"His name was Kenneth Evans, you know, Bob," explained Polly, innocently.
Eleanor and Anne exchanged glances and smiled, for they understood that Barbara meant to be condemnatory in her manner; but Polly, in her very guilelessness, countered the city girl's disparagement.
"It's too bad we couldn't have had him come home with us," added Eleanor, teasingly, to Barbara.
"Dear me, Nolla! By the time I get you back to Chicago you will need a complete training in social behavior again!" declared Barbara, frowning at her younger sister.
But her remark merely called forth a merry laugh from the light-hearted girl. Mrs. Brewster then started the usual preparations for bed, and the group followed her example.
For the benefit of any one who has not been fortunate enough to become acquainted with our western friends, in the first book of this series, we will introduce you while the girls are soundly sleeping.
Polly Brewster, a girl just past fourteen, was a true type of the honest, ambitious ranchers of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Her home, the extensive farm in the crater of an extinct volcano, was called Pebbly Pit because of the giant cliffs of colored stones guarding the entrance trail. This ranch was about eleven miles from Oak Creek, the mining settlement and railroad station for about a thousand inhabitants, where all shopping had to be done. The town was much like other rough, half-civilized western settlements, consisting of a post office, a bank, the sheriff's office, and several saloons. A general store was maintained in connection with the post office, and here one must buy anything needed for house or farm. The Brewsters, being affluent ranchers, ordered their clothing, house-furnishings, and many tools or luxuries by mail, from illustrated catalogues. But the rough road from the ranch to the town post office, being hard going in a heavy ranch-wagon, often caused the Brewsters to forego a mail order on cosmopolitan stores rather than drive in and cart the goods home from Oak Creek.
Polly had just completed her grammar course at the little Bear Forks' school-house where Anne Stewart had taught two years previous to this summer. Polly had never been elsewhere than at Oak Creek and now she yearned to attend High School in Denver.
Anne Stewart lived in Denver, and for the past year had been tutoring Eleanor Maynard, while the girl and her older sister Barbara boarded with Mrs. Stewart. The Maynard girls were from Chicago, but Eleanor, who was fourteen, was very delicate, so the doctor had recommended a high altitude for her.
Anne Stewart was helping her brother Paul through a college in Chicago, and during her visit to him, at the end of his first year, she met his friends—John Brewster who was Polly's older brother; Tom Latimer a promising young engineer from New York; and Pete Maynard who was a brother to Eleanor and Barbara. It was through this means that the Maynards heard of the Stewarts' home in Denver, and anxiously begged Anne to take the two girls into her home circle. As the salary offered for this privilege was so munificent, the young teacher eagerly accepted, and then found her youngest charge a lovable and merry girl.