[Illustration: MARGARET BELKNAP’S BROTHER COULD BE SEEN DANCING
ATTENDANCE ON JEAN]
THE RANCH GIRLS SERIES
The Ranch Girls at Boarding School
By
Margaret Vandercook
Illustrated By
Hugh A. Bodine
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright, 1913, by
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
CONTENTS
I. “STILL AS THE NIGHT”
II. IN DISGRACE
III. “GERRY”
IV. GETTING INTO HARNESS
V. NEWS AND A DISCOVERY
VI. HER TEMPTATION
VII. CINDERELLA
VIII. SHADOWS BEFORE
IX. FRIEDA’S MISTAKE
X. THE HOUSE OF MEMORY
XI. “SLEEPY HOLLOW, A LAND OF DREAMS”
XII. WINIFRED GRAHAM AND GERRY
XIII. THE APPEAL TO OLIVE
XIV. “TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE”
XV. THE DANGER OF WEALTH
XVI. ELECTION DAY
XVII. CONGRATULATIONS
XVIII. FANCIES OR MEMORIES?
XIX. NEW YEAR’S EVE
XX. THE TRUE HISTORY OF OLIVE
XXI. JEAN AND FRIEDA RETURN TO PRIMROSE HALL
XXII. READJUSTMENTS
XXIII. “MAY TIME is GAY TIME”
XXIV. SHAKESPEARE’S HEROINES
XXV. “JACK”
The Ranch Girls at Boarding School
CHAPTER I
“STILL AS THE NIGHT”
Would the long night never pass? A figure on a bed in a big bare room
stirred and then sighed. Ages ago a clock in the great house known as
Primrose Hall, not far from the famous region of “Sleepy Hollow,” had
struck three, then four, and now one, two, three, four, five solemn
strokes boomed forth and yet not a glimmer of light nor a sound to
announce the coming of morning.
“In the Lord put I my trust; how say ye then to my soul, that she should
flee as a bird unto the hill? For lo, the ungodly bend their bow and
make ready their arrow within the quiver, that they may privily shoot at
them which are true of heart,” a tired voice murmured, and then after a
short pause: “Oh, girls, are you awake yet? Aren’t you ever, ever going
to wake up? Dear me, this night already seems to me to have lasted
forever and ever!” For no answer had followed the question, although a
door stood wide open between this and an adjoining room and the bed in
the other room was occupied by two persons.
Five minutes crawled by and then another five. Tired of reciting the
“Psalms of David” to induce repose, the wakeful figure slipped suddenly
from its own bed and a slim ghost stole across the floor—a ghost that
even in the darkness revealed two shadowy lengths of jet-black hair. In
the farther room it knelt beside another bed, pressing its cheek against
another cheek that felt both plump and peaceful, while its hand reached
forth to find another hand that lay outside the coverlet.
“They are both sound asleep and I am a wretch to be trying to waken
them,” the spectre faltered; “but how can they sleep so soundly the
first night at a strange boarding school when I am so homesick and
lonely I know that I am going to die or cry or do something else
desperate? If only Jack were here, things would be different!” And Olive
Ralston, one of the four girls from the Rainbow Ranch, sliding to the
floor again, sat with her legs crossed under her and her head resting on
her hands in a curious Indian posture of grief. And while she waited,
watching beside the bedside where Jean Bruce and Frieda Ralston were now
quietly asleep, her thoughts wandered away to the hospital in New York
City, which held her beloved friend Jack.
Only the day before the three ranch girls, accompanied by their
chaperon, Ruth Drew, had made their initial appearance at Primrose Hall
to begin their first year of fashionable boarding school life. But once
the girls had been introduced to the principal of the school, Miss
Katherine Winthrop, and Ruth had had a talk with her and seen the rooms
assigned to the ranch girls, she had been compelled to take the next
train back to New York, a journey of twenty or more miles, for Jack had
been left behind in a hospital and must not be long alone. There she lay
awaiting the verdict of the New York surgeons to know whether after her
accident at the Yellowstone Park the summer before she might ever expect
to walk again. The chief reason of the trip from the Rainbow Lodge in
Wyoming to New York City had not been to give the ranch girls an eastern
education and to fit them for a more cosmopolitan life now that so great
wealth was being brought forth from the Rainbow Mine, but to find out
what could be done for Jack.
