Olive flung her arms about the bride with more emotion than Ruth had ever seen her show. "I wish I could say things like the other girls!" she exclaimed. "But oh, Ruth, you do understand how grateful I am to you and Mr. Colter for all you have done for me? Because, however kind the girls wanted to be, they could not have succeeded without your aid and Jim's."
"You are as dear as the other girls to me, Olive, I know no difference between you," Ruth answered, choking a little over Olive's unusual display of feeling. And as she clasped an emerald chain about her neck she whispered, "I can hope in return that some day you may be as happy as I am."
Olive said nothing; only shook her dark head quietly, but before Ruth could speak again, Jean danced into the room.
"Jack stayed so long there won't be any good by turns for Frieda and me," she pouted, "unless Olive comes away at once. Jim is already raging up and down the veranda like a bear, saying that he is sure you will miss the train."
Jean's gift was a necklace of sapphires set with tiny diamonds in between. And Ruth had only a chance to kiss her favorite Ranch girl (for Jean was her favorite, though she would never have admitted it) and whisper:
"If you don't leave Giovanni alone while we are away, I will make Jim lock you up alone in your stateroom for the entire voyage home."
Then Frieda, with a slice of wedding cake in her hand, made her appearance. "I didn't have a chance to eat hardly any at the table," she defended immediately, answering Jean's teasing glance. "Jim says you must say what you have to say to me when you get back from your trip, Ruth; you simply must come on down now right away."
So Ruth had only time to push the scarlet jewel case into the hand Frieda did not have occupied with cake. And begging her to be a good baby and not eat too many of Dick's chocolate drops in her absence, she hurried off to her impatient bridegroom.
Faithfully the four girls kept their promises and not a tear followed the departing carriage. However, when the last sounds of the wheels had rolled away they stared at one another as though the world had suddenly come to an end.
"Well," Frieda remarked, as she held her pretty chain of rubies in her hand, "I must say I never supposed that Ruth and Jim would ever want to get married. They knew each other so well. Now take the rest of us. Nobody would ever want to marry any one of us except a stranger. Jack is too high-tempered and wants her own way too much, Jean is a perfectly horrid tease, Olive goes and stays by herself and cries when her feelings are hurt—"