But at the present moment Jean did not find the subject of the mine of sufficient interest to persuade her to walk down to it in an effort to make her own investigations. Things would clear up soon enough without her troubling. For there had to be friction every once and a while where so many people were employed.
Yawning several times, Jean finally dropped into a hammock that had been swung for Ruth on the porch at Rainbow Lodge. She was holding a magazine in her hand and reading it fitfully.
Probably Jean would have assured you that she was wearing the oldest and simplest dress in her entire wardrobe and that she really had not made any kind of toilet for the afternoon. Yet with Jean Bruce pretty clothes and a graceful and pleasing fashion of wearing them were second nature. It is true her pale pink cashmere frock was not new and was made in a straight piece with no trimming save a round lace collar and a girdle of broad pink silk ribbon. Yet Jean had wound a ribbon of the same color about her dark brown hair, until her usual pallor seemed to be warmed by its glow.
For a half moment she must have fallen asleep, for she was awakened by thinking she heard some one coming toward the Lodge. The next moment Ralph Merrit stood beside her.
He looked entirely unlike himself; his clothes were untidy; he seemed not to have slept for a number of nights; his face was worn and drawn. Jean was startled into sudden pity and interest. For Ralph had always seemed so capable and so efficient and if things worried him, he had always kept them to himself.
Now as Jean struggled to her feet he only said: "How do you do, Jean. Will you tell me, please, whether Mr. Colter is at home or whether I may be apt to find him anywhere about the ranch?"
But Jean's eyes questioned, although her lips as yet said nothing, and the young man flushed.
"I must beg your pardon for my appearance," he began awkwardly, "but I have been doing some rather hard traveling and I have not yet been to my own quarters to fix up. I had no idea of running across you." Ralph stared hard for a moment at the dainty girl slowly rising out of the hammock and then at himself. She was like the inside of a sea shell in her pink costume with her white skin and the pretty detached air she so often wore.
Ralph laughed uncomfortably and not very mirthfully.
"Won't you wait a minute, please?" Jean asked quietly. "Jim is not here and won't be for some little time perhaps. But I have an idea that you are hungry as well as tired and I have been longing for some one to drink afternoon tea with me." And before her companion could reply the girl disappeared.