too, I will make her come along with us, she shall not be such a grind,” she protested. But before she could vanish for the second time Margaret and Gerry both clutched at her skirts.

“Don’t urge Olive to come with us, for you see we don’t really want her, and only asked her because we knew she couldn’t come.” Margaret explained hastily, and then seeing Jean’s face crimson with anger and resentment, she gave her an affectionate shake.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, when will you ranch girls get over being so touchy about one another? You know that now we know Olive better, we like her as much as any girl in our class. To tell you the truth, it is just because we are trying to fix up some plan to show Olive how we feel toward her that we did not want her to come along with us now. It seemed to us this would be our best chance to let you know our idea and to see what you think about it. I suppose I might have told you this at first,” Margaret ended, “only I am not a tactful person, and perhaps put things pretty badly.”

“You certainly did,” Jean laughed, “but now I will hurry and get my belongings, as I am perfectly dying to hear what you have in mind.”

An hour later eight members of the Junior class, Frieda and Mollie and Miss Rebecca Sterne, having arrived at a private landing pier not far from their school, were assisted aboard the steam yacht “Marathon” by Cecil Belknap and his father.

During the first half of the sail there was little real conversation among the girls, only “Ohs” and “Ahs” of delight at the beauty of the river scenery and the wonders of the yacht. But by and by on their return journey when Margaret and her guests were seated around the salon dining table drinking afternoon tea, Gerry, who never could bear putting off things, turned to her hostess.

“Look here, Margaret,” she said in tones loud enough for the entire company to overhear, “if your father and brother will pardon us, I vote that we plunge right into the subject we have come together to discuss this afternoon. I suppose your father and Cecil must both have heard something of Olive’s story by now.”

Margaret nodded. Jean was not so sure that she cared to have Olive’s difficulties at school discussed before Cecil Belknap, whom she did not yet thoroughly like, but as Margaret’s guest she did not like to protest.

Gerry then leaned across the table toward the ranch girls with her teaspoon poised in the air.

“Look here, Jean, Frieda, everybody, it is just like this. You know that when the three ranch girls came to Primrose Hall most of us liked two of the three girls right from the first, after a few of their western peculiarities had rubbed up against our eastern ones. But with the third girl, with Olive—well, it was different. In the first place, Olive was shy and did not look exactly like the rest of us (she is much prettier than I am, for example); in the second place, the story was circulated about among the girls that Olive was part Indian, the daughter of a dreadfully ignorant Indian woman from whom she had run away and that now she was trying to pretend that she was no relation to her own mother. Of course, had any one of us ever looked at Olive very hard we must have known that this story was an untruth, or else only a half truth, which is the worst kind of a lie. But we were too prejudiced and Olive too shy to stand up for herself and—oh, what is the use of my going into this horrid part of my story when I want to come to the fairy tale at the end! After a while some of us girls did begin to see a little further than the end of our noses and to suspect that a girl as clever as Olive in her studies, as lovely in disposition and as refined and gentle in her manner, could hardly be what we had believed her, simply couldn’t. And now I want to say just one thing in excuse for myself. I did know that Olive was a lady and more than a lady, a trump, before I learned that she was not an Indian girl, but a heroine,” and here Gerry paused an instant to sigh and to get her breath in order to continue to express her romantic delight in the change of the stranger girl’s fortune.

Hurriedly, however, Margaret Belknap now seized this moment’s respite.

“I knew that Olive was charming too,” she interposed, “and I did try to be nicer to her before I went away for the Christmas holidays, intending on my return to ask her to overlook the past and be friends. I suppose there were other girls in our class who felt the same way and had this same intention?”

As Margaret paused four or five other voices answered: “There certainly were,” before she went on. “Yes, I know. But after we got back from our holidays it was then too late to make Olive believe in our good intentions, because in that short time things had so changed for her that she had become more interesting than any of the rest of us. You can see, Jean and Frieda, just what we have been up against?” (The well-broughtup Margaret was not conscious of using slang at this moment and only her brother smiled at her.) “If our Junior class had then rushed up at once to Olive and apologized to her, after we had learned of what had befallen her, why we did not believe that she would care very much for such a belated repentance. So for months now we have been trying to think of some pretty and tactful way to show our real feeling toward her and now we hope we have at last hit upon the right plan.”

