With cries of delight the two ranch girls, pouncing on the great box, which was brimful of violets, buried their noses in its fragrances.
“They are just too lovely and too Rainbow ranchy for anything,” Jean exclaimed, thrusting a bunch into Gerry’s hand. “Won’t Frieda be homesick for her violet beds when she sees them, even if she is so enraptured with boarding school that she hardly talks of home any more?”
While Jean was speaking Olive was busily lifting the flowers from the box. Just toward the last she discovered a separate bouquet, wrapped in white paper and bearing a card with a name inscribed upon it.
“This is for you, Miss Hunt; it has your name upon it,” Olive announced, trying to look entirely unconscious, although she and Jean both guessed at once that the gift of the large box of flowers to them had been made largely in order to include the smaller offering inside it.
Jessica, assuming a far-away expression of complete indifference, took the flowers; they were lilies of the valley encircled with violets and it was difficult for any girl to conceal her delight in them.
Watching her with her head slightly to one side and a dangerously demure look on her face, Jean said suddenly, “I wonder, Miss Hunt, how long you have known our Mr. Drummond? You see, we are awfully fond of him and he has been very good to all of us, especially to Jack. Sometimes I have wondered if he could think you and Jack look a little bit alike? Olive and I think you do. But we don’t know anything about Mr. Drummond except that he is terribly rich and terribly good looking and very kind. Can’t you tell us something more?”
Jessica shook her head gravely. “I am afraid that is all I can tell you about Peter, I mean Mr. Drummond, that is of any importance. Just that he is rich and good looking and kind. He is so rich that he has never done anything or been anything else, and I have known him a great many years, since I was a small girl and he was a big boy and we used to live near one another in Washington Square, before my father died and we lost some of our money.”
“Well,” Jean returned reflectively, “it seems to me that it is a good deal to be just rich and good looking and kind, for there are lots of people who are not one of those three things.”
And though Jessica was not feeling especially happy at the moment, Jean’s words made her smile. “That is true, dear,” she returned, “but I am afraid that I want a man to be more and to mean more in this world than just that.” She was about to leave the room when Olive put her hand on her arm. “Don’t go, Jessica, Miss Hunt I mean,” she apologized, “but I so often think of you as a girl like the rest of us. I want to talk to Jean about something and I wish you to stay to help me make her behave sensibly.”
Still unsuspicious of what Olive had in mind, but realizing now that it was important, else she would not have called in so many persons to her assistance, Jean put down her flowers and coming up to her friend placed one hand on each of her shoulders, looking closely with her own autumn-toned brown eyes into her friend’s darker ones.