Ginger knew most of the older people, but the three or four girls were strangers to her, and it is doubtful if they welcomed her with any deep degree of pleasure; everything that they were—in riding, in pictorialness, Virginia McVeagh, the far-famed “Ginger” of Dos Pozos, was—and more. She was the doctor’s prime favorite; his keen eyes rested on her in affectionate approval. She was quieter than she used to be, he believed, but it was a sure and serene quiet, not a shy one.
They had been discussing a two days’ riding and camping trip and a very blond girl leaned forward in her chair at table and called down to Ginger. “Listen, Miss McVeagh, I want to give you fair warning about the new Forest Ranger! I saw him first—I’ve got my fingers crossed!” She held up two slim digits, twisted. “Ah ... wait till you see him! Wallie Reed and Tommy Meighan and Valentino rolled into one! We’ll never be the same again, any of us! Even Laura”—Laura, a brown-eyed beauty, was newly and patently betrothed—“has missed a mail or two! He’s—”
“Now, now,” said the doctor, rather quickly, “he’s a nice, likely lad, but nice, likely lads aren’t any treat for Ginger—she has a whole landscape full of them, down south. Well, she can judge for herself; she’s going to ride out to Cold Spring with me this afternoon, and meet him and get our camp-fire permit.”
“Oh, doctor!” wailed the very blond girl. “That’s playing favorites! You know Miss McVeagh looks as if she had invented horseback riding—it gives her a terrible handicap!”
“Won’t you come, too, Miss Milton?” Ginger wanted calmly to know.
“I should say not! I won’t be a mob scene. But it’s not fair. I shall stay in my cabin all afternoon and think up ways in which I may outshine you.”
“I’m sure it won’t take you long,” said Ginger, amiably. She felt a great deal older than the chattering, pretty creature; she felt older and wiser than all of them—immeasurably older and wiser than the rapt-eyed Laura.
She was ready at one to ride with the doctor, but when she walked down to the corral, her Aunt Fan, panting beside her, she found Dr. Mayfield putting her saddle on his own horse.
“Ginger, I’m going to desert you,” he said. “I don’t know whether Miss Fanny has confessed to you or not, but she’s inveigled me into a game of bridge.”
“My dear, I simply have to play bridge after the lunches I eat here, or I’d take a nap, and that’s fatal! I’ve been shamefully deceived about this place, anyway—‘camp fare!’ Better food than you get at the Ritz, and much more fattening—hot biscuits—honey—”