“Do let me tell the rest, Margaret, you have talked such a long time,” and though a laugh went all around the table at her expense, Gerry again burst forth: “Everybody here knows that we are to have our school finals now in a short time and see the Seniors graduate and the Juniors, who are trying for the Shakespeare prize, give their recitations before the committee specially chosen to pass on them? Then of course we have luncheon and afterwards a dance on the lawn with all our guests at the commencement present. But there is one thing that perhaps you two ranch girls don’t know and that is that we always choose one of the Primrose Hall girls as our Queen for commencement day. Of course she must be selected from among the entire school, not from any one class; but Margaret and some of the other Juniors and I have been talking things over with the Seniors and they say it is our turn to have the Queen and that they are willing to—you know what we want to do, don’t you, Jean and Frieda?”

Jean bowed her head showing that she understood, but Frieda still appeared mystified.

“I think it would be a beautiful thing for you girls to do, if you really wish to do it,” Jean answered a bit huskily, although she was trying not to show any special emotion before Cecil Belknap, who had been watching her pretty closely all afternoon through his same hateful pair of eyeglasses.

“Beautiful to do what?” Frieda now demanded, turning first toward Mollie and then toward Lucy Johnson for the explanation of this everlasting preamble of Gerry’s and Margaret’s.

“Why, choose Olive for our School Queen for commencement day,” Gerry returned, “and as our finals take place in May, I suppose you can call her ‘Queen of the May’ if you like. For you see she does preside over our dances all afternoon, leads any special ones, and we pay her whatever homage we can. Now, please, don’t you, Cecil, or any other human being at this table start reciting: ‘You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear’,” she concluded, “for if it were not for that tiresome, weepy poem, I should think the choosing of a May Queen one of the prettiest customs in the world. But I can assure you that at least eleven out of every twelve persons who come to our commencement feel called upon to spout that poem; I suppose because it is so ridiculously easy to remember.”

As soon as the speaker finished Margaret jumped up from the table, her guests immediately following suit. “Then it is all settled,” she exclaimed happily, lifting high her pretty teacup, “so let us drink to Olive as our next queen and to the other ranch girls.”

“I suppose you mean Jack too, even if you don’t know her,” Frieda suggested loyally before joining in the toast. And Gerry’s hearty “Of course,” ended the pretty scene.

For now the entire party of girls, deserting the salon, made their way again out on to the deck of the yacht. Of the group Jean was the last to leave, followed by Cecil Belknap.

“Oh, I say, Miss Bruce, will you go a bit slow?” he asked. “My sister tells me that she has asked you to pay us a visit at our cottage on the Massachusetts coast this summer and I hope you are going to be jolly enough to come, for I should enjoy it most awfully.”

“You wouldn’t really, not a visit from a western ranch girl?” Jean’s eyes danced; “but it is very kind of you to say so,” she ended prettily, extending her hand to the young man.

Cecil was looking out the open door to where the lights were now twinkling forth one by one along the side of the Jersey shore. “No, it is not what I would call good of me,” he replied quietly. “I thought I told you at our house at Christmas that I liked you and that if there wasn’t any fellow out West, I would like to see more of you anyhow. Do say you will make us the visit?”

With a new dignity that a year of Primrose Hall had helped develop in her, Jean now shook her head. “No,” she replied quietly, “I have already explained to Margaret that I shan’t be able to come to her this summer. You see, my cousin, Jack Ralston, whether she is better or not, is to leave the hospital in New York early in June and then we expect to go back to the Rainbow Ranch for the summer time. After that we may go, who knows where?”

