THERE WERE THREE CRIES OF “OH,” FOLLOWED BY A MOMENT’S SILENCETHERE WERE THREE CRIES OF “OH,” FOLLOWED BY A MOMENT’S SILENCE
THERE WERE THREE CRIES OF “OH,” FOLLOWED BY A MOMENT’S SILENCE
THERE WERE THREE CRIES OF “OH,” FOLLOWED BY A MOMENT’S SILENCE
“They are the loveliest things I ever saw in my life and the grandest, and now Jean won’t be able to pretend we are poor any more,” Frieda announced.
“Ah, but maybe Jack is a fairy godmother, and even poor girls may have fairy godmothers,” Jean teased.
“I think none of us have guessed yet what Jack intends our gifts to suggest,” Olive added slowly, her eyes still resting on the glowing colors of the jeweled pins. “Don’t you see, Mr. Drummond, that our pins represent rainbows? I have been repeating the rainbow colors to myself—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. And here are seven jewels of the same colors in our pins.”
Peter Drummond took Olive’s pin in his own hand. “Right you are, and Jack has beaten me at my own game. For I have been collecting jewels all my life and never thought of so pretty an idea as this. Here is a garnet to start with for the red, then a topaz for the orange, a yellow diamond next, an emerald for the green, a sapphire for blue, a blue opal for indigo and last of all an amethyst for the last shade of violet.”
“They are to make us think of the ranch and the lodge and the mine and all the good things that have come to us through a rainbow,” Jean said thoughtfully and then more huskily, “I guess Jack is pretty homesick.” Frieda made a dive toward the floor at this moment, rising up with a piece of paper in her hand. “This fell out of the jewel case when I opened it, but I hadn’t time to pick it up then,” she announced. “Oh, goodness gracious, Jack, of all people, has written us a poem!” And Frieda read:
“Here are seven colors in nature and art,What I think they mean I wish you from my heart;Here’s red, that good courage may fill you each dayAnd orange and yellow to shine on your way.Here’s green for the ocean to bear us afarTo some lovely blue land ’neath an opal star.And yet to the end shall we ever forgetOur own prairie fields of pale violet?”
“Here are seven colors in nature and art,What I think they mean I wish you from my heart;Here’s red, that good courage may fill you each dayAnd orange and yellow to shine on your way.Here’s green for the ocean to bear us afarTo some lovely blue land ’neath an opal star.And yet to the end shall we ever forgetOur own prairie fields of pale violet?”
“Here are seven colors in nature and art,What I think they mean I wish you from my heart;Here’s red, that good courage may fill you each dayAnd orange and yellow to shine on your way.Here’s green for the ocean to bear us afarTo some lovely blue land ’neath an opal star.And yet to the end shall we ever forgetOur own prairie fields of pale violet?”
“Here are seven colors in nature and art,
What I think they mean I wish you from my heart;
Here’s red, that good courage may fill you each day
And orange and yellow to shine on your way.
Here’s green for the ocean to bear us afar
To some lovely blue land ’neath an opal star.
And yet to the end shall we ever forget
Our own prairie fields of pale violet?”
“It is a rather hard poem to understand, but it rhymes pretty well,” Frieda ended doubtfully.
Olive’s loyalty left no room for criticism. “It’s beautiful, I think. And I know what Jack means at the end. If we ever do go to Europe, as we sometimes have planned, we must never forget the Rainbow Ranch. You know, Frieda dear, that the alfalfa clover is violet and not pink and white like the clover in the east.”
But the poem could not be further unraveled because Mr. Drummond had now to tear himself away in order to catch his train back to New York. Hurrying out into the hall, with the three ranch girls close behind him, he suddenly came to an abrupt stop. He had nearly run into a young woman, who also stood still, staring at him with reproachful blue eyes and a haughtily held head.
“Peter, that is, Mr. Drummond, how could you come down here when I told you not to?” the girls heard Jessica Hunt say with the least little nervous tremor in her voice.
Mr. Drummond bowed to her coldly. “I am very sorry, Jessica, Miss Hunt,” he returned coldly, “but I had not the faintest idea of seeing you at Primrose Hall. You do not know it, but the ranch girls are my very dear friends and my visit was solely to them.” Peter was moving majestically away when a hand was laid for the briefest instant on his coat sleeve. This time a humbler voice said, “Forgive me, Peter, I might have known you would never trouble to come to see me again.”
That evening as the ranch girls were dressing for dinner Jean poked her head in Olive’s room. “Olive Ralston, has it ever occurred to you that Peter Drummond may have recommended Primrose Hall to us because a certain young woman named Jessica Hunt taught here? Men folks is deep, child, powerful deep, but as the book says, ‘we shall see what we shall see.’ I wonder, though, why girls and men can’t fall in love and get married without such a lot of fussing and misunderstanding. Think how Ruth is treating poor Jim! When I fall in love I am not going to be so silly and tiresome. I am just going to say yes and thank you too and let’s get married next week.” Jean’s face was very serious for the moment and also very bewitching.
But Olive answered her with the voice of prophecy. “Jean Bruce, you will have the hardest time of us all in making up your mind when you are in love.”
Face to face with her first serious temptation stood Jean Bruce. Always beyond anything else had she desired to be popular, even in the old days at the ranch when the only society in which she had a part was composed of the few neighbors in riding distance of the Lodge. But here at Primrose Hall was her first real opportunity to gratify her heart’s desire, and would she for the sake of another be compelled to give it up? For how could she accept the honor that might be bestowed upon her of being chosen for Junior class president without turning traitor to Olive. After her friends’ treatment of Olive in front of the “Theta” house on the afternoon of Peter Drummond’s visit, Jean could no longer shut her eyes to Olive’s unpopularity. What was the cause of it? Try as she might she could not find out, yet the prejudice was certainly deeper than any one could suppose. Suspecting Winifred Graham to be at the bottom of the mischief, Jean kept a close watch upon her, but if she had circulated any story against Olive no one would confess it. “Miss Ralston is so shy and queer, her appearance is so odd, I do not think she enjoys being with other girls,” these evasions of the truth were all Jean could get hold of. But in the meantime there was no doubt that Olive’s classmates absolutely refused to have her in either of the two sororities and that this insult was almost unprecedented in the history of Primrose Hall. Of course, Jean might have appealed to Miss Winthrop or one of the other teachers, asking that their influence be exerted in Olive’s behalf, but this for Olive’s own sake she was unwilling to do. For even if Olive should be forced into one of the sororities, how would it change her classmates’ attitude toward her? Would it not make them more unkind than ever? No, there were only two courses open to Jean, either she must join the sorority she had chosen without any question of Olive’s being a member or else she must decline to be admitted herself until such time as the girls should come to their senses and voluntarily desire the election of them both.
