Once inside the ranch girls’ sitting room, Jessica Hunt gave a little cry of admiration and surprise. “Why, no wonder you don’t wish to be outdoors,” she exclaimed, “for this is the most charming girls’ room at Primrose Hall! It makes me think of that same poem of Kipling’s which I was misquoting a minute ago, ‘The Gypsy Trail.’ You must read it some day when you’re older, for you look like a Romany maid yourself. And surely in this room at least ‘the east and the west are one.’”
Truly the ranch girls’ sitting room was indeed what they had dreamed of making it in the last days at home, a bit of the Rainbow Lodge in miniature, their own beloved ranch house living room reproduced many miles across the continent. By Ruth’s request Miss Winthrop had allotted to the three ranch girls a large and almost empty room, containing only a divan, a few chairs and low bookshelves. Now the floor was covered with half a dozen gayly colored Indian rugs, bright shawls were thrown over the divan, piled with sofa cushions of leather and silk, and on the walls were prints of Indian heads, one of them a picture of a young girl looking singularly like Olive, and several Remington drawings of cowboys on lonely western plains. Over the open fireplace, about one-fourth the size of the one at The Lodge, was the head of an elk shot by Jim Colter himself on the border of their own ranch, and on the mantel the very brass candlesticks that belonged on the mantelpiece at home, besides several pieces of Indian crockery, the ancient ornaments discovered by Frieda in the Indian cave on the day when Olive had made her first appearance in the ranch girls’ lives.
But when Jessica had seen the beauties of the sitting room she began at once to look more closely at the few photographs which the ranch girls had placed on top of their bookshelves, knowing that there is no quicker way to learn to understand and enter the heart of a school girl than by taking an interest in her photographs. Of course, these must represent the persons nearest and dearest, their families and closest friends.
The ranch girls had not a very large collection of pictures, only an absurd one of Jim, taken at Laramie as a farewell present to them, but as he wore a stiff collar and shirt and his Sunday clothes, it was not in the least like their big, splendidly handsome friend. Next Jim’s was one of Ruth and alongside that one of Frank Kent, but almost instinctively Jessica’s hand reached forth to pick up a photograph of a girl on horseback and at the same instant she touched Olive’s heart.
“Who is this beautiful girl?” she asked quickly. “She is just the type of girl I admire the most, so graceful and vigorous and with such a lot of character. Oh, I hope I haven’t said anything I shouldn’t,” she ended suddenly, seeing that Olive’s eyes had filled with tears.
Olive shook her head. “No, it’s all right, only Jack isn’t vigorous any more.” And then, to her own surprise and relief, Olive poured forth the whole story of Jack’s accident and their reasons for coming east.
Strange, and yet no stranger than the same kind of thing that takes place every day, but just as Olive was on the point of telling Miss Hunt that she expected each day to hear more definite news of Jack, a message was sent upstairs to her from the office. A visitor was in the reception room desiring to see the Misses Ralston and Miss Bruce at once. Would Olive find the other girls and come to the reception room immediately?
With but one thought in her mind, that it must be Ruth Drew who had come to tell them that Jack was better, Olive, with a hurried apology to Jessica, begging her to wait until her return, fled out, of her room down through the lower part of the house and then out into the school grounds to search for Jean and Frieda, for much as she yearned to run at once to Ruth, it would be too selfish not to let the other girls hear the good news with her.
And Jessica Hunt was glad enough to be left alone in the ranch girls’ room for a few minutes longer, for standing near the photograph of Jacqueline Ralston was another photograph whose presence in the room puzzled her greatly. She did not feel that she had the right to ask curious questions and yet she must look at this picture more closely, for the exact, copy of it was at this moment lying in her own bureau drawer between folds of lavender-scented silk.