The young people went out on deck together as the yacht was now running in toward shore, and beyond the landing pier in the soft, spring dusk the travelers could see the old school carryall and in another carriage Olive and Miss Winthrop waiting to drive the party back to Primrose Hall. But before anybody was allowed to leave the yacht Gerry had solemnly whispered to each one of them. “Remember, please, Olive is not to hear a single, solitary word about our plan. It is to be a secret up to the very last minute.”

CHAPTER XXIV
SHAKESPEARE’S HEROINES

“I declare, I never saw such a spectacle as I am in my life,” Gerry Ferrows protested, turning half way around to get a back view of herself in her bedroom mirror. “You look perfectly lovely, Winifred, and I would not be a bit surprised if you get the Shakespeare prize after all, even though Olive has the best class record for the year and I the highest mark for my essay. We are so close together in this contest that the least thing may change the balance. It is my private opinion that whoever gives the best Shakespeare recitation to-day will receive the prize.” And Gerry sighed and then laughed, as she stooped to adjust her doublet and hose. “Dear me, Winifred, why couldn’t I have been born a stately blonde beauty like you so that I might have appeared as lovely Ophelia instead of having to represent Rosalind on account of my short hair?”

Winifred also laughed, just the least bit complacently, happening at that moment to catch sight of her own fair reflection. She was dressed in a long clinging robe of some soft white material and her pale blonde hair, bound with a fillet of silver, hung loose about her neck. In her hand she held a sheet of paper with her speech written upon it, which she glanced at a little nervously every now and then.

“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;

The expectancy and rose of the fair state.”

“Dear me, Gerry, don’t talk of my winning the prize by my recitation,” Winifred groaned. “I have the most dreadful case of stage fright already, and to think that I have to make the first speech!” She glanced up at the clock on their mantel. “It is only a half hour now before we must go downstairs and I believe that there have never been so many guests at one of our commencements before. I suppose it is because the day is so beautiful that we can have our whole entertainment outdoors. I wish we had a front window, for I am sure I have heard at least a hundred automobiles drive up to the house. If we go to the ranch girls’ room we can see out into the yard and I can have a look at Olive. I am simply dying to find out what she looks like!”

Gerry shook her head positively. “Jean says that no one is to come near Olive; she even means to go downstairs with her herself and to slip around to the entrance to the stage in the pavilion, so that no one shall dare speak to her. So I suppose if the truth be known, Winifred, Olive is just about as badly scared as you are and a good deal more so, considering how dreadfully shy she is. But don’t fear that she will not look pretty. I heard Jessica Hunt say the other night that she never saw any one so exquisite in her life as Olive in her Shakespeare costume. And I feel rather proud because Olive chose Perdita in ‘The Winter’s Tale’ for her character because I asked her to. She had once made me think of a description of Perdita.”

Winifred flushed angrily and then began walking up and down the room. “See here, Gerry Ferrows, I do think it is just too hateful for you to have kept on encouraging Olive to try for this prize. It will look awfully queer to people if she accepts a prize from her own grandmother anyhow, and I do need it most dreadfully.” In her nervousness and temper Winifred was almost in tears, though not for worlds would she consciously have marred her lovely appearance.

A low whistle came from between Gerry’s red lips. “Please don’t leave me out of the race altogether, sweet Winifred,” she begged. “I may not have so great beauty as you and Olive to commend me, but remember:

“‘From the east to western Ind,

No jewel is like Rosalind.

Her worth, being mounted on the wind,

Through all the world bears Rosalind.’”

Then Gerry, marching over with an exaggerated, swashbuckling stride toward Winifred, smote her on the shoulder with more friendliness than she had shown her in many weeks. “Come, Winifred, what is the use of our worrying now? I believe I need this prize money quite as much as you do, since my father has just made some unfortunate investments and may not be able to let me come back to old Primrose Hall to graduate next year. And of course we know this prize would mean our tuition. But we must take what comes with a good grace, for you and Olive and I have an equally fair chance with our speeches to-day. So if Olive wins we ought not to fuss, for I can perfectly well understand how she wants the glory of winning and not the prize itself. She told me that she had been working for this prize ever since she first came to Primrose Hall in order to show her beloved Jack Ralston how much she had appreciated the opportunities she had given her.”