Of course, if membership in one or the other of the two sororities had been Jean’s only dilemma there had been small excuse for her hesitation. But a larger issue was at stake. Unless she became a member of a sorority and as one of its leaders could influence new girls to her cause, she might lose the Junior presidency and Winifred Graham, the head of the Kappa organization, would surely be chosen in her stead.
Jean had won her way to her present popularity in a very charming fashion, just by the power of her own personality, which is after all the greatest force in the world. She had no prominent family connections, as so many of the Primrose Hall girls had, and she continued to act as though she had no money except what was necessary for very simple requirements. Indeed, she behaved as she must have done had the ranch girls come east to boarding school before the discovery of the gold mine of Rainbow Creek. But it was a hard fight and many times the young girl longed to break faith with herself.
Before setting out on their journey, after a careful reading of the Primrose Hall catalogue, Ruth Drew had ordered the three ranch girls’ school outfits, but now these clothes seemed so simple and ordinary that at least two of the girls hated the wearing of them.
Each one of them had several pretty school dresses of light weight flannel and serge, two simple silks for afternoon entertainments and dinner use and a single party dress for the monthly dances which were a feature of Primrose Hall school life. Their underclothes were plentiful but plain. Indeed, until Jean saw her friend Margaret Belknap’s lingerie, she had supposed that only brides, and very wealthy ones at that, could have such possessions. Just think of a single item of a dozen hand-made nightgowns at fifteen dollars apiece in a school girl’s outfit; and yet these were among Margaret’s clothes. Jean openly expressed her wonder and yet managed quietly to refuse to receive a gift of two of them without hurting her new friend’s feelings.
To a girl brought up in the conventional and moneyed atmosphere that Margaret Belknap had been, Jean was a revelation. She seemed not to know the meaning of snobbery, not to care who people were so long as she liked what they were. Her manners were as charming to one person as to another and her interest as sincere. Margaret had already asked Jean to visit her in her home in New York during the Christmas holidays, as she longed to introduce her to her own family in order that they might lose their prejudice against western girls. But more especially Margaret desired to bring her Harvard College brother, Cecil, and Jean together so as to find out what they would think of one another. She was only awaiting the first opportunity. In the meantime, although Jean would not accept other gifts from her wealthy friend, she could not refuse the flowers Margaret so constantly sent her. Indeed, she went about school so much of the time with a pink carnation tucked in her hair that she soon became known as “the pink carnation girl.”
One of Jean’s greatest self-denials was not being able to send flowers to Margaret in return, but in order to retain her masquerade of poverty, most of the time she had to refrain. Only now and then she did relieve her feelings by presenting Margaret a bunch of Violets or roses regardless of cost. And occasionally a box of roses or chrysanthemums would find their way into the room of a teacher who had been especially kind to Olive, Frieda or her.
With Olive there was apparently no self-denial in failing to spread abroad the news of their wealth and in spending no pocket money, but with Frieda the case was very different. It is quite certain that Jean would never have had her way with Frieda except by appealing directly to Jack for advice and assistance. When the letter from Jack came begging her little sister to keep the secret of their wealth and to agree to Jean’s plan, Frieda’s rebellion had weakened. Not that she saw any sense in her sacrifice or was in the least reconciled to it, but simply because under the circumstances, while Jack was still so ill, she could refuse her nothing. And this self-restraint was particularly hard on both the ranch girls, because never before in their lives had they had any money of their own to spend and now Jack was sending each one of them fifty dollars a month for pin money. Think of the fortune of it, if you have had only one-tenth of that amount per month for your own use before!
And yet so far only once in all the weeks had Frieda yielded to temptation. Going up to New York one Saturday for her first visit to the grand opera, she had drifted into a big department store with half a dozen of the other school girls and their chaperon in order to buy herself a pair of gloves.
Late that same afternoon Jean and Olive, who happened at the time to be dressing for dinner, received a shock. An elegant young woman, arrayed in a dark blue velvet coat and a hat encircled with a large, lighter-blue feather, entering Jean’s room, dropped exhausted on the bed. A cry brought Olive to the scene, but either because Frieda looked too pretty in her new clothes to scold, or because she pretended to be ill from fatigue, no word of reproach was spoken to her, not even when a pale blue silk followed next morning by the early express and twenty-five dollars had to be borrowed from Olive and Jean to pay for it.
Possibly both of the older girls were secretly pleased at Frieda’s extravagance, because, while saving money is a virtuous act, it certainly is a very dull one. And while Olive was storing her income away in a lock box, wondering if it were possible to return it some day in a gift for Jack, Jean was also hoarding hers in the same fashion, but intending finally to spend it all in one grand splurge.
While Jean often regretted having taken the vow of poverty at Primrose Hall, she was always convinced of its wisdom. That there could be so much talk and thought of money as she had lately heard among the set of girls of whom Winifred Graham was leader, was repellant to her and, as Jean already had developed strong class feeling, one of her chief reasons for desiring to be elected Junior class president was in order to prove that this snobbish set was not really in control of Primrose Hall. Would Ruth and Jack and Jim Colter, the overseer of their ranch, who had always said money would be the ruination of Jean, not feel proud of her if they could hear that she won out in her battle without its help. And yet what would they think of her if she turned her back on Olive? Surely if Jean had not been so harassed and torn between the twin enemies, ambition and love, she would hardly have accused Olive of being the cause of her own unpopularity and certainly not at so unpropitious an hour as she chose. But the time for Jean to make up her mind one way or another was drawing close at hand and so far Olive had no idea of her friend’s struggle, naturally supposing that Jean had already entered the “Theta” society without mentioning it to her in order to spare her pride.
Monthly dances were an institution at Primrose Hall and it was now the evening of the first one of them. Of course, dances at girls’ boarding schools are not unusual, but the dances at Primrose Hall were, for Miss Winthrop allowed young men to be present at them. Her guests were brothers and cousins of her students or else intimate friends, carefully introduced by the girls’ parents. Miss Winthrop regarded Primrose Hall as a training school for the larger social world and desired her students to learn to accept an acquaintance with young men as simply and naturally as they did the same acquaintance with girls. If young girls and boys never saw or spoke to one another during the years of their school life, it was Miss Winthrop’s idea that they developed false notions in regard to one another and false attitudes. Therefore, although no one could be more severe than the principal of Primrose Hall toward any shadow of flirtation, she was entirely reasonable toward a simple friendship. It was because most of her girls had respected Miss Winthrop’s judgment in this matter that her monthly dances, at first much criticized, had since become a great success. Watching her students and their friends together, the older woman could often give her students the help and advice they needed in their first knowledge of young men. So when Olive sent down an imploring message asking to be excused from attendance at these monthly dances, Miss Winthrop had positively refused her request. No excuse save illness was ever accepted from either the Junior or Senior girls.
