"About our party? Girls, you must do all you can to assist me. I never have been the successful hostess of our family. Aunt Jean and Aunt Frieda were both more gifted, Olive was shy. I was always supposed to be too frank, a graceful fashion of saying I said and did the wrong thing."
Jack had finished dinner, which was a simple, early meal that the family shared.
The sun had gone down, but the afterglow was coloring the landscape. The radiance spread over the big veranda filled with graceful wicker furniture. A rose glow lay upon the table and the faces surrounding it.
There had been no special friction during the past two weeks, so that the new stepmother was beginning to feel her task might not be so difficult as she anticipated.
If the four girls still displayed no active liking for her, they did not seem to dislike her. Jeanette's manner showed a good deal of repression.
"Surely one of you new Ranch Girls must possess the social gift. Whom must I depend upon? In a few years you will be grown and entering more formal society, but before then I hope I shall learn to be a proper chaperon."
Jeanette arose.
"You need not trouble about me. I cannot understand father's sudden change of attitude. Never has he agreed that we give a party before, although I have often asked for the privilege.
"I hope, father, you will allow me to go East to school as soon as school opens. I have been thinking a good deal of this lately. If you ever have time for me again I should like to talk it over with you. I have an idea I want to study something to make my own living. You already have a large family and our share of the Rainbow Ranch is not a large one."
"Jeanette, this is not the time or place for such a discussion." In her father's voice there was a tone Jeanette had never heard before, which frightened and startled her. She had desired to vex him, not to make him seriously angry. Actually this had not occurred to her as a possibility. It was true, however, that they had not spent an hour together alone since his return from Canada.