Elizabeth sighed. "Yes, I do, Jack," she confessed honestly. "You don't care because you have so much, but I have so little I am awfully jealous and envious."
Jack's frank face clouded. She did not know exactly what to say to so queer a girl as Elizabeth Harmon. The ranch girls never preached, and Jack was not inclined to be critical, always preferring action to speech, so that now she found herself in deep water.
"Look here, Elizabeth," she said a moment later, with a wisdom greater than she dreamed, "I believe you make yourself sicker by thinking so much about your illness and worrying about the things you can't do. I know it is awfully hard, but if you'll promise me while you are out west to try every day to see if you can walk a little farther and eat more and not be cross, why, I'll do most anything in the world for you."
"Will you come and stay with me at Rainbow Lodge and let the others go on with their holiday?" Elizabeth begged.
Jack laughed and shook her head. "I couldn't do that, dear. I should feel too queer and homesick to be visiting in my own home."
"Then you'll come to New York next winter to stay with me?" Elizabeth demanded. "That will be best of all. It seems so funny to me that you've never been in a theater or to a big restaurant or to any large city!"
"I'd love to come, Elizabeth," Jack agreed, "but you mustn't expect me, for you know we ranch girls haven't any money except just enough to live on, and I couldn't possibly take more than my share for such a trip."
Elizabeth pouted. "You don't know what it means not to be rich, Elizabeth," Jack explained. "Here come the others, thank goodness! I am nearly starved."
When Frieda, Carlos and Olive appeared, their hands were filled with every variety of lovely wild flower. They had been searching the woods and hills for them, while Jean and Donald hung over the boiling pool with their kettle swung in the water by a long string. Olive and the two children flung their flowers in a heap in Ruth's lap. "Give us a botany lesson on the Park flowers when tea is over, Ruth," Olive suggested. "I wish I knew as much about them as you do."
It was a beautiful afternoon, warm even for July in this part of the country, although the whole month had been such a mild one that the peaks of the snow-capped Yellowstone mountains were less white than usual, from the melting of the snow. Nobody seemed inclined to stir when tea was over. Ruth was idly twining a wreath of the wild flowers, when Jean flung herself down by her.