But the worst is still to tell.
He had planned a surprise for his little ward. When she should come back to the ranch, it would be to a real home. A sweet, womanly influence would have transformed it into a fitting abode for a young girl. Guardie was not alone. He was accompanied by his bride—a tall, fair, beautiful woman with a low voice and gracious manners. She sang for the girls after dinner, and as sixty-four pairs of eyes studied the beautiful presence, sixty-four—no, sixty-three—of her auditors decided to grow up to be exactly like her. Margarite did the honors in a state of dazed incomprehension. Her make-believe world of seven weeks had crumbled in an hour, and she had not had time to readjust herself. Never—she realized it perfectly—could she have competed in femininity with Guardie's wife. It wasn't in her, not even if she had commenced to practise from the cradle.
They went back to the city in the evening, and before the entire school, Guardie patted her on the head and told her to be a good little kiddie and mind her teachers. His wife, with a protecting arm about her shoulders, kissed her forehead and called her "dear little daughter."
After evensong on Sundays, came two hours of freedom. The teachers gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the town."
The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss Lord came to investigate—and she came on her tiptoes.
Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp, while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.
"Margarite! Get down!" someone suddenly warned in frightened tones above the uproar.
"You needn't call me Margarite. I'm Kid McCoy of Cripple Creek."
Her eye caught sight of Miss Lord towering above the heads crowded in the doorway and she quite suddenly climbed down. For once, Miss Lord was without words. She stared for a space of three minutes; finally, she managed to articulate:
"Sunday evening in a Church school!"