Now Jeanette lifted up her face and the older woman bent toward her.
On her lips the girl felt another pair of lips rest for a fleeting instant. This was unimportant beside the fact that eyes met in a long, intimate and soul-revealing glance.
"It is all right, Jeanette, and wise for you to go," her stepmother answered her unspoken thought. "Things may be difficult at school, but you'll get a great deal from it. As for me, I promise to do my best at the Rainbow Ranch and to let you hear if anything goes seriously wrong. Good-by."
The three other Ranch Girls were waiting to say farewell. Jeanette's last embrace was for her father.
"Say I am your favorite daughter just this minute?" she begged.
He nodded and drew her toward the train, which had at this instant stopped.
A few moments after she was wiping the mist from the car window and trying to catch farewell glimpses of her family and friends. They receded all too quickly from her vision.
A surprisingly quiet Jeanette sat beside Mrs. Perry for the next few hours.
The older woman read a magazine. Now and then she glanced at the girl when she felt she was not aware of her scrutiny.
After a time Jeanette's sensation of loneliness began to be dissipated by her interest in her surroundings. Her color came back. The small head with the bobbed brown hair and firm chin and the gray-blue eyes was lifted first to stare out the window, then to study her fellow-travelers.