Now even while Olive was thinking of her best loved friend, a faint,
chirrupy noise and a flutter of unfolding wings sounded along the
outside walls of Primrose Hall. Lifting her head with a smothered cry of
delight, the girl spied a thin streak of light shining across the floor.
A moment later, back in her own room with the door closed behind her and
her own window open, her eyes were soon eagerly scanning the unfamiliar
scene before her. Dawn had come at last!
The young girl drew a deep breath. In the excitement of her arrival at
school the day before, in the first meeting with so many strangers,
Olive had not spared time to see or think of the surroundings of
Primrose Hall, but now she could examine the landscape thoroughly. Set
in the midst of one of the most beautiful valleys along the Hudson
River, this morning the fields near by were bright with blue asters,
with goldenrod and the white mist-like blossoms of the immortelles; the
low hills in the background were brown and red and gold with the October
foliage of the trees. Beyond the fields the Hudson River ran broader and
deeper than any stream of water a ranch girl had ever seen, and across
from it the New Jersey palisades rose like hoary battlements now veiled
in a light fog. Surely no sunrise on the river Rhine could be more
wonderful than this sunrise over the Hudson River; and yet, as Olive
Ralston gazed out upon it, its beauty did not dry her tears nor ease the
lump in her throat, for what she wanted was home, the old familiar
sights and sounds, the smell of the Rainbow Ranch—and nothing could be
more unlike the low level sweep of their Wyoming prairie than this
Hudson River country.
“Heimweh,” the Germans call this yearning for home, which we have named
homesickness, but a better word theirs than ours, for surely this
longing for home, for accustomed people and things in the midst of
strange surroundings, may be a woe very deep and intense.
From the first hour of the ranch girls’ planning to come east to
boarding school Olive Ralston had believed that the change from the
simple life of the ranch to the more conventional school atmosphere
would be more difficult for her than for either Jean or Frieda. True,
she had not spoken of it, but Olilie, whom the ranch girls had renamed
Olive, had never forgotten that she was in reality an unknown girl, with
no name of her own and no people, and except for her friends’ generosity
might still be living in the dirty hut in the Indian village with old
Laska.
After talking it over with Ruth and Jack, they had all decided that it
would be wiser not to mention Olive’s strange history to her new
schoolmates. Now in the midst of her attack of homesickness, Olive
wondered if the girls would not at once guess her mixed blood from her
odd appearance, or else might she not some day betray her ignorance of
the little manners and customs that reveal a good family and good
breeding? In the two happy years spent at the Rainbow Ranch she had
learned all she could from Ruth and the other three girls, but were
there not fourteen other ignorant years back of those two years?
A charming picture Olive made standing at the open window with her
quaint foreign face framed in the high colonial casement. But now,
finding both the autumn air and her own thoughts chilling, she turned
away and began slowly to dress. She was still blue and yet at the same
time ashamed of herself, for had she not been indulging in the most
foolish habit in the world, feeling sorry for herself? Here at Primrose
Hall did she not hope to find the beginning of her big opportunity and
have not big opportunities the world over the fashion of starting out
with difficulties to be overcome? When Olive’s education was completed
she had made up her mind to return once more to the Indian village where
she had spent her childhood and there devote her life to the teaching of
the Indian children. Though Jack and Frieda Ralston, since the discovery
of the gold mine near Rainbow Creek, were probably very wealthy and
though it was but right that Jean Bruce as their first cousin should
share their fortune with them, Olive did not feel that she wished to be
always dependent even on the best of friends.
Having slowly dressed with these thoughts in her mind, the young girl’s
mood was afterwards a little more cheerful, and yet she could not make
up her mind how best to amuse herself until the half-past seven o’clock
bell should ring for breakfast. She might write Jack, of course, but
there was no news to tell her at present, and stirring about in her room
hanging pictures or arranging ornaments would surely awaken Jean and
Frieda, who were still slumbering like the seven famous sleepers. No
other girl shared Olive’s room because Ruth and the four ranch girls
hoped that after a few weeks’ treatment in the New York hospital Jack
would then be able to join the others at school.
Idling about and uncertain what to do, Olive came again to her open
window and there stood listening to the “chug, chug, chug” of a big
steamer out on the river and then to the shriek of an engine along its
banks. Suddenly her face brightened.
