The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure

by Margaret Vandercook

London was never more filled with tourists, the greater number Americans intending to leave later for the continent.

But so far as Professor Russell was concerned, no word had been heard from him since his unceremonious meeting with his wife. However, he had sent his banker's address to Lord Kent, saying that all mail would be forwarded to him from there. Then he appeared to have dropped completely out of sight for, in spite of his brother-in-law's effort toward friendliness, he had not called upon him a second time.

In discussing the matter between themselves, Jack and Frank decided that this was possibly the best arrangement for the present. Frieda had never mentioned her unexpected discovery of her husband; nor did she ever voluntarily refer to her married life. Therefore, whatever was going on inside her mind, no one had any knowledge of it. As is often the case with women and girls of Frieda's temperament, she was better able to keep her own counsel than the women who are supposed to be strong minded and who are more apt to be frank.

So far as Jack was concerned she had never reopened with Frank the question of her rides with Captain MacDonnell, because the latter had been away and he had not asked her to ride since his return.

However, neither of these facts were so important as the feeling Jack had, that no propitious moment had arrived for a second discussion of the subject with her husband. She did not intend to defy him, but to make him see that he had no right to be so arbitrary and—more than that—so domineering. This had been Jack's usual method in any difference of opinion between herself and Frank, or in any unlikeness between the American and English point of view concerning marriage. As a matter of fact, more than half the time Jack had been successful.

But, during the past few weeks she had seen that Frank was worried and unlike himself—that his attention was engaged on matters which were not personal. For if the weather and the climate appeared serene in these particular July weeks in England the state of English politics was not. For the country was being harassed by the questions of Home Rule for Ireland and by the Militant Suffrage movement.

The Suffrage question was one which Lord and Lady Kent had agreed not to discuss with each other. To Jack, who had been brought up in Wyoming—the first of the Suffrage states in the United States—and who had seen the success of it there, the fact that the English nation held the idea of women voting in such abhorrence and with such narrow mindedness, was more a matter of surprise than anything else. The fact that her husband, who had also lived for a short time in Wyoming, should also oppose woman's suffrage was beyond her comprehension, except that Frank had the Englishman's love for the established order and disliked any change. Jack would not confess to herself that he also had the Englishman's idea that a woman should be subservient to her husband and that he should be master of his own house. To give women the freedom, which the ballot would bring, might be to allow them an independence in which the larger majority of the men of the British Isles did not then believe. Neither did they realize—nor did the suffragists themselves—how near their women were to being able to prove their fitness.

One Saturday afternoon at the close of July, Captain MacDonnell invited Jack and Olive and Frieda and a number of his other neighbors and friends to tea at his place. He had no near relatives, and when he was in Kent county lived alone, except for his housekeeper and servants, in an odd little house, perhaps a century old, which had been left him by his guardian.

The girls drove over together in a pony carriage, usually devoted to Jack's children. But at the gate they gave it into the charge of a boy in order that they might walk up to the house, which was of a kind found only in England.

The house was built of rough plaster which the years had toned to a soft grey. Captain MacDonnell had the good taste to allow the roof with its deep overhanging eaves to remain thatched as it had been in early days. The building was small and one walked up to the front door through two long rows of hollyhocks. On either side of the hollyhock sentinels the earth was a thick carpet of flowers, and the little house seemed to rise out of its own flower beds.