Frieda shook her head. "They won't bring any gold," she said firmly.
"But you'll feel lots better, Frieda," Ruth begged.
Frieda saw that the weight of opinion was against her, and, besides, she was vain of her hair and did wish it to look pretty again, so she gave in graciously.
"All right, Jean, if you will ride horseback with me all day to-morrow and make Olive and Jack ride in the wagon, I guess I will let you," she conceded.
Jean had the sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled up past her dimpled elbows and the collar of her white blouse tucked in at the neck. She felt as much at home by the wayside pool as she did in Rainbow Lodge. Frieda was wrapped in a white towel like a shawl. Only once, toward the end of the washing operation, did she utter a squeal of indignation, and Ruth and Olive immediately ran to her rescue.
"Jean's caught a minnow in my hair," she insisted wrathfully, with her face very red. "I saw the tiniest one sailing down the brook by me, and then all at once it disappeared, and I am sure I can feel it wriggling on my neck."
Ruth made a careful examination of the clean yellow hair before Frieda would be reconciled. Then she led the small girl away to a sunshiny spot, spreading her hair over her shoulders to dry, until she looked like the original "Miss Goldilocks" in the old fairy tale. Frieda was given a piece of scalloping, which she had been working on for weeks, to keep her quiet.
"Jean," Ruth called a minute later, "do you mind staying here with Frieda for a little while? Olive and I have to go foraging for some chips before we can make the fire burn for luncheon, naughty Carlos having deserted us. Do you think you can make yourself lovely and keep an eye on things at the same time?"
Jean nodded peacefully from her throne of rocks, though a minute before she had been hot from her exertions and angry at Frieda's ingratitude. "Sure, as my name is Jean Bruce, I can," she answered cheerfully, letting down the masses of her dark-brown hair. She made such a pretty picture that Ruth watched her smilingly for a few minutes. She thought she loved all the girls alike now, but Jack and Olive were her friends and Jean and Frieda her children. She guessed her business of playing chaperon to the ranch girls would not be an easy one, if ever Jean got away from their western life into the gay society world of which she dreamed and talked.
But no frivolous ideas of a society existence now engaged Miss Bruce's attention, and she had no more idea of being disturbed than if she had been the original lady in the Garden of Eden. Jean was indeed the nut-brown maid of whom old-fashioned poets loved to write. Her hair had no golden tones in it; only the rich browns of the autumn woods, and her eyes matched it in color. She was paler than the other ranch girls, with a soft, healthy pallor, although to-day a little tanned and rosier than usual from her week's trip in the caravan.