In reply Winifred merely shrugged her shoulders scornfully, but at the same instant, a bell sounding out on the lawn and a great clapping of hands, she again fell to studying the paper in her hand. “Good gracious, there is someone’s speech just ending!” she exclaimed, “so our turns will come soon.”

And Gerry, even though she was sure of being letter perfect in Rosalind’s saucy reply to Orlando: “No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed,” opened her “As You Like It” and began once more to read over her part.

So five, ten, fifteen minutes went by and then Jessica Hunt’s voice was heard outside in the hall: “Where are my Shakespeare heroines?” she demanded. “Gerry, Winifred, please put your long coats around you and come on downstairs now. The coast is clear and it is almost time for your speeches. I will tell Olive.”

Winifred had indeed been right: no commencement day at Primrose Hall had ever been so beautiful as this one and never before had one called forth so many guests.

Built as like as possible to an old Greek outdoor theatre, a stage had been erected at the edge of a grove of trees not many yards from the great house and a kind of covered arbor temporarily arranged so that the girls who took part in the commencement exercises might pass from the house to the stage without being seen by the audience. The stage had no curtain and only the sky for a canopy, a rarely blue sky with the white clouds that melt before the deeper warmth of June. On either side were piled great branches of trees freshly brought in from the woods, delicately green with the early leaves of spring, and the floor of the stage was strewn with wild-flowers, buttercups, violets and daisies.

In the yard facing the pretty impromptu theatre the audience was seated, perhaps two hundred persons, so that any girl making her first public appearance before it might reasonably be frightened. Perhaps it was the beauty of the day, perhaps the novelty of Miss Winthrop’s stage arrangements, for surely no audience had ever appeared more enthusiastic than hers, and as each girl had stepped forth on the stage, apparently entering from the heart of a woods on to a carpet of flowers, the applause and interest had increased.

The Shakespeare heroines were to be the closing feature of the programme. Therefore, in the front row facing the stage were half a dozen men and women whom Miss Winthrop had invited to act as judges, and a few feet from them in a chair next Miss Winthrop’s sat old Madame Van Mater, the owner of “The Towers” and the donor of the Shakespeare prize. Her appearance at the commencement had been a surprise to everybody, but whether she came because of her interest in her newly-found granddaughter or whether because of her affection for Miss Winthrop, no one had been told.

When Winifred Graham first came out upon the stage such a murmur of admiration ran through the audience that its echo reached to her, giving her just the confidence she had needed for the making of her speech. And truly her beauty justified the admiration, for she was wearing the costume that best suited her and was most effective against the natural background of evergreens and flowers. The sunshine falling between the leaves of the trees overhead touched her pale blonde hair to a deeper gold, making fairy shadow patterns on the pure white of her dress.

Without a trace of the nervousness that had haunted her upstairs, nor a moment’s faltering over her lines, Winifred recited Ophelia’s famous description of Hamlet, ending with the words, “O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see.” Then for just a moment she paused with a pretty, pathetic gesture and her gaze swept the faces of her judges before she vanished from the stage amid much clapping of hands. Three times Winifred was recalled by the audience and at each call Gerry’s heart sank lower and lower in her pretty high-top boots.

“There is no use my trying now,” she grumbled, “because Winifred has already won.” When a friend standing near whispered something in her ear she laughed in her usual good-humored fashion. “Oh, yes, I suppose I can recite better than Winifred, but what avails it me when I can’t look like the goddess of spring as she does at this moment there on the stage with her arms full of flowers.”

Gerry and two of her closest friends were under the enclosed arbor in the spot nearest the entrance to the stage, as her recitation came next, and a few feet away Olive, closely guarded by Jean, was also waiting.

Hurriedly Jessica Hunt rushed in, whispering something to Jean. Then she darted across to Gerry. “Winifred is coming off now for the last time; are you ready? Winifred looked perfectly lovely, but she did not speak distinctly enough. Remember it is difficult to hear out of doors.”

