"The Harmons are coming down to the rancho some time to-day to say good-by to Jack; you know they are leaving for New York in the morning," Jean interposed, feeling conscience-smitten, but anxious to escape a scolding.
All this time Frieda had been silent, but now she clapped her hands together so suddenly that she made everybody in the room start. "I have a perfectly lovely idea," she announced. "Let's give Jack a surprise party. We need not ask any outside people except the Harmons, for poor Jack can't dance or play many games any more, but she will like the surprise, I know."
Ruth leaned over and kissed Frieda, and there was a moment of silence. The girls were thinking that money would mean very little to any one of them if Jack did not regain her strength.
"It's a beautiful plan, Frieda," Jean answered at last, with hot cheeks. "We will stay at home to-day and decorate the rancho so no one will know it to-night. I suppose it will be nice to have a farewell party for the Harmons. We ought not to show that we have any feeling against them, but it is pretty hard," she concluded.
"Jack does not believe that Elizabeth or Donald or Mrs. Harmon knew why Mr. Harmon wanted to buy our ranch," Ruth interposed.
"Donald Harmon knew," Olive interrupted quietly, but no one could persuade her to say how she had found this out.
By half-past seven the front of the rancho was hung with Japanese lanterns. On the old divan in the sitting room Jack was enthroned like an Oriental princess, with her blue crepe shawl draped over a blue muslin gown and a wreath of red roses in her coronet of gold hair.
Peter Drummond had at last returned to his home in New York without paying a visit to the ranch, but never a week passed that he did not send a large box of red roses to Jack with a letter urging her to hurry to New York.
The girls had decided to have a fancy dress party, and, as there was no time for preparation, their costumes were an odd assortment of all the odds and ends they could find. Early in the day, when Jack guessed that something unusual was to take place, Ruth decided that she would enjoy the preparations more than the surprise. So it was she who helped dress Olive, who never looked so lovely in her life. Quite by accident her odd costume exactly suited her. She wore a simple white dress, with a short jacket of gold embroidery, and a round, gold-embroidered cap on her loose black hair; and around her throat on a chain the silver cross which she had found in the sandalwood box hidden by old Laska.
Jean and Frieda in kimonos, with sashes about their waists, were Japanese geisha girls, and found their costumes excessively inconvenient in their efforts to help Ralph Merrit freeze the ice cream in the back yard.