CHAPTER XV.
ALL SAVE JACK!
IT was nearly noon next day when the latest comer to Rainbow Lodge awoke. She still felt sore and stiff from her long journeyings, but she could never remember such a blissful sleep in her life.
Out her bedroom window, Ruth thought she caught the sound of the girls' voices and dipping into her wrapper, threw up her window blind. The sun flooded her room with a curious radiance. Ruth felt she had never known what real sunlight was before. It certainly cleared away the mists from her heart and brain.
Ruth gazed around her room. It was a joy to her in its wide sunlit emptiness. The girls had hung white muslin curtains at the windows, the little pinewood table, chair and bureau were painted white and the bed was white iron. A little fire burned in the low grate, for Aunt Ellen had stolen in and laid it, without wakening their guest. There was no color in the room except the soft brown stain on the walls and floor, and one bright, red and black Indian blanket.
Ruth understood that the girls had made the place lovely for her. She began to feel that perhaps they did want her with them after all. Unconsciously she yielded to the cheerful spirit of Rainbow Lodge and hurrying into her clothes, found Aunt Ellen ready with her toast and coffee.
Aunt Ellen explained that the ranch girls had disappeared somewhere about the ranch. They had waited for their visitor, but when it seemed that she was going to sleep all day, they vanished.
"You mustn't mind, Miss," Aunt Ellen murmured apologetically, "but they can't somehow stay indoors, so long as the good weather holds."
Cousin Ruth went shyly out on the ranch-house veranda. She was thinking regretfully of what a bad impression she had made on her cousins the night before, because she, too, had planned a very different kind of meeting. No recollection remained of any one of the girls, except Jack, whom she would always remember as the young Centaur she saw racing across the plains.
Ruth strolled slowly down the path through the cottonwood trees. She was beginning to feel lonely, and hoped one of the girls would turn up soon. Above her head the yellow leaves rustled softly and the brown landscape no longer looked uninteresting. It was all new and strange, she thought, but some day she might learn to care for it.