It was a quarter before eight o’clock and the dance was to begin at eight that evening, when Olive, already dressed, strolled slowly into Jean’s and Frieda’s room, pretending that she wished to assist them, but really longing for some word of sympathy or encouragement to help her in overcoming her shyness.
Frieda had slipped across the hall to show herself in her new blue gown to the Johnson sisters, therefore Jean was alone. At the very instant of Olive’s entrance she was thinking of her with a good deal of annoyance and uncertainty and now the very fact that Olive looked so charming in a pale-green crepe dress made her crosser than ever. When Olive was so pretty how could the school girls fail to like her?
But Olive immediately on entering the room and entirely unconscious of Jean’s anger, stood silent for a moment lost in admiration of her friend’s appearance. In truth, to-night Jean was “a pink carnation girl,” for Margaret Belknap had sent her a great box of the deep rose-colored variety and she wore a wreath of them in her hair. Quite by accident her frock happened to be of the same color and the rose was particularly becoming to her healthy pallor and the dark brown of her hair, while to-night the excitement of attending her first school dance made Jean’s brown eyes sparkle and her lips a deep crimson.
“I do wish Ruth could see you to-night,” Olive said wistfully, “for I think she has already cared more for you than even for Frieda or Jack.”
“And not for you at all, Olive, I suppose,” Jean answered ungraciously. “I do wish you would get over the habit of depreciating yourself. Didn’t Miss Winthrop say the other day that we generally got what we expected in this world and if you don’t expect people to like you and are too shy and proud to let them, why how can they be nice to you?”
Olive colored, but did not reply at once.
“I do wish Jack were here,” Jean continued, “for she would have some influence with you and not let you be so pokey and unfriendly. I am sure I have tried in vain to stir you up and now I think I’ll write Jack and Ruth how you are behaving. Really, you are spoiling Frieda’s and my good times at school by being so stiff and touchy.” And Jean, knowing that Olive did not yet understand how her failure to be invited into either sorority was influencing her chance for the class election, yet had the grace to turn her face away.
For Olive had grown white. “Please don’t write to Jack or Ruth, Jean,” she asked quietly, “I do not wish them to know I am not a success at school and if you tell them that no one here likes me they will then know that I am unhappy and will be worried, and Jack must not have any worry now. It isn’t that I don’t try to make the girls like me. You are mistaken if you think I don’t try; but oh, what is the matter with me, Jean, that makes me so unpopular?”
In an instant Jean’s arms were about Olive and she was kissing her warmly. “Don’t be a goose, dear, there is nothing the matter with you and you are not unpopular really; it is just some horrid, silly mistake. Now promise me that to-night you won’t be frightened and you will be friendly with everybody.” In this instant Jean made up her mind that in some unexplainable way Olive must be standing in her own light or else her classmates must see how charming she was.
Olive promised with a quaking heart, knowing that many eyes would soon be upon her to-night, including Miss Winthrop’s, who would be noticing her unpopularity. And would she know a single guest at the dance?
Frieda and Mollie Johnson had already disappeared, so that Jean and Olive went down to the big reception rooms together, holding each other’s hands like little girls.
To Miss Katherine Winthrop’s credit it must be stated that she desired her students at Primrose Hall to grow into something more useful than mere society women. Her ambition was to have them fill many important positions in the modern world now offering such big opportunities to clever women. Miss Winthrop was herself an unusually clever woman, cold perhaps and not sympathetic with most of her girls, but just always and interested in their welfare. But then none of her girls knew the story of her youth nor realized that the last life she had ever expected for herself in her rich and brilliant girlhood was that of a mistress of a fashionable boarding school. Years before, Katherine Winthrop had been the belle and beauty of the countryside, a toast in New York City and in the homes of the old Dutch and English families along the Hudson River, until she had let her pride spoil the one romance of her life. By and by, when her father died and her family fortune disappeared, she had then opened up her old home as a girls’ boarding school and her aristocratic connections and old name immediately made Primrose Hall both fashionable and popular, until now its mere name lent its students an assured social prestige. Nevertheless, Miss Winthrop wished her school to be something more than fashionable. Indeed, this thought had been in her mind when she had chosen the ranch girls for her pupils from among a list of fifty or more applicants whom she had been obliged to refuse. There was little in the life of her school which she did not see and understand, and now her hope was that Jean and Olive and Frieda, with their freedom from snobbery, their simplicity and broader way of looking at things, would bring the element most needed into their mere money-loving and conventional eastern atmosphere. Though no one had mentioned it to her, she had already observed Jean’s great popularity with her classmates, Frieda’s good time among the younger girls and Olive’s failure to make friends. What was the trouble with this third ranch girl?
Although Miss Winthrop had been particularly busy for the past month in getting her school into good working order, she had not forgotten the peculiar emotion that Olive had awakened in her at their first meeting. Because the child was unusual in her manner and appearance was scarcely a sufficient reason for the universal prejudice against her, and to-night, at the first dance of the school season, Miss Winthrop had determined to watch Olive closely and find out for herself wherein lay the difficulty. Jessica Hunt was receiving with Miss Winthrop to-night and had also wondered how Olive would stand the ordeal of their first evening entertainment. For the dances at Primrose Hall were not informal, it being a part of the principal’s idea that they should train her girls for social life in any part of the world where in later years circumstances might chance to take them.
Miss Winthrop, her teachers and students, always appeared in full evening dress at these entertainments, and this evening Miss Winthrop wore a plain black velvet gown with a small diamond star at her throat, a piece of jewelry for which she had a peculiar affection. Jessica Hunt, who was standing next her, was in pure white, so that her blue eyes and the bronze-gold of her hair (so like Jack’s, Olive had thought) made a striking contrast with the darker, sterner beauty of the older woman. Though there were a dozen or more of the Primrose Hall girls grouped about the two women when Jean and Olive entered the reception room together, both of them immediately saw and watched them as they came slowly forward.
The eyes of Jean, the flush and sparkle of her, spoke of her anticipation of unutterable delights. Yet who should know, as she moved through the room with an expression of fine unconsciousness, that this was the first really formal party she had ever attended in her life. Neither her blush nor her dimple betrayed her, although she was perfectly aware that a number of youths in long-tailed coats and black trousers, wearing immaculate white gloves and ties, had stopped talking for several moments to their girl friends in order to glance at Olive and at her. She even saw, without appearing to lift her lids, that a tall, blonde fellow standing near her friend, Margaret Belknap, was deliberately staring at her through a pair of eyeglasses. And at once Jean decided that the young man was extremely ugly in spite of his fashionable clothes and therefore not to be compared to Ralph Merrit or other simple western fellows whom she had known in the past.