Then came Gerry’s cue. A little nearsighted without her glasses, she tripped over some branches, making a headlong rush on to the stage in her entrance, as though Rosalind, really trying to find her way through an unknown woods, had stumbled in the underbrush.

No one had ever been able to call Gerry Ferrows handsome, and yet in the character and costume of Rosalind she was certainly at her best. Perhaps the description that the heroine gives of herself in masquerade will best describe Gerry’s present appearance.

“More than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtle axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand and—in my heart

Lie there what hidden woman’s fear there will—

We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside.”

And truly if Gerry did feel any womanish fear during her recitation she did not in any way betray it, for at once the gayety of Rosalind, her wit and gallant courage, seemed to have fallen like a mantle upon Gerry. Twice her audience laughed aloud in the course of her recitation and once two of the judges nodded at each other, which had not happened during Winifred’s speech. Nevertheless, though Gerry came twice on to the stage again to receive her flowers and applause, she was certain that unless Olive made a much better showing than she had, Winifred would be the winner of their contest.

For some unexplainable reason there was a slight wait before the third girl, who was to close the competition, made her appearance. And this was unfortunate for Olive. In the first place, the large audience was growing a little bit tired and hungry, and in the second place, it gave them the opportunity to begin talking of Olive’s curious history, retailing to one another as much or as little as each one of them knew.

Olive’s costume was a gift from Ruth and Jack, sent from New York and shown to no one before the entertainment save Jessica Hunt and Miss Winthrop. No one will ever know how much pleasure the planning of it had given to Jack Ralston in the tiresome days at the hospital. Not that she and Ruth were Shakespeare scholars, only it had happened that years before Ruth had seen a famous actress, who soon afterwards retired from the stage, in this very character of Perdita in “The Winter’s Tale” and had never forgotten the details of her dress.

Quietly, when but few persons were looking, Olive at last skipped on to the stage. She was wearing a pale pink crepe dress that came down to her ankles, covered with an overdress of flowered tulle. Her long and curiously black hair was braided in the two familiar loose braids with a single pink flower at one side, and on her arm she carried a basket of spring flowers.

Had all her friends and acquaintances not been convinced from the first that Olive would be frightened to death before so many people? It was odd, therefore, that as she first came down toward the edge of the platform she smiled assurance at Miss Winthrop, who was trying her best not to appear too anxious or too interested in her favorite pupil.

Then, Olive, before beginning Perdita’s speech, started slowly to dance an old English folk dance such as the country people must have danced in rustic England long before even Shakespeare’s time. Dancing was an art with Olive, so that before she commenced her speech her audience was won.

Still not showing the least trace of fright or nervousness, when her dance was concluded, Olive stepped forward again to the center of the open-air stage:

“I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might

Become your time of day; and yours, and yours—”

She looked from one face to the other in the rows of people watching her as though addressing Perdita’s pretty speech to them.

Then Miss Winthrop lost her color and old Madame Van Mater stiffened and her eyes flashed. “Foolish girl, she has forgotten her part and is going to make a spectacle of herself and me!” she whispered in her friend’s ear. “I wish I had never come.”

And apparently Olive had forgotten her lines or else grown suddenly ill, for she continued standing perfectly still and speechless for a period of one, two minutes, though surely it seemed like ten, while waves of color swept over her face, turning it crimson and then leaving it pale. “Oh, I cannot believe it,” she whispered softly to herself, never taking her eyes from a central place in the audience, as though on this exquisite May morning she had suddenly seen a ghost.

What secret message traveled across the heads of the audience to the girl on the stage, no one knows, but Olive must have caught it, for she smiled again and dipping her hand in her basket of wild-flowers appeared to present them to various characters, who in Shakespeare’s play stand grouped around the figure of Perdita as she makes this speech:

“Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried—”

As Olive spoke slowly she drew her flowers from her basket, dropping them to the ground and moving gradually backwards toward the entrance to the stage. Then, when she had recited the last line of her speech, she made a quick bow and before her audience realized that her speech was actually over, had disappeared.

