“Jean, Frieda,” Olive began, speaking quietly now and in her accustomed voice and manner, “it is only that since you have been away Miss Winthrop has found out for me that I am not an Indian girl. I am not even a western girl, or at least my father was not a Westerner. You remember the day we went to see the Harmons at ‘The Towers’ and old Madame Van Mater stared at me so strangely and scolded Donald for thinking I was like his mother. She did not wish me to look like Mrs. Harmon because Mrs. Harmon was my father’s first cousin and——”
“Oh, Olive, what are you talking about? You sound quite crazy!” Frieda interposed.
And then Olive went on, even more clearly and rapidly telling the other girls the history of her father and of herself as far back as she had learned it. “Oh, I know you can’t believe what I have told you all at once, girls, for it does sound like a miracle or a fable and we never would have believed such a story had we read of it in a book. But Miss Winthrop says that every day in the real world just such wonderful things are happening as my coming here to Primrose Hall in the very neighborhood where my father used to live and finding my grandmother alive. In any newspaper you pick up you can run across just such an odd coincidence.” As Olive had been allowed to talk on without interruption, of course she believed by this time that both Jean and Frieda understood the news she had been trying to make plain to them. Frieda had risen to a sitting posture and was staring at her with frightened eyes, Jean was frowning deeply.
“You mean?” said Jean helplessly. “You don’t mean?” said Frieda at the same moment, and then, to relieve the tension of the situation the three girls giggled hysterically.
“Please begin right at the beginning and tell the whole story over again, Olive, and I will try to understand this time,” Jean had then commanded and patiently Olive went through the whole tale again.
Therefore it was small wonder that they forgot about the bedtime hour, until a knock at the door startled them. Jessica Hunt was preceptress of their floor for the evening and, as Miss Winthrop had already told her something of Olive’s history, she readily allowed the ranch girls a half hour’s extra talk. She could not help their lights going out at ten o’clock, however, but the ranch girls did not really care. A candle under an umbrella makes an excellent light and no one outside can be any the wiser!
Perhaps it was their two weeks of separation, perhaps it was Olive’s strange story, for rarely had the three girls felt more devoted to one another than they did to-night. They were sitting with their arms about one another when Olive jumped up. “Please lend me the candle a minute,” she begged unexpectedly, “I have been talking so much about myself that I forgot I had some letters for you. They may be important.”
In another moment, coming back from her desk, she dropped several envelopes in Jean’s and in Frieda’s hands. “I suppose if they are Christmas cards you can see them by this light,” she said carelessly, “but if they are letters you had best wait till morning.”
With a quick gesture Frieda tore open one of her envelopes and the paper enclosed was neither a card nor a letter. “Oh, my goodness gracious, what ever am I going to do?” she asked desperately, seeing three large black figures staring at her even in the dark. “I have but ten cents in all this world and I owe a bill of one hundred and fifty dollars!”
The reason for the line in Frieda’s brow was now disclosed. Instead of having saved any of her hundred-dollar Christmas present during her Christmas visit she had spent every cent of it. Now, without waiting for her to find out what she could do to get the money for her dreadful bill, the wretched, unkind shop people had sent it her on the very first day of the New Year.