Perhaps five minutes were required for this list of Jean’s passing observations in her forward progress toward Miss Winthrop, and yet in the same length of time Olive, who was close beside her, had seen nothing “but a sea of unknown faces.” Even her school companions to-night in their frocks of silk and lace looked unfamiliar. And yet somehow, with Jean’s assistance, she also managed to arrive in front of Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt and to pay her respects to them. Then, still sticking close to Jean, she was soon borne off for a short distance and there surrounded by a group of Jean’s girl friends.
Half a dozen or more of them, Gerry Ferrows and Margaret Belknap in the number, had come up with their cousins, brothers and friends to meet Jean Bruce and to fill up her dance card. They were, of course, also introduced to Olive, but as she did not speak, no one noticed her particularly and no one invited her to dance. Jean had not intended to desert Olive, but when the music of the first waltz began she forgot her and marched off with an enthusiastic partner, who had asked Gerry Ferrows to introduce him to the most fascinating girl in the room, and Gerry had unhesitatingly chosen Jean.
There were two or three other girls and young men standing near Olive when Jean had turned away, but a few seconds later and she was entirely alone.
Is there greater anguish than for a shy girl unaccustomed to society to find herself solitary in a crowded ballroom? At first Olive felt desperate, knowing that her cheeks were crimson with shame and fearing that her eyes were filling with tears. Then looking about her she soon discovered a group of palms in a corner of the room not far away and guessed that she could find shelter behind them. Slipping across she came upon a small sofa hidden behind the evergreens, and with a little sigh of thanksgiving sank down upon it. Soon after Olive began to grow serene, for from her retreat she could watch the dancers and see what a good time Jean and Frieda were having without being seen herself. Once she almost laughed aloud as Frieda waltzed by her hiding place—Frieda, who had been a fat, little girl with long plaits down her back just a few weeks ago, now attired in a blue silk and lace, was whirling about on the arm of a long-legged boy who had such a small nose and ridiculous quantity of blonde curls that he might almost have been Frieda’s twin brother. Five minutes later Olive decided that Jean was the belle of the evening and that she would write the news to Jack to-morrow, for apparently every young man in the ballroom was wishing to dance with her. Even the supercilious fellow with the eyeglasses, whom Olive recognized as Margaret Belknap’s much-talked-of Harvard brother, could be seen dancing attendance on Jean.
Twenty minutes, half an hour must have passed by in this fashion until Olive felt perfectly safe in her green retreat, when unexpectedly a hand was laid upon her shoulder and a voice said sternly, “What in the world, child, are you doing hiding yourself in here? When I said you could not stay up in your room to-night it was because I desired you to take part in the dancing; there really isn’t much difference between your being concealed up there or here.”
And then to Olive’s discouragement an absurd catch in her breath made her unable to answer at once.
Olive’s retreat behind the palms had not been unnoticed as she had thought, for both Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt had seen first her embarrassment at being left alone and next her withdrawal. In much the same fashion that Jack would have followed, Jessica had wished to rush off at once to comfort Olive, but Miss Winthrop had held her back.
“What is the difficulty about this girl, Jessica, what makes her so unpopular?” she had asked when every one else was out of hearing. “I wish you would tell me if you know any explanation for it.”
But Jessica had only been able to shake her head, answering, “I can’t for the life of me understand. There are a good many little things that Olive does not seem to know, and yet, as she studies very hard, I believe she will soon be one of the honor girls in my class. I have a friend in New York, or an acquaintance rather,” and here Jessica blushed unaccountably, “who seems to know the ranch girls very well. Perhaps I had best ask him if there is anything unusual about Olive.”
But the older woman had interrupted, “No, I had rather you would ask no questions, at least not now please, Jessica, for I have heard at least a part of the girl’s history, and yet I believe the real truth is not known to any one and perhaps never will be. It may be happier for Olive if it never is found out, but I wish we could teach her not to be so sensitive.” And then when the opportunity arrived Miss Winthrop had moved across the room to where Olive was in hiding. As the girl’s startled brown eyes were upturned to hers Miss Winthrop, who was not poetic, yet thought that her pupil in her pale green dress with her queer pointed chin and her air of mystery, somehow suggested a girl from some old fairy legend of the sea. And she wondered why the girls and young men in the ballroom had not also seen Olive’s unusual beauty, forgetting that young people seldom admire what is out of the ordinary.
Some impulse after her first speech to Olive made the older woman quickly put out her hand, clasping Olive’s slender brown fingers in hers. “Don’t be afraid of me,” she said in a voice that was gentler than usual, “for I understand it is timidity that is making you hide yourself. Don’t you think though that you would enjoy dancing?”
Olive’s face was suddenly aglow. “I should love it,” she returned, forgetting for the instant her shyness, “only no one has invited me.” Then as her teacher suddenly rose to her feet, as though intending to find her a partner, with a sudden accession of dignity and fearlessness Olive drew her down again. “Please don’t ask anyone to dance with me, Miss Winthrop,” she begged; “if you will sit by me for a little while I am sure it will be delightful just watching the others.”
While the woman and girl were quietly gazing at the dancers, Miss Winthrop happened to notice a silver chain with a cross at the end of it, which Olive was wearing around her throat. Leaning over she took the cross in her hand. “This is an odd piece of jewelry, child, and must be very old; it is so heavy that I wonder if there is anything concealed inside it.”
Olive shook her head. “No, that is, I don’t know anything about it, except that I hope it once belonged to my mother,” she replied. For some strange reason this shy girl was speaking of her mother to a comparative stranger, when she rarely had spoken the name even to her best beloved friend, Jacqueline Ralston.
But before Miss Winthrop had time to reply a new voice startled both of them. “Why, Olive Ralston,” it exclaimed, “what do you mean by hiding yourself away with Miss Winthrop when I have been searching the house over for you.”
Turning around, to her intense surprise, Olive now beheld Donald Harmon standing near them, the young fellow whose father had rented the Rainbow Ranch from the Ralston girls the summer before and whose sister had been responsible for Jack Ralston’s fall over the cliff.
“I wonder why you would not tell Olive that I was to be one of your guests to-night, Miss Winthrop,” he continued, “and that my aunt is your old friend and lives near Primrose Hall.”
While Miss Winthrop was laughing and protesting that she had no idea that Olive and Donald could know each other, Donald was trying to persuade Olive out on the ballroom floor for her first dance with him. By accident it happened to be a Spanish waltz and Olive had not danced it before, but she had been watching the other girls. Donald was an excellent partner and in five minutes she might have been dancing it all her life.
Now dancing with Olive and with Jean was quite a different art, although both of the girls were beautiful dancers. Jean was gay and vivacious, full of grace and activity, keeping excellent time to the music, but Olive seemed to move like a flower that is swayed by the wind, hardly conscious of what she was dancing or how she was dancing it and yet yielding her body to every note of the music and movement of her partner.