Whether the applause that followed after her equalled Winifred’s and Gerry’s she did not know and at the moment did not care. For Jean was waiting only a few yards away and Olive rushed to her at once.

“Oh, Jean dear,” she said half laughing and half crying, “I didn’t see? It can’t be true! Oh, why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because we did not want you to be too excited,” Jean answered, trying to speak calmly, “but oh, Olive, please hurry, for Jack wishes you to come to her at once.”

CHAPTER XXV
“JACK”

Under a tall linden tree shedding its yellowy perfumed blossoms about her a young girl stood alone, waiting. She was pale and fragile and leaned slightly on a cane; her hair was a deep bronze, the color of copper in the sunlight, and her gray eyes, were now unusually dark with emotion. She was evidently trying to appear less disturbed than she felt, for her head was tilted back the least bit and her lips were held close together; indeed, her whole attitude suggested a strong effort at self-control.

“Jack!” Two figures came running across the lawn entirely unconscious of the number of persons about them, and the girl in the costume of an English shepherdess arrived at the desired goal first.

“Olive!” There are no adequate words that can be spoken on first meeting after a long separation from one we love. And so for several moments the two ranch girls clung together trying hard to keep back their tears, while Jean, standing a little apart from them, pretended to laugh at their emotion.

“But, Jack, you are well. Why didn’t you let us know? When did it happen? There are so many things I want to ask you and yet I don’t care whether you answer me or not, I am so glad you are here.” Olive said at last.

“Perhaps it wasn’t quite fair of me, Olive, to have taken you so much by surprise. Jean and Frieda had a few days of warning. But you see it was like this,” Jack explained, leaning a little more heavily on her cane, although neither Jean nor Olive noticed it. “When my operation was over neither the surgeons nor anybody knew just at first whether or not I was to get well. So of course Ruth did not wish to write and tell you until we were certain. Then after a little while when I began to get stronger I thought how I should love to surprise you by appearing out here at Primrose Hall just as I have done to-day. Of course I did not mean to put off coming until commencement day,” Jack continued apologetically, “but somehow I did not get well quite as fast as I expected, until it had to be now or never, so Ruth wrote Jean and Frieda to expect us this morning but not to let you know, for we were afraid that seeing me would somehow affect your speech.”

“It nearly finished it altogether,” Olive returned. “Just think how I felt, Jack, when suddenly in the midst of my poor effort I saw you standing straight up in the crowd looking just as you used to do.”

“I shouldn’t have stood up, Ruth tried her best to hide me, only I got so excited.” Jack wavered a little. “Jean, of course I am perfectly well, but would you mind getting me a chair; I am not accustomed to standing so long.”

Feeling dreadfully ashamed of her thoughtlessness, Jean hurried off, returning in another minute empty handed. But following close behind her was a tall man in a costume that somehow looked a little out of place at Primrose Hall. Also he walked with a freedom and power that did not speak of city streets, neither did the deep tan of his skin. He was carrying the big, comfortable chair for Jean.

“Oh, Jim, Mr. Colter, I don’t think it fair to give a person so many surprises in one day!” Olive protested.

Jim Colter, the overseer of the Rainbow Ranch and the manager of the Rainbow Mine, was engaged in helping Jack into her chair so that he could not at once shake hands with Olive. But in another moment his big hands closed over hers.

“Don’t talk about surprises, Miss Olive Van Mater,” he replied. “To think I used to laugh at all the yarns in the story books, and here I was raising up a real live heroine out at the Rainbow Ranch, whose history makes most of the fiction tales look real pale! But ain’t it great to see the boss herself again. I couldn’t believe she was getting well when she wrote me; I was like that man from Missouri, ‘you had to show me’.” And here Jim put his hand on top of Jack’s uncovered head.

“Jim Colter, where are you and Jack and everybody?” a new voice demanded. “I promised to let Jack and Olive have just five minutes together alone, and I have, but now I am not going to let my sister get out of my sight again as long as I live!” Frieda had joined the little group under the linden tree just as Jim was finishing his speech and before Olive could answer him.

