CHAPTER XXI

JEAN AND FRIEDA RETURN TO PRIMROSE HALL

In less than forty-eight hours after the close of the last chapter Primrose Hall was once more emptied of its silences and loneliness and gay with the returning of its students now that the holiday season was well past.

Most of the girls came back in groups of twos and threes, since trains at Tarrydale were numerous, but every now and then the school carryall would be loaded up with girls, hanging on to the steps, sitting in one another’s laps. And it happened that in one of these overloaded parties Jean and Frieda arrived at Primrose Hall together.

There was so much excitement, of course, in the arrival of such a number of students at one time and so much kissing and embracing among some of the girls tragically separated from their best chums for two weeks, that in the general hubbub Jean and Frieda noticed no special change in Olive. If Jean thought at first that she had looked a little tired she forgot about it in a few minutes. The girls had so many stories to tell of their own experiences, there was so much running back and forth from one room to the other, so much unpacking of trunks and bestowing of forgotten gifts, that the three ranch girls really saw very little of each other without outside friends being present until almost bedtime that night.

Then at nine o’clock, with only an hour to spare before their lights were turned out, they met before their sitting-room fire, wearing their kimonos, their hair down their backs, prepared at last for the confidential talk to which for different reasons they had all been looking forward for some time.

A sign with “No Admittance” printed on it hung outside their door and on the floor in convenient reach of the three girls sat two large boxes of candy, one presented to Frieda upon leaving Richmond, Va., and the other a farewell gift to Jean from Cecil Belknap in New York.

For the first moment so great was the satisfaction of the three girls at being reunited that nobody spoke, and then all at once they began talking in chorus.

“I think I ought to have the first chance to tell things, as I am the youngest and have been the farthest away,” Frieda protested.

Of course Jean and Olive were glad enough to give Frieda the first chance, but now as she began to speak, very naturally both of them turned their attention full upon her. It was strange, for of course Frieda had had a wonderful visit—what girl in a southern city fails to have—and yet in spite of all her accounts of dances and dinner parties and germans given for the school girls in Richmond during the holidays, both Jean and Olive noticed that she did not look as cheerful as usual, but that, if it were possible to believe such a thing, a fine line of worry appeared to pucker her brow.

“Frieda Ralston, you have been going too hard and seeing altogether too much of life for such a baby,” Jean insisted when Frieda had triumphantly cast a dozen or more pretty trinkets received as favors at germans at their feet.

But Frieda had only obstinately shaken her head, “I haven’t either, Jean,” she declared, “Mrs. Johnson says it does not hurt girls to have a good time in the holidays if they only study hard and behave themselves properly at school.”

“Well, perhaps you are just tired, Frieda,” Olive suggested.

And again the youngest Miss Ralston disagreed. “I am not tired. Why should you girls think there is anything the matter with me?” And she turned such round, innocent blue eyes on her audience that it became silenced. For five, ten minutes afterwards Frieda continued to hold the floor, and then in the midst of an account of a party given at the Johnson home she had suddenly stopped talking and thrown herself down on the floor, tucking a sofa pillow under her blonde head. “Maybe I am tired to-night on account of the trip home,” she confessed; “anyhow I don’t want to talk any more just now. I suppose, Olive, you haven’t anything special to say, just having stayed here at school with Miss Winthrop. So Jean, you tell us what you did in New York.”

Because Jean took up the conversational gauntlet so promptly, both the older girls failed to notice that before Frieda had even ceased talking her eyes had filled with tears.

The story Jean told of her visits to Gerry and Margaret in New York City was not exactly like Frieda’s, for though Jean was several years older than her cousin, in New York school girls are never allowed the same privileges that they enjoy in the South. But Jean had been to the theatre many times and to luncheons and twice Mrs. Belknap had taken Margaret and Jean and Gerry to the opera in her box. “Yes, Cecil Belknap had been very nice and she had liked him a little better, though she still thought him horribly vain,” Jean confessed, in answer to a leading question from Frieda. Then she, too, abruptly concluded her story. “There is just a weeny thing more I have got to tell everybody when the lights go out,” she concluded, “but I am not willing to tell now.”

Frieda reached out for comfort toward her box of candy, popping a large chocolate into her mouth.

“Now, Olive, you please tell us what you did while we went away like selfish pigs and left you for most two weeks. You must have had a dreadfully dull time!” Frieda suggested indulgently.

Olive laughed quietly. “Well, I didn’t have exactly a dull time; at least, not lately.”

Another chocolate passed from the box to the youngest girl’s lips.

“Oh, I suppose you mean that Miss Winthrop was kind to you and you took long walks together and things like that. I believe Miss Winthrop is really fond of you, Olive, even more than she is of Jean and me. I wonder why?”

At this both the girls laughed. “Oh, I suppose it is because she thinks Olive the most attractive of ‘The Three Graces.’ Baby, of course you and I are the other two,” Jean interrupted. “But I hope, Olive dear, that she was good to you.”

And at this simple remark of Jean’s, Olive’s face suddenly flushed scarlet. “Yes, Miss Winthrop has been good to me, better than any one else in the world except you ranch girls,” she replied.

Struck by something unusual in her friend’s face and expression, Jean’s own face suddenly sobered. “What do you mean, how can she have been so unusually kind to you?” she questioned. Then with a sudden flash of illumination. “Olive Ralston, you have something important on your mind that you want to tell us. I might have guessed that you have been keeping it a secret ever since we returned, letting us chat all this nonsense about our visits first. Don’t you dare to tell us that Miss Winthrop wants to adopt you as her daughter and that you have consented, or none of us will ever forgive you in this world!”