By and by, as Olive and Donald continued their dancing, many of the others stopped and at once the young men demanded to be told who Olive was and why she had been hidden away from their sight until now? Whatever replies the girls may have made to these questions, they did not apparently affect their questioners, for from the time of her first dance until the close of the evening Olive no longer lacked for partners. She did not talk very much, but her eyes shone and her cheeks grew crimson with pleasure and now and then her low laugh rang out, and always she could dance. What did conversation at a ball amount to anyhow when movement was the thing, and this stranger girl could dance like a fairy princess just awakened from a long enchantment?
Donald Harmon grew sorry later in the evening that he had ever brought Olive forth from her retreat, but just before midnight, when Primrose Hall parties must always come to an end, he did manage to get her away for a moment out on the veranda, where chairs were placed so that the young people could rest and talk.
The veranda was prettily lighted with Japanese lanterns and shaded electric lights and Donald found chairs for Olive and himself in a corner where they could see the dancers and yet not be interrupted, for he wished to talk to her alone for a few moments, never having forgotten the impression she had made upon him at their first meeting, nor the peculiar likeness which he still saw in her to his mother.
But though Olive could not forget the Harmons, she had never really liked them nor could she forgive the hurt which Elizabeth had innocently brought upon her beloved Jack. And yet, as she knew that this attitude on her part was hardly fair, she now turned to Donald. “I hope your mother and Elizabeth are quite well,” she inquired with unconscious coldness.
Donald felt the coldness, but answered at once. “Yes, they are both unusually well these days, and if Beth could only hear that your friend Miss Ralston was going to get quite well, why she would brace up a lot. But she worries about her a great deal, so she and my mother have just come out here to Tarrydale for a short visit to my aunt. I got away from college for a few days to be with them and to see you ranch girls again,” he ended honestly.
“You are very kind,” Olive murmured, watching the passers-by for a glimpse of Jean or Frieda.
“Elizabeth and mother wish you to come over very soon and have tea with them,” the young man urged, appearing not to notice his companion’s lack of interest. “My aunt’s place is very near Primrose Hall, so you can easily walk over.”
Olive shook her head. “I don’t believe Miss Winthrop would care to have us go about the neighborhood making visits,” she announced, glad of what seemed to her a reasonable excuse.
Donald laughed, although he did feel somewhat hurt by Olive’s manner. “Don’t try to get out of coming to see us for any such cause, Miss Olive,” he protested, “for Miss Winthrop is one of my aunt’s dearest friends and she and my mother have known one another since they were girls. Why, my aunt is one of the shareholders in this school and is always offering prizes to the girls, a Shakespeare prize and perhaps some others that I don’t know about. You see, I was going to ask Miss Winthrop to bring you and Miss Bruce and Frieda over to us, as she always comes to see my aunt every week, now that Aunt Agatha has grown too old and too cranky to leave her place.”
Olive was essentially gentle in her disposition and knowing that Donald had always been their friend in all family difficulties, she was sorry to have seemed unkind. “I’ll tell Jean and Frieda,” she replied with more enthusiasm, “and if Miss Winthrop is willing, why of course we will be happy to come. You are staying at ‘The Towers,’ aren’t you, the white house at the end of the woods with a tower at the top of it and queer gabled windows and two absurd dogs on either side the front door?”
The young man nodded. “You have seen the place, haven’t you? We are dreadfully ashamed of those dogs now, but we used to love them as children; I suppose a good many generations of the children in our family have had glorious rides on their backs.” Olive frowned, a wave of color sweeping over her face which even in the glow of the artificial lights Donald was able to see. “I wonder,” she said, “about that tower room. Isn’t it very big, with guns and swords and things around the walls, and books, and a man in armor standing in one corner?”
Donald stared, as Olive’s face went suddenly white again. “I am sorry I made such a silly speech. Of course your tower room isn’t like that. I think I must just have read of some such a room at the top of a house somewhere that looks like yours. Only I want to ask you a few questions.”
At this instant a pair of hands were suddenly clasped over Olive’s eyes and a voice asked:
“Oh, tell me, lady, fair and blind,Whose hands about thee are entwined?”
“Oh, tell me, lady, fair and blind,Whose hands about thee are entwined?”
“Oh, tell me, lady, fair and blind,Whose hands about thee are entwined?”
“Oh, tell me, lady, fair and blind,
Whose hands about thee are entwined?”
The voice there was little difficulty in recognizing, for Jean had come up quietly behind Olive and Donald with Cecil Belknap and with Gerry Ferrows and one of her friends. Jean promptly began a conversation with Donald; Gerry and her friend, after being properly introduced to the others, continued their discussion, so there was nothing for poor Olive to do but to try to talk to Cecil.
Rather more sure of counting on Jean’s interest in his invitation than Olive’s, Donald Harmon had promptly repeated his request to her, so that for five minutes or more they were deep in questions and answers, Jean laughingly reproaching Donald for not having asked her to dance all evening, while he assured her that in vain had he tried to break through the wall of her admirers. When a truce was finally declared Jean smilingly accepted his invitation to tea and then turning stood for a moment with her eyes dancing as she watched Olive’s struggle to keep up a conversation with Cecil Belknap. The subject of the weather had evidently been exhausted, also the beauty of the moon even now peeping over one of the ridges of the Sleepy Hollow hills, and still Olive was struggling bravely on without the least assistance from her superior companion, who merely stared at her without volunteering a single remark.
Jean’s laugh rang out mischievously. “I do ask your pardon, Olive, for having left you to talk to Mr. Belknap so long. Just think,” she turned to look up at the young man with her most demure expression, “I used to think the sphinx a woman, but now I am entirely convinced that he or she is a Harvard student, for surely nothing else could be so equally silent and inscrutable.”
Cecil Belknap’s glasses slid off his nose. Could it be that this small ranch girl, whom he had been trying to be nice to all evening on account of his sister’s affection for her, was actually poking fun at him, a Harvard Senior and heir to half a million dollars? The thing was impossible! Had she not realized that his mere presence near her had added to her social distinction all evening? Could it be that she had also expected him to chatter with her like any ordinary schoolboy? Winifred Graham would have had no such ridiculous ideas and Cecil now hoped it was not too late to reduce Jean to a proper state of humility.
However, Jean at this moment, asking pardon for her rudeness, drew Olive aside. “Olive,” she whispered in her friend’s ear in rather anxious and annoyed tones, “have you seen anything of Frieda Ralston for the past hour? I told that young lady to come and speak to one or the other of us every half hour all this evening and she has never been near me a single time. Has she spoken to you?”
Olive laughed, shaking her head. “No, Frieda has never spoken to me,” she replied, “but once in dancing by me she did deign to smile as though we had met somewhere before. Isn’t she funny?”
But Jean was not amused. “She’s perfectly ridiculous with her grown-up airs and I wish Ruth were here to send her upstairs to bed. You know it is nearly twelve o’clock, Olive, and our dance will be over at exactly twelve and then Miss Winthrop expects each one of us to come up and personally say good-night to her. Suppose Frieda and that Johnson child should not be around, for I can’t find Mollie either. I wonder if they have gone off anywhere with that long-legged grasshopper of a boy?”
