Nevertheless Frieda tossed her yellow head, but also flushed a little, having said more than she intended. If Frank did not know he was jealous of Captain MacDonnell and Jack was also unaware how much this had unconsciously influenced his decision concerning his friend's request, it was not her place to tell them.
"Just the same you'll be sorry and ashamed of yourself some day, Jack Ralston. You need not pretend anything to me, I understand the present situation perfectly. Frank was rather horrid to you and he ought not to be allowed to be a bully, but you could really twist him around your finger if you tried. You can now at any rate because he adores you. And Frank is pretty nice you know, most women would be glad to have him. After all he has a title and money, and men are going to be scarce when this war is over."
"Frieda!" Jack exclaimed in such a tone of disgust that Frieda departed hastily, if still gracefully, out of her sister's room.
However she stopped at the door.
"You know it will look perfectly absurd for us both to go back home without husbands," Frieda tossed out. "I didn't mind half so much when Frank was around and there was at least one man in our family. But of course it looks now as if we had something the matter with us, horrid dispositions, so that no man could make up his mind to live with us."
This time Jack betrayed herself a little more by showing anger.
"You have no right to assume I am behaving as you did, Frieda, because I want to go to the old ranch for a time. Frank has given me his consent, I've no idea of running away."
Then, as Frieda burst into tears at the allusion, Jack had to draw her small sister back into her room from the doorway, and do what she could to apologize and console her.
She felt rather a hypocrite, too, because after all Frieda was not so far wrong in some of her suppositions, and she had had no right to pretend to superiority.
There was at this time no danger to passenger vessels through submarines, so that it was arranged for the travelers to leave for the United States early in April that they might spend the spring at the Rainbow Ranch.