Now Olive turned again to Jack. “Do you know about everything, my grandmother and all my queer history?” she asked.

“DON’T TALK ABOUT SURPRISES.”

Jack nodded. “Yes, Olive, I do know,” she returned, “and I am awfully glad and awfully sorry, for somehow it seems to make you belong to us less than you used to do. Ruth told me as soon as she thought I was well enough to hear. Didn’t you know that I have even had a letter from your grandmother thanking me for rescuing you from a person by whom she had been deceived, meaning old Laska, I suppose. But goodness gracious, who are all those persons coming towards us now?”

Half a dozen persons were approaching, Madame Van Mater and Miss Winthrop, Ruth Drew and Gerry Ferrows, and bringing up the end of the line Jessica Hunt and Peter Drummond, smiling at one another and apparently unconscious of every one else.

With great solemnity introductions were soon exchanged and then immediately afterwards Gerry Ferrows slipped over next Olive.

“Miss Winthrop said I might be first to tell you that you have received the Shakespeare prize,” she whispered. “The judges voted your speech the most effective, and as you already had the best record for the year in the Junior Shakespeare class, why of course the honors are yours and I want to congratulate you.”

With entire good feeling Gerry put forth her hand toward her victorious rival.

But Olive quickly clasped her own hands behind her. “I won’t be congratulated, Gerry, and I won’t have a prize that I don’t deserve,” she answered. “Tell me, please, who was the second choice?”

“I was, or at least the judges said so, though I entirely disagree with them,” Gerry returned, blushing furiously, for Olive was almost forcibly trying to drag her over to where Madame Van Mater and Miss Winthrop were standing together.

“Yes, the Shakespeare prize is to be yours, Gerry,” Miss Winthrop at once explained. “Olive wanted the pleasure of trying for it just to see what she could do, but Madame Van Mater does not wish the prize given her, and of course under the circumstances Olive does not wish it herself.”

Ten minutes later Jean, Frieda, Olive and Gerry were peremptorily borne away by a number of their classmates. Later on from a kind of throne on one of the Primrose Hall verandas Jack and some of her friends witnessed the pretty ceremony of the crowning of Olive as Queen of the day. For several hours afterwards the dancing out on the lawn continued, Olive raising a silver wand as a signal for each dance to begin and then in royal fashion leading it off herself. Four or five times during the afternoon Olive and Donald Harmon had been partners. Once, when Jack had been watching them, she happened to turn to speak to Madame Van Mater, who sat next her. But whatever she may have intended to say she did not, but instead waited to study her companion’s expression.

There was no doubt that Madame Van Mater was looking distinctly pleased at the sight of Olive and Donald together, for there was almost a smile of satisfaction on her face. Watching her, Jack flushed, biting her lips, then she leaned over and spoke:

“You are very good, Madame Van Mater, to be willing to have Olive go home with us to our ranch this summer. I wonder if afterwards you will do something that is kinder still?” she asked.

With distinct approval Madame Van Mater regarded Jack, for there was an air of distinction and aristocracy about her that was very pleasing.

“It was Katherine Winthrop’s idea that I should not interfere with my granddaughter’s liberty at present,” she replied; “but what more would you have me to do?”

For answer Jack, who was growing weary, leaned back on her sofa cushions looking out over the garden and fields to where afar off she could see just a silver line marking the course of the Hudson River.

“I have been shut up inside a hospital for seven months, Madame Van Mater,” she explained slowly, “and until my accident I don’t believe I had ever been indoors twenty-four hours together in my life. And all the time lately I have been thinking and longing for just two things. One to see our beloved ranch again, to get on horseback and ride for miles and miles over the prairie. And then—”

“And then?” old Madame Van Mater repeated with more interest than you would believe she could show.