“You take Frieda too seriously, Jean,” Olive murmured, “she is sure to be in the parlor and will say good-night with the rest of us. You see, we are so used to thinking of her as a baby that we can’t get used to her independence.”
But the two ranch girls could not continue indefinitely to talk of family matters with strangers waiting near them. Anyhow, just at this moment the big clock in the hall, the same clock that Olive had listened to so long on that first night at Primrose Hall, now slowly began to boom forth the hour of midnight and at the same moment the music began to play the farewell strains of the “Home, Sweet Home” waltz.
Cecil Belknap straightway offered his arm to Olive, not that he desired her as a partner, but that he wished to punish Jean. A moment later Gerry and her friend entered the ballroom, so that naturally Donald and Jean were compelled to have this last dance together. Of course Donald would have preferred Olive, but any ranch girl was sure of being second best. However, Donald need not have worried over Jean’s being forced upon him, for no sooner had they come into the parlor with the other dancers, than two young fellows, seizing hold of Jean, declared she had promised the “Home, Sweet Home” waltz to both of them, and almost forcibly bore her away to divide the dance between them.
So with nothing better left to do, Donald stood for a moment watching Olive and Cecil Belknap. They were having a conspicuously sad time, for Cecil could not dance and so Olive was miserable. Rushing to the rescue, Donald bore his first partner away and now Cecil had the desire of his heart. For Jean’s benefit he spent the closing moments of the evening in the society of her rival, Winifred Graham. However, the young man would have been better satisfied could he have known whether or not the western girl noticed his desertion. His sister had asked him to be nice to Jean in order that the mere influence of his presence near her might induce her classmates to vote for her, and yet she had not appeared particularly grateful. It is the old story with a girl or a woman. Strange, but she never seems to care for a man’s attention when he makes a martyr of himself for her sake!
However, in these last few minutes of the dance the older ranch girls were concerned only with thoughts of Frieda. Nowhere about the great room could she be seen, not even after the young men guests had gone away and the girls had formed in line to say good-night to Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt. Olive and Jean were separated by several students and yet the same questions traveled from one face to the other. “Suppose Miss Winthrop asks us what has become of Frieda, what must we say, and what will she do if, after trusting Frieda and Mollie, they have gotten into some kind of mischief?”
Two steps at a time, the two girls, when their own good-nights had been said and no questions asked, rushed upstairs to their bedrooms. But outside Jean’s door Olive suddenly stopped and laughed. “Frieda is such a baby, she has only gone upstairs to bed. Of course she has said good-night long ago.”
Cautiously they thrust open the door; a dim light was burning inside the room and a maid had turned down Frieda’s bed, but that young lady was not in it, neither was there any sign of her presence about the place.
Jean slipped across the hall to the Johnson girls’ room. “Lucy says Mollie hasn’t come upstairs either,” she reported immediately, “so what on earth shall we do? Miss Sterne has charge of our floor to-night and will be around in a few minutes to see that we are ready for bed. Then if Frieda isn’t here, won’t she just get it?” Jean was almost in tears from nervousness and vexation, having always tried to keep Frieda a little bit in order. Now that Frieda no longer paid any attention to her, she was both angry and frightened.
“I will slip downstairs and look for her,” Olive suggested faintly, knowing that she could never get downstairs and back again before Miss Sterne’s appearance and feeling that the vanishment of two girls might be even more conspicuous and draw greater wrath down upon their heads than the disappearance of one.
“Miss Winthrop or one of the other teachers would surely see you prowling around and would have to know the reason why, so that wouldn’t help the present situation,” Jean answered. “Surely Frieda will be here in a few minutes.” All up and down the hall the opening and shutting of bedroom doors could now be heard and the voices of the other girls bidding Miss Sterne and each other good-night.
Jean had on her blanket wrapper and had taken down her hair, but Olive, still fully dressed, kept darting from her own bedroom to Jean’s and Frieda’s, peering out both doors for a sign of the wanderer.
Finally Jean turned to her. “Come on, Olive, I don’t care in the least what Miss Winthrop does to Frieda when she finds out how she has behaved, but you and I must go to look for her.”
Jean and Olive were half-way out in the hall, where the lights were now being turned low, when a figure brushed by them. “Please let me get into my own room,” a voice said peevishly, and nothing loath, the three figures returned inside the room. “Begin undressing at once, Frieda Ralston,” Jean commanded, “and don’t say one word in explanation or excuse until Rebecca Sterne has gone by our room, for it is just barely possible that she may not have seen you sneaking along the hall.”
Jean spoke in tones of the utmost severity and even Olive gazed upon the youngest ranch girl with an expression of disapproval.
The preceptress’s knock came at this very instant.
“Whatever are you doing in your ball gown, Frieda?” Miss Sterne inquired, with her head on one side, gazing about through her large horn spectacles that Olive had so promptly disliked, like a wise old owl.
“And you, Miss Ralston, why aren’t you in your own room?” she continued, “you know you are not expected to enter another girl’s sleeping apartment after the hour for retiring.”
Without replying Olive promptly slipped back into her own room and rapidly began making ready for bed, not returning to talk to Jean or to Frieda even when Miss Sterne’s retreating footsteps were far out of hearing.
And only once in the next ten minutes did she understand what the other two ranch girls were saying and then it was Jean’s tones that were the more distinct.
Frieda was quietly slipping off a pale blue silk stocking and slipper, keeping her eyes fastened conscientiously on the floor, when Jean, now in her night gown, planted herself before her. “Where have you been all this time, Frieda Ralston, and why didn’t you and Mollie Johnson say good-night to Miss Winthrop when the rest of us did?”
Frieda looked up, her eyes, almost the color of her blue stockings, swimming in tears. “I was in the back hall, Jean, and I didn’t dream of its being so late. Do you think Miss Winthrop noticed?” the culprit faltered.
Jean cruelly bowed her head. “What is there that goes on in this school, Frieda, that escapes Miss Winthrop?” she inquired. “I suppose you will be able to explain to her in the morning why you were in the back hall instead of in the parlor with her guests, as you never seem to care to tell anything to Olive or to me any more. Please hurry to bed.”
Frieda was very angry at Jean’s superior air, but her own heart was quaking and her lips trembling, so that she could not answer back in the cool fashion she desired. “Mollie Johnson was with me,” she managed to say, “and two boys.”
Jean might have been the late Empress Dowager of China or the present Czarina of Russia, so majestic was her manner as she sat up in bed with her arms folded before her.
“I had no idea you were alone, Frieda,” she said firmly, “but will you please tell me why you went to the back hall when you knew perfectly well that Miss Winthrop was trusting you to behave like a lady and remain in the rooms where she was receiving her guests. I don’t know what Ruth and Jack will say.”
