“It is very,” Olive replied. “I think I should like to read the book.”
Miss Winthrop again turned to study Olive’s face, but the darkness of the late fall afternoon had now fallen completely.
“May I ask if you have had any queer experience, Olive? Have you ever felt that you have been in a certain place before, where you know you could never really have been, or have you thought suddenly of something that you did not remember having in your mind before? But please do not answer me if you would rather not, for I know that these queer experiences most of us would rather keep to ourselves.”
“Thank you,” was Olive’s unsatisfactory answer as the four women started up the outside steps of Primrose Hall.
CHAPTER XII
WINIFRED GRAHAM AND GERRY
While Jean and Olive were having tea at “The Towers” and Frieda and Mollie were engaged in a confidential talk in the ranch girls’ sitting room, school politics were playing an important part in the precincts of Primrose Hall, for Winifred Graham and Gerry Ferrows were devoting that same Saturday afternoon to canvassing their class in order to discover whether Jean or Winifred might hope in the following week to be elected president of the Junior class. Gerry was electioneering for Jean, while Winifred was conducting a personal investigation. Indeed, the situation between these two girls was a peculiar and a difficult one, for having once been intimate friends, they had now become violently estranged from one another and yet continued to be room-mates. For no other reason than because Winifred suspected Gerry’s political intentions on that Saturday afternoon did she arrange to bring her own followers together and with their aid to outclass Gerry, for Jean had positively refused to work for herself, having turned over her cause to her two best friends, Gerry and Margaret Belknap.
But before leaving for “The Towers” very early on that morning Jean and Gerry had had a long and intimate talk over the chances for her election and Gerry had been perfectly frank about the whole situation.
Olive was still the obstacle standing in the way of Jean’s success. If even at this late date Jean would allow herself to be elected into one of the sororities and thus proclaim her independence of the girl whose presence in the school her classmates resented, she might yet win their complete allegiance; if not—well, it was just this state of the case that Gerry was trying to fathom. For Jean absolutely declined to turn her back on her adopted sister and yet longed with all her heart for the honor of the class presidency. Gerry’s own position on this question of Olive was an exceedingly anomalous one; while she was too good a sport to be unkind to any one in adversity, yet she did not herself care to associate with Olive on terms of perfect equality, although she had never mentioned this fact to Jean. And lately she had felt her own decision waver, for since her father had written her that he had charge of Jack Ralston’s case at his hospital and found her the pluckiest girl he had ever seen, Gerry longed to take all the ranch girls under her protection, and yet her prejudice still held out against Olive.
Being but human and entirely devoted to Jean, this prejudice grew deeper on the afternoon that Gerry went from one room to the other of her classmates, asking them point-blank whether they intended to cast their votes for Winifred or for Jean at the coming election. Some of the girls were quite frank. They had intended voting for Jean, but lately decided that it would be wiser not to have as the representative of their class a girl who claimed as her adopted sister a half-caste Indian. Others of the Juniors hedged, they might or they might not vote for Jean, not having entirely made up their minds between her and Winifred; a number of them were, of course, Jean’s frank and loyal supporters and yet it was with a feeling of discouragement that Gerry at the close of her canvass returned to her own room. She had taken a note book with her and written down each girl’s position in regard to the election, and yet she could not now decide whether Jean’s prospects were good or bad. So it was peculiarly irritating on bouncing angrily into her sitting room to find Winifred already there before her, with her long blonde hair down her back, and, while she was pretending to cut the pages of a magazine, wearing a particularly cheerful and self-satisfied expression.
Winifred Graham was a very beautiful girl and perhaps not an agreeable one, and yet she represented a type not unusual in a certain portion of American society. As long as Winifred could remember she had been taught these two things: By her brains and her beauty she must some day win for herself the wealth and the position that her family had always longed to have and yet never had quite succeeded in attaining. For always her mother and father had been spending more money than they could afford in trying to keep up with their friends who were richer and more prominent than themselves. Indeed, Winifred’s presence at Primrose Hall was but another proof of their extravagance, for they could by no means afford the expense of such a school, yet their hope was that there Winifred would make so many wealthy and aristocratic friends that later on they might help her to a wealthy marriage.