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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.