Frieda began to cry softly. “We were so hungry, Jean,” she murmured, struggling to braid her long locks of flaxen hair. “You see, we had only ices and cake for the party, and about eleven o’clock Tom Parker, the boy I was with, said he wished he had a sandwich, and I was just as hungry for one, so we found Mollie and another boy and slipped out of the dining room. Mrs. White, the housekeeper, was up and back in the pantry and she gave us cheese and pie and all sorts of good things.” And now Frieda’s courage returning in a small measure, she turned out the electric lights, hopping into bed. “I am not going to be treated like a criminal, though, Jean Bruce, so I shan’t tell you anything more,” she ended, burying herself under the cover.
So half an hour passed and supposedly the three ranch girls were sound asleep, though in reality the three of them were still wide awake.
Jean and Olive were both worrying over Frieda, not yet understanding the real facts of her escape, and Frieda was longing with all her might for some one to sympathize with her and help her in her scrape, some one who would let her cry herself out.
By and by Olive crept softly from her room to Jean’s bedside. “Jean, has Frieda explained things to you?” she whispered.
Jean sighed. “She said they were hungry, she and Mollie and two boys, and that they went into the pantry and had something to eat, but she didn’t say why they stayed in the back hall afterwards. They couldn’t have kept on eating pickles and cheese for over an hour.” And both girls giggled softly in spite of their worry, for was it not like little greedy baby Frieda to have required extra food just as she was constantly doing on their long trip through the Yellowstone the summer before?
“Well, it all sounds pretty simple, Jean,” Olive comforted, “and I don’t think Miss Winthrop will be very angry when she hears that the pantry was the difficulty, for she knows how good the housekeeper is to all the little girls.”
“It isn’t the pantry that worries me; it’s the back hall.” Jean’s voice became low and impressive, “What do you suppose that Frieda Ralston could have to talk about to a—boy?”
A stifled sob at this moment shook the bed-clothes and both older girls started, guiltily. Reaching over, Olive patted the outside of the blanket.
“Were you talking to the boy, Frieda?” she inquired in a sterner manner than was usual to her, “or were all four of you just sitting around having a jolly time together?” Now that Frieda’s sobs assured the other two girls that she was awake, they were glad enough to be able to go on with her cross-examination.
“I was talking to the boy all by myself,” Frieda’s reply was unhesitating though somewhat choked. “Mollie and the other boy were sitting on a higher step and the servants were around, but no one told us how late it was.”
“Well, what were you talking about that you found so interesting that you could not hear the clock strike twelve, or the ‘Home, Sweet Home’ waltz, or the good-byes being said?” Jean demanded fiercely.
This time Frieda made not the least effort to restrain her sorrow, for the bed fairly shook with her weeping. “We were talking about worms!” she sobbed.
“Worms!” Olive and Jean repeated in chorus, believing that they could not have heard aright.
“Oh, yes, worms and flies,” the culprit continued. “You see, we got to talking about fishing and Tom Parker said he loved it better than most anything he ever did and some summers he goes way up into the Maine woods and fishes in the lakes for trout. He uses flies for bait always, but I told him that we fished with worms in Rainbow Creek and sometimes when it wouldn’t rain for a long time we used to have to dig way down under the ground to find them. I told him too how once I started a fishing worm aquarium and kept all the worms I could dig up in a glass bowl to sell to Jim and the cowboys whenever they wished to go fishing.”
Frieda did not further endeavor to outline her grown-up conversation with her first admirer, feeling too angry and too puzzled to go on for the minute, for her former irate judges were now holding their sides and doing their level best to keep from shrieking with laughter.
“And I was afraid she was talking sentiment instead of fishing worms,” Jean whispered in Olive’s ear.
Around to the other side of the bed Olive went to tuck the covers more closely about Frieda. “Go to sleep, baby, and dream of Jack,” she comforted, “and perhaps Miss Winthrop will never hear of your mistaking the time for saying good-night.”
“And if she does hear, you’ll ask her to forgive me,” Frieda returned sleepily, “for I believe she likes you, Olive, better than most any of the girls. I have seen her looking at you so strangely every now and then.”
In another half minute Frieda was fast asleep, not feeling so penitent over her escapade as the two older ranch girls supposed. But Frieda had always been a good deal spoiled and, as Miss Winthrop had not noticed her failure to say good-night, no further scolding impressed her fault upon her mind. Perhaps this was unfortunate, for it is better that both little girls and big receive their punishment for a fault so soon as the fault is committed, in order not to keep on growing naughtier and naughtier until Fate punishes us for many sins at once.
After lunch the day following the dance, as it chanced to be Saturday afternoon, Jean came into the ranch girls’ sitting room looking for Olive and Frieda. She had been playing basketball for the past two hours and in spite of having known nothing of the game on her arrival at school, was already one of its acknowledged champions. But although Jean’s cheeks were glowing and her hair in a tumbled mass above her face, her expression was uncommonly serious and in her hand she held a bundle of letters. One she tossed to Frieda, who was curled up on a sofa nursing a small cold due to her frivolity, and two to Olive, keeping two for herself.
Olive quickly tore open the letter addressed to her in Jack’s handwriting and Frieda followed suit. When Jack had first been taken to the hospital and there compelled to lie always flat on her back, her handwriting had been difficult to read, but now that she had gotten used to this method of writing, her stroke was again as vigorous and characteristic as of old.
Frieda, after reading a few lines, smiled up at the other girls. “Jack says she is getting on very well and we are to see her in a few weeks—perhaps,” she announced.
Olive looked over at Jean. “It is worse than Jack writes, of course, isn’t it?” she asked. “I suppose Ruth has written you, for Jack never tells anything but the best news of herself.”
“There may be an operation or something of the sort later on,” Jean conceded, “Ruth does not say positively, for it may not be for some months yet. Only if the operation does have to take place Jack has demanded that Jim come on from the ranch to New York, leaving Ralph Merrit to look after things at the mine. Jim would come now, but things are in a bit of a tangle. I wonder how Ruth will behave if Jim does come?” And Jean sighed.
An interested expression, crossed Frieda’s face. “Why should she behave in any special way?” she inquired, sitting straight up on the couch to gaze from Olive to Jean.
Quickly the subject of conversation needed to be changed, for Frieda was the only one of the four ranch girls who knew nothing of what had happened at the ranch between Jim Colter, their overseer, and Ruth Drew, their chaperon. What had come between the two lovers only Jack Ralston understood, but Olive and Jean were both perfectly aware that Jim and Ruth had seemed to care a great deal for one another and then some mysterious misunderstanding had suddenly parted them.
