This time Frieda made not the least effort to restrain her sorrow, for the bed fairly shook with her weeping. “We were talking about worms!” she sobbed.
“Worms!” Olive and Jean repeated in chorus, believing that they could not have heard aright.
“Oh, yes, worms and flies,” the culprit continued. “You see, we got to talking about fishing and Tom Parker said he loved it better than most anything he ever did and some summers he goes way up into the Maine woods and fishes in the lakes for trout. He uses flies for bait always, but I told him that we fished with worms in Rainbow Creek and sometimes when it wouldn’t rain for a long time we used to have to dig way down under the ground to find them. I told him too how once I started a fishing worm aquarium and kept all the worms I could dig up in a glass bowl to sell to Jim and the cowboys whenever they wished to go fishing.”
Frieda did not further endeavor to outline her grown-up conversation with her first admirer, feeling too angry and too puzzled to go on for the minute, for her former irate judges were now holding their sides and doing their level best to keep from shrieking with laughter.
“And I was afraid she was talking sentiment instead of fishing worms,” Jean whispered in Olive’s ear.
Around to the other side of the bed Olive went to tuck the covers more closely about Frieda. “Go to sleep, baby, and dream of Jack,” she comforted, “and perhaps Miss Winthrop will never hear of your mistaking the time for saying good-night.”
“And if she does hear, you’ll ask her to forgive me,” Frieda returned sleepily, “for I believe she likes you, Olive, better than most any of the girls. I have seen her looking at you so strangely every now and then.”
In another half minute Frieda was fast asleep, not feeling so penitent over her escapade as the two older ranch girls supposed. But Frieda had always been a good deal spoiled and, as Miss Winthrop had not noticed her failure to say good-night, no further scolding impressed her fault upon her mind. Perhaps this was unfortunate, for it is better that both little girls and big receive their punishment for a fault so soon as the fault is committed, in order not to keep on growing naughtier and naughtier until Fate punishes us for many sins at once.
CHAPTER X
THE HOUSE OF MEMORY
After lunch the day following the dance, as it chanced to be Saturday afternoon, Jean came into the ranch girls’ sitting room looking for Olive and Frieda. She had been playing basketball for the past two hours and in spite of having known nothing of the game on her arrival at school, was already one of its acknowledged champions. But although Jean’s cheeks were glowing and her hair in a tumbled mass above her face, her expression was uncommonly serious and in her hand she held a bundle of letters. One she tossed to Frieda, who was curled up on a sofa nursing a small cold due to her frivolity, and two to Olive, keeping two for herself.