CHAPTER IV
When Jack, the present Mrs. Jim Colter, came out of the house a few moments after the younger girl, she was not aware of Jeanette's departure.
Observing her on the way to the stables, she had no thought of following her.
In fact, Jack distinctly recalled the days when, as one of the original Rainbow Ranch Girls, she had made just such early-morning escapes from her family and the problems that troubled her.
Already she was aware that among the four new Ranch Girls, Jeanette would probably be her chief problem, if she were to succeed in her determination to make friends.
Her husband had assured her otherwise. Jeanette always appeared easy enough to manage, provided one did not interfere with her tastes too seriously. She was boyish and frank and fond of the outdoors, a little as he recalled Jack herself to have been. If she were wilful now and then, she was seldom sullen. Always she was quick to forget an unpleasantness.
Jack had not the same impression. Not knowing Jeanette intimately, yet the year she had spent at Rainbow Lodge had afforded her a better opportunity for observing Jeanette than any one of the other girls.
Rarely ever with any degree of amiability, Jeanette and her own son, Jimmie, had spent a good many hours together. If they did not especially like each other, they had the same interests.
Jeanette was what old-fashioned persons once called a tomboy. She loved to ride and climb, fish and shoot, often excelling Jimmie, who was younger.
Jeanette had never been particularly sweet-tempered with Jimmie. Wanting her own way, she was apt to be difficult when opposed. From the first Jack had seen that Jeanette resented the boy's affection for his guardian, who was now his stepfather. More she resented her father's devotion to the only boy in the family.
If she could be jealous of this relation, how much greater her resentment against a stepmother, with such a strong claim upon her father.
There were breakers ahead.
Her husband had insisted that Eda, the youngest of the four girls, might be a trial. He never had understood her. A little more than a baby at her mother's death, she had been a shy, strange little person, thinking her own thoughts and living her own life with little regard to any one else.
Yet the thought of Eda did not trouble the new stepmother. Eda was young, was devoted to her older sister, and there was time enough to watch her character unfold.
Jack had a shrewd idea that Jeanette had her own way with her sisters more than any of them realized. Lina was studious and calm in temperament. Her interests were more in books than in the outside world. She seemed to love peace and quiet in order to pursue her own tastes. She would be inclined to surrender to Jeanette on some occasions because she was indifferent, on others to avoid argument.
Olivia, who was the gentlest of the four girls, with a wistful, imaginative quality, was under the spell of her next older sister's more active personality.
Without walking any distance from the house, Jack watched Jeanette ride away. She sat her pony fairly well, but more carelessly than Jack herself approved of.
She had no idea of riding before breakfast. She had come outdoors to walk for an hour about the place and watch its awakening.
She went first to the Rainbow Creek, where gold had first been discovered. There was little work going on at the mine at present.
Ralph Merritt, who had married Jean, her cousin, had accepted an engineering position farther West.
Jack regretted the fact that no one of the three other original Rainbow Ranch Girls would be at the old ranch during the present summer. She and her husband had decided this would be wisest. The others had agreed.
Frieda's husband, Professor Russell, having completed his scientific experiment, did not desire to remain longer at the ranch, now that Peace, their little girl, was in better health.
Olive and her husband, Captain Bryan MacDonnell, had returned to England, taking Jacqueline's own son, Jimmie Kent, to visit his father's people.
Returning to the house, Jack found her husband dressed and outdoors searching for her.
"I thought perhaps you might have run away, Mrs. Colter; you know you have in times past."
Jack shook her head.
"Never really run away, Jim, only for a few hours, or at most a day at a time. Now that I have grown elderly I suppose I should give up even such short breaks for liberty. If I ever do again, please remember that I shall always come back to you. What are you intending to do before breakfast?"
Jack made no mention of having seen Jeanette ride off a half hour before, not knowing whether it would meet her father's approval.
"I'm off to the ranch house to see the men before they start to work for the day. If I wait until after breakfast they will have gone. I shall ride out after them later."
Jack laughed.
"Glad to be at home and at work, Jim? A honeymoon is hard on a man, isn't it? No, I won't go with you. I am going into the kitchen for coffee. I want to be here when the girls come downstairs and to preside properly at the breakfast table the first morning of our home-coming. Don't be late."
Jack kept her eyes fastened on her husband for a moment after he turned away.
She was aware that many persons felt their marriage a mistake. Devoted as they were to their guardian, Jean and Olive, the two former Ranch Girls, had hesitated. Only Frieda, who so rarely approved of anything her older sister thought or did, had been openly pleased with Jack's marriage to their former guardian.
"Jim has always been the one person who could make Jack do what she should," Frieda had argued in a tone of relief, as though her own responsibility were partly lifted.
Entering the room for breakfast some little time later, Jack wore a cream-colored muslin dress, with brown shoes and stockings and a brown satin belt. She had a lace kerchief about her throat, which seemed to give her a properly domestic and elderly appearance.
Three of the four new Ranch Girls were waiting and appearing more friendly than the evening before.
Evidently they too had put on especially pretty morning dresses in honor of the occasion.
Jeanette was not present. Either she had failed to return, or else did not wish to come to breakfast until it was actually announced.
"Jeanette has disappeared. I hope you won't think she is rude if she does not get back in time for breakfast. She really should have known better than to be away the first morning of your and father's return," Lina apologized.
Eda, in a pink starched frock, with her black hair in a stiff halo about her face, looked like a slim Princess in a fairy tale. She condescendingly allowed herself to be kissed.
Lina only shook hands, but Olivia put up her lips in a sweet and natural fashion which gave her new stepmother a sensation of satisfaction and relief.
Small wonder that the grave, gentle girl was the favorite of the entire family.
Seeing her father enter at the same moment, she moved swiftly toward him and heard him whisper:
"If everybody were like you, Via, this would be a lovelier world. Where is Jeanette?"
When her absence was explained, he appeared more annoyed than the other girls were accustomed to seeing him.
"I think Jeanette might have postponed her ride a few hours this morning."
As he spoke steps were heard approaching and Jeanette entered the room with an unexpected companion, a tall, fair boy.
She looked flushed and excited. The young fellow appeared pale and weary.
The truth was that Jeanette had raced across the fields in order to be at home at this moment, unmindful of the fact that her companion knew little of riding and found it extremely difficult not to be left behind.
"I have discovered a new neighbor, father," said Jeanette, introducing the newcomer first to him and ignoring the presence of her new stepmother.
To her surprise Cecil Perry stretched out his hand.
"Is this Mrs. Colter? I know you cannot remember me, but I met you several years ago. How glad I am to see some one I have met before!"