“I wonder if old Jack looks very badly,” Jean suggested, knowing this would surely divert Frieda’s attention to one theme. “Sometimes I wish for Jack’s sake that we were all back at Rainbow Lodge, for there she was able to be out in the air a part of the time and now—” The vision of Jack lying helpless at the hospital was too much for the three girls, so that there was a moment of painful silence in the room. Then Jean said more cheerfully after re-reading the latter part of Ruth’s letter: “Jim says that Ralph Merrit is doing perfectly splendid work at the mine and that he is a trump. Do you know I am rather vain of having discovered Ralph that day in the wilderness, considering how well he has turned out; Jim likes him a lot better than he does Frank Kent.”
The young lady on the sofa with the cold had not yet forgiven Jean for last night’s scolding. Now she turned up her small nose a trifle more than usual. “Oh, you just say that because Ralph likes you best and Frank Kent is more fond of Jack,” she answered scornfully. And Jean flushed.
“That is not true, Frieda. Of course it is only natural that Jim should like Ralph better because Ralph is poor and has to make his own way in the world just as Jim has; and Frank Kent, though he is awfully simple and a thorough good fellow, is the son of an English Lord and may have a title himself some day.”
“Then wouldn’t it be splendid if Jack should become an English lady and own country estates and ride to hounds?” Frieda suggested more peacefully, gazing across the room at Frank Kent’s photograph, which ornamented the bookshelf. “I think I should love to be introduced into English society and talk to earls and princes and things,” she ended lamely.
A fine sarcasm curled Jean’s lips, though her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Talk to earls and princes and things about fishing worms, baby?” she queried with studied politeness.
And promptly Frieda, flushing quite up to her ears, hurled a sofa cushion at Jean, which Olive caught, saying gently:
“Please don’t let’s quarrel, children, we never used to at the Lodge. What would Ruth think of us?” And picking up a second letter that Jean had brought to her, she began to read it.
Jean sat penitently down on the sofa trying to kiss Frieda, who resolutely covered up her head. “Come on and get dressed, infant; no, your cold isn’t too bad for you to come. Olive is reading a note of invitation from Mrs. Harmon for us to come over to ‘The Towers’ to have tea and Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt are to go with us.”
But the rôle of invalid was too precious a one and too seldom enjoyed by the youngest Miss Ralston for her to surrender it easily.
“I am too sick, please tell Mrs. Harmon,” she protested resolutely; “only if they have any candy or cake and happen to mention sending me some you might bring it along. And I do wish both you girls would go out for a while, for Mollie is coming to spend the afternoon with me after she finishes her music lesson and we would love to have the sitting room to ourselves.”
“I hope, Olive, that you know when you are not wanted without being actually knocked over by the broadness of the hint,” Jean said, seeing that Olive was hesitating about what she should do. “Come along, it will do us both good to get away and not to sit here thinking about what we can’t help,” she ended.
While both girls were putting on their best afternoon frocks preparatory to starting forth on their visit, in the silence of her own room Olive was trying to persuade herself that her hesitation in going for the call upon the Harmons was because she dreaded to be reminded by the sight of Elizabeth of the old tragedy to Jack. But there was something more than this in her mind, for actually she dreaded entering the big white house which had given her such an uncomfortable sensation the moment her eyes had rested upon it. Yet what connection could she have ever had with an old place like “The Towers,” or any house resembling it? Her impression that she must have seen the house somewhere before was sheer madness, for was it not an old Dutch mansion, perhaps built hundreds of years ago, and certainly wholly unlike any of the ranch houses out West?
Olive resolutely put all the ridiculous ideas that had annoyed her out of her mind and with Jessica Hunt, Miss Winthrop and Jean started gayly forth on their walk. It was about four o’clock in the late November afternoon and instead of following the path through the woods, the little party set out along the lane that led through an exquisite part of the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood. Crossing a little brook they climbed a short hill and from the top of it could see at some distance off the spire of the old Sleepy Hollow church and on the other side the Hudson River with the autumn mists rising above it like breath from its deep hidden lungs.
Jessica and Olive were together, Jean and Miss Winthrop. As Olive was particularly silent, Jessica drew her arm through hers. “This is a land of legends and of dreams about here, dear, and some day I must take you western girls about the country and show you the historic places nearby. Do you know anything about them?” she asked.
But Olive was dreaming or else stupid, for she only shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered, “the country does seem somehow familiar, yet it did not at first. Don’t you believe that all the world, at least the world of outside things, of hills and trees and valleys and water, somehow belongs alike to all of us and once we have seen a landscape and moved about in it, why we are at home. There isn’t any strangeness in nature, there can’t be; it is only people and houses and streets that are odd and unlike and fail to belong to us.”
Donald Harmon met his four guests some yards up the road on their approach to the house. As he was holding a great St. Bernard dog by the collar and as it bounded away from him all of a sudden, nearly upsetting Olive and Jessica in the rapture of its welcome, the little party entered “The Towers” with too much laughter and excitement for Olive to feel any self-consciousness or emotion. Indeed, she quite forgot all of her past foolishness in meeting Mrs. Harmon and Elizabeth again after so many eventful months. Elizabeth was able to walk about the room quite easily and of course her first inquiry was for Jack.
Without a chance for exchanging views, Jean and Olive both decided at once that the drawing room at “The Towers,” in spite of its magnificence, was one of the darkest and most unattractive rooms either of them had ever seen. For everything was very stiff and formal and without life or fragrance. Carved black furniture sat stiffly against the walls, which were hung with old portraits of men and women in high fluted ruffs, with gorgeous embroidered clothes and hard, cold faces. Over in one corner stood a tea table piled with silver and white linen and having a large arm chair near it carved like a throne. And behind this chair was a portrait of a beautiful boy of ten or twelve, who looked a little like Donald Harmon.
“My aunt will be down in a few minutes, Katherine,” Mrs. Harmon had said as soon as her guests were seated. “She has asked us to wait tea for her.” And Jean and Olive both noticed that Mrs. Harmon’s manner was a little constrained and that she kept looking at Olive as though she intended asking her some question, but as the question was never asked, the girls must have been mistaken. However, the conversation in the little company did not become general, for no one except Miss Winthrop seemed to feel at ease, until by and by the tap, tap, tap of a long stick was heard coming along the hall and with a low bow the butler flung open the drawing room door.
Everybody sat up straighter in their high-back chairs; Jean could not forbear a slight wink at Donald, but Olive felt her heart rise up in her throat. Why on earth was the old mistress of “The Towers” so formidable that the entire neighborhood felt an awe of her? Olive was rather sorry that she was competing for one of her prizes offered to the Junior students at Primrose Hall.
“Madame Van Mater,” the butler announced very distinctly and at the name of the owner of the white house, which Olive now heard for the first time since her arrival at Primrose Hall, the young girl caught at the sides of her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. Then when no one was looking at her, smiled at herself and turned her gaze curiously on their ancient hostess.