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.
“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:
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.
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:
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:
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.