Jack laughed. “Why then I want to travel as far and as fast as I can. You see, I have been shut in so long and some days I used to think perhaps I should never see much more of the world than just four walls.” Jack shuddered and then braced her shoulders in her old, determined way. “But I am well now and, as the doctors don’t wish me to be in school, I want you to promise to let Olive go to Europe with Jean and Frieda and me next fall?”

“Europe?” Madame Van Mater reflected a moment. “An excellent idea! I could have planned nothing better for Olive, for travel and experience may give her just the ease and culture she needs. But who will look after you?”

At this moment Ruth Drew slowly approached towards Jack and her companion. She too was looking pale and worn from her long vigil of watching, but she smiled as Jack, reaching forth, took tight hold of her hand.

“Why Miss Drew will chaperon us, of course,” she answered. “She will not go home with us this summer, but she has promised to go abroad afterwards and to stay forever if we wish.”

Before Ruth could do more than make a conventional reply, Miss Winthrop arriving persuaded her old friend to join her in saying farewell to her guests.

So just for a few moments, as all their friends were walking about in the great garden, Ruth and Jack were once more left alone. Not far off they could see Jim Colter slowly approaching them with Jean and Frieda holding on to his hands like little girls.

Jack looked first at Jim and then turned to the older girl at her side.

“I am so sorry, Ruth,” she said, “perhaps I was foolish, but I used to hope in those long empty days at the hospital that when you and Jim saw each other again you would forget what has separated you and only remember you care for one another. Somehow when one has been very ill, love seems the only thing that is really important.”

Ruth flushed until she looked like the old Ruth of those last weeks at the ranch before Jim had made the tragic confession of his past fault to her. “Jim does not care for me any more, Jack dear,” she whispered, although no one was near enough to hear. “He has not spoken to me alone since he arrived in New York, so I suppose he has not forgiven my hardness and narrowness; besides, men forget love very easily.”

Jack shook her head and somehow her expression was happier than it had been the moment before Ruth’s speech. “Jim does not forget,” she answered, “he is the faithfulest, tenderest, kindest person in the world.” And then the oldest ranch girl sighed. “Dear me, isn’t it the horridest thing in the world to have to wait for the nice things to happen?” she asked. “Of course, we all know, Ruth, that some day everything will turn out for the best, but it is just that silly old indefinite word some that makes the waiting so difficult.”

The next volume to be issued in the Ranch Girls’ Series will appear under the title of “The Ranch Girls in Europe.” In this story the histories of the four girls and their chaperon will be more fully developed, for having put childhood and school life behind them, they will enter that broader world of young womanhood, where romance stands ever waiting round the corner.

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Table of Contents

- The Ranch Girls at Boarding School
- CHAPTER I “STILL AS THE NIGHT”
- CHAPTER II IN DISGRACE
- CHAPTER III “GERRY”
- CHAPTER IV GETTING INTO HARNESS
- CHAPTER V NEWS AND A DISCOVERY
- CHAPTER VI HER TEMPTATION
- CHAPTER VII CINDERELLA
- CHAPTER VIII SHADOWS BEFORE
- CHAPTER IX FRIEDA’S MISTAKE
- CHAPTER X THE HOUSE OF MEMORY

- CHAPTER XI “SLEEPY HOLLOW, A LAND OF DREAMS”

- CHAPTER XII WINIFRED GRAHAM AND GERRY
- CHAPTER XIII THE APPEAL TO OLIVE
- CHAPTER XIV “TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE”
- CHAPTER XV THE DANGER OF WEALTH
- CHAPTER XVI ELECTION DAY
- CHAPTER XVII CONGRATULATIONS
- CHAPTER XVIII FANCIES OR MEMORIES?
- CHAPTER XIX NEW YEAR’S EVE
- CHAPTER XX THE TRUE HISTORY OF OLIVE

- CHAPTER XXI JEAN AND FRIEDA RETURN TO PRIMROSE HALL

- CHAPTER XXII READJUSTMENTS
- CHAPTER XXIII “MAY TIME IS GAY TIME”
- CHAPTER XXIV SHAKESPEARE’S HEROINES
- CHAPTER XXV “JACK”
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE