However, Jean at this moment, asking pardon for her rudeness, drew Olive aside. “Olive,” she whispered in her friend’s ear in rather anxious and annoyed tones, “have you seen anything of Frieda Ralston for the past hour? I told that young lady to come and speak to one or the other of us every half hour all this evening and she has never been near me a single time. Has she spoken to you?”
Olive laughed, shaking her head. “No, Frieda has never spoken to me,” she replied, “but once in dancing by me she did deign to smile as though we had met somewhere before. Isn’t she funny?”
But Jean was not amused. “She’s perfectly ridiculous with her grown-up airs and I wish Ruth were here to send her upstairs to bed. You know it is nearly twelve o’clock, Olive, and our dance will be over at exactly twelve and then Miss Winthrop expects each one of us to come up and personally say good-night to her. Suppose Frieda and that Johnson child should not be around, for I can’t find Mollie either. I wonder if they have gone off anywhere with that long-legged grasshopper of a boy?”
“You take Frieda too seriously, Jean,” Olive murmured, “she is sure to be in the parlor and will say good-night with the rest of us. You see, we are so used to thinking of her as a baby that we can’t get used to her independence.”
But the two ranch girls could not continue indefinitely to talk of family matters with strangers waiting near them. Anyhow, just at this moment the big clock in the hall, the same clock that Olive had listened to so long on that first night at Primrose Hall, now slowly began to boom forth the hour of midnight and at the same moment the music began to play the farewell strains of the “Home, Sweet Home” waltz.
Cecil Belknap straightway offered his arm to Olive, not that he desired her as a partner, but that he wished to punish Jean. A moment later Gerry and her friend entered the ballroom, so that naturally Donald and Jean were compelled to have this last dance together. Of course Donald would have preferred Olive, but any ranch girl was sure of being second best. However, Donald need not have worried over Jean’s being forced upon him, for no sooner had they come into the parlor with the other dancers, than two young fellows, seizing hold of Jean, declared she had promised the “Home, Sweet Home” waltz to both of them, and almost forcibly bore her away to divide the dance between them.
So with nothing better left to do, Donald stood for a moment watching Olive and Cecil Belknap. They were having a conspicuously sad time, for Cecil could not dance and so Olive was miserable. Rushing to the rescue, Donald bore his first partner away and now Cecil had the desire of his heart. For Jean’s benefit he spent the closing moments of the evening in the society of her rival, Winifred Graham. However, the young man would have been better satisfied could he have known whether or not the western girl noticed his desertion. His sister had asked him to be nice to Jean in order that the mere influence of his presence near her might induce her classmates to vote for her, and yet she had not appeared particularly grateful. It is the old story with a girl or a woman. Strange, but she never seems to care for a man’s attention when he makes a martyr of himself for her sake!
However, in these last few minutes of the dance the older ranch girls were concerned only with thoughts of Frieda. Nowhere about the great room could she be seen, not even after the young men guests had gone away and the girls had formed in line to say good-night to Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt. Olive and Jean were separated by several students and yet the same questions traveled from one face to the other. “Suppose Miss Winthrop asks us what has become of Frieda, what must we say, and what will she do if, after trusting Frieda and Mollie, they have gotten into some kind of mischief?”
Two steps at a time, the two girls, when their own good-nights had been said and no questions asked, rushed upstairs to their bedrooms. But outside Jean’s door Olive suddenly stopped and laughed. “Frieda is such a baby, she has only gone upstairs to bed. Of course she has said good-night long ago.”
Cautiously they thrust open the door; a dim light was burning inside the room and a maid had turned down Frieda’s bed, but that young lady was not in it, neither was there any sign of her presence about the place.