“What a goose I am to be moping indoors!” she exclaimed aloud, “I think
I will try Jack’s old remedy for a bad temper and go and have a good
walk to myself before breakfast.”
Now Olive did not have the least idea that in going out alone and
without permission she would be breaking an iron law of Primrose Hall.
Nothing was farther from her mind than disobedience, but no one had yet
told her of the school rules and regulations and taking a walk alone
seemed to her the most natural thing in the world. Had she only waited a
few hours longer she must have understood differently, for the students
were expected to assemble that very morning to hear what was required of
them at Primrose Hall.
As quietly as possible Olive now slipped on her coat and hat, creeping
along the hall on tiptoes so as not to disturb the other sleepers, and
for the same reason she as quietly unlocked the big front door. But once
out on the lawn, so innocent was she of trying to escape unnoticed, that
she paused for several moments to gaze back at the great house she was
about to leave.
Primrose Hall was so handsome and imposing that its new pupil felt a
thrill of admiration as she looked upon it. A red brick mansion of the
old colonial period, it was set in a lovely garden with flowers and
shrubs growing close about the house and an avenue of elm trees leading
down to the gate. Back of the house was an English garden with a border
of box and a sun-dial at the end of a long path. This morning only a few
late asters were in bloom in the garden and bushes of hardy hydrangeas
with their great blossoms now turning rose and brown from the first
early autumn frosts. The house and estate of twelve acres had belonged
in the family of Miss Katherine Winthrop for the past five generations
and Olive smiled a little over her queer conceit, for the house somehow
suggested its present owner to her. Surely Miss Winthrop had appeared
just as imposing and aristocratic as her old home on first meeting with
her the day before, but far colder and more imposing than any mere pile
of brick and stone.
Primrose Hall was of so great size that it included all the bedrooms and
reception rooms necessary for its pupils and teachers, and the only
other school buildings about the grounds were the recitation hall and
two sorority houses devoted to the pleasures of the girls. Olive had
never heard of secret societies, yet she wondered what the mystic words
“Kappa” and “Theta” meant, inscribed above their doors.
Primrose Hall had been recommended to Ruth Drew and the ranch girls by
Peter Drummond, the New York friend whom they had learned to know at the
Yellowstone Park, but apart from its excellent reputation as a finishing
school, their choice had fallen upon it because of the far-famed beauty
of its historic grounds. In this same old house Washington and Lafayette
had been known to stay, and who can guess how many powdered belles and
beaus may have flirted with one another in the garden by the old
sun-dial?
When Olive had grown tired of the views about the houses she determined
to extend her walk over a portion of the estate, and coming to a low,
stone wall, climbed over it without thinking or caring just where it led
her. Being outdoors once more and free to wander as she choose after two
weeks’ confinement, one aboard a stuffy train and the other in a
palace-like hotel in New York, was now so inspiring that Olive felt like
singing aloud. Indeed, it seemed to her that her own personality, which
had somehow vanished since leaving the ranch, had come back to her this
morning like a dear, familiar garment. It was as though she had lately
been wearing fine clothes that did not belong to her and in this hour
had donned once again her own well-worn dress.
Running along with the fleetness and quietness of her early Indian days,
soon the truant found herself in a woods thick with underbrush and trees
never seen before by a Wyoming girl. The air was delicious, the leaves
sparkled with the melting of the frost, there was a splendid new wine of
youth and romance abroad in the world and Olive completely forgot that
she was in the midst of a highly civilized community and not in the
heart of a virgin forest. Indeed, it was not until she had come entirely
out of the woods that her awakening took place. Then she found herself
apparently in some one’s private yard, for she stood facing a white
house set up on a hill with a tower at the top of it and queer gabled
windows on either side. At the entrance to its big front door stood two
absurd iron dogs, and yet there was nothing in any of these ordinary
details to make the onlooker turn crimson and then pale. And yet as she
stared up at the house the idea that had suddenly come to her seemed so
utterly, so absurdly impossible that surely she must be losing her
senses.
For five minutes Olive waited without taking her gaze from the house,
and then with a shrug of her shoulders turned and walked back into the
woods. At first she paid no particular attention to what direction she
was taking until all at once, hearing footsteps not far behind, she felt
reasonably sure they were following hers.