Still Olive hesitated. “Truly, I don’t know how to tell you yet,” she murmured, “though I have been planning a dozen different ways of starting in the last two days.”

“That is it, then, Jean has guessed right,” interrupted Frieda darkly. “I suppose it has happened just as a punishment to us for having left you alone at Primrose Hall during the Christmas holidays. Of course Miss Winthrop decided that we really do not care much for you and for all her coldness to the other girls she needn’t try to deceive me; she is just crazy about you, Olive!” Frieda now began really to shed tears. “But whether you like Jean and Ruth and me or not, I never could have believed that you would be so cruel as to turn your back on poor Jack when she is too ill to speak for herself,” she finished.

“Hush, Frieda,” Olive returned sternly. “That is not what I want to tell you. Of course Miss Winthrop has asked me to live with her if you should ever wish to stop taking care of me, but I don’t want to live with her if you ranch girls want me. I was only trying to explain——”

“What, for heaven’s sake, Olive?” Jean demanded, now nearly as white and shaken as her friend, seeing Olive’s great difficulty in making her confession.

“Jean, Frieda,” Olive began, speaking quietly now and in her accustomed voice and manner, “it is only that since you have been away Miss Winthrop has found out for me that I am not an Indian girl. I am not even a western girl, or at least my father was not a Westerner. You remember the day we went to see the Harmons at ‘The Towers’ and old Madame Van Mater stared at me so strangely and scolded Donald for thinking I was like his mother. She did not wish me to look like Mrs. Harmon because Mrs. Harmon was my father’s first cousin and——”

“Oh, Olive, what are you talking about? You sound quite crazy!” Frieda interposed.

And then Olive went on, even more clearly and rapidly telling the other girls the history of her father and of herself as far back as she had learned it. “Oh, I know you can’t believe what I have told you all at once, girls, for it does sound like a miracle or a fable and we never would have believed such a story had we read of it in a book. But Miss Winthrop says that every day in the real world just such wonderful things are happening as my coming here to Primrose Hall in the very neighborhood where my father used to live and finding my grandmother alive. In any newspaper you pick up you can run across just such an odd coincidence.” As Olive had been allowed to talk on without interruption, of course she believed by this time that both Jean and Frieda understood the news she had been trying to make plain to them. Frieda had risen to a sitting posture and was staring at her with frightened eyes, Jean was frowning deeply.

“You mean?” said Jean helplessly. “You don’t mean?” said Frieda at the same moment, and then, to relieve the tension of the situation the three girls giggled hysterically.

“Please begin right at the beginning and tell the whole story over again, Olive, and I will try to understand this time,” Jean had then commanded and patiently Olive went through the whole tale again.

Therefore it was small wonder that they forgot about the bedtime hour, until a knock at the door startled them. Jessica Hunt was preceptress of their floor for the evening and, as Miss Winthrop had already told her something of Olive’s history, she readily allowed the ranch girls a half hour’s extra talk. She could not help their lights going out at ten o’clock, however, but the ranch girls did not really care. A candle under an umbrella makes an excellent light and no one outside can be any the wiser!

Perhaps it was their two weeks of separation, perhaps it was Olive’s strange story, for rarely had the three girls felt more devoted to one another than they did to-night. They were sitting with their arms about one another when Olive jumped up. “Please lend me the candle a minute,” she begged unexpectedly, “I have been talking so much about myself that I forgot I had some letters for you. They may be important.”

In another moment, coming back from her desk, she dropped several envelopes in Jean’s and in Frieda’s hands. “I suppose if they are Christmas cards you can see them by this light,” she said carelessly, “but if they are letters you had best wait till morning.”

With a quick gesture Frieda tore open one of her envelopes and the paper enclosed was neither a card nor a letter. “Oh, my goodness gracious, what ever am I going to do?” she asked desperately, seeing three large black figures staring at her even in the dark. “I have but ten cents in all this world and I owe a bill of one hundred and fifty dollars!”

The reason for the line in Frieda’s brow was now disclosed. Instead of having saved any of her hundred-dollar Christmas present during her Christmas visit she had spent every cent of it. Now, without waiting for her to find out what she could do to get the money for her dreadful bill, the wretched, unkind shop people had sent it her on the very first day of the New Year.

“I don’t like to borrow money of you and Olive, Jean, when I haven’t paid back the last,” Frieda said, after a slight, uncomfortable moment of surprise on the part of the other ranch girls, “but what can I do? I suppose I have just got to write to Ruth and Jack, asking them to pay it for me.”

“How could you ever have made such a bill, Frieda?” Jean demanded, looking over her cousin’s shoulder in the flicker of the candle light.

“Clothes,” the answer came back in a weak, small voice.

Unexpectedly Jean laughed. “Oh, well, I need not preach, baby. What I wanted to tell you myself, when the lights went out, is that I became a backslider in New York and with Ruth’s consent told Gerry and Margaret that we were not absolutely paupers. I just had to spend some of the money I had saved, the things in New York were so fascinating. So I haven’t much left to lend you, Frieda, and I am awfully sorry, for Ruth says the mine is not yielding quite as much as it formerly did and we must all be economical, for such a dreadful lot of money is needed right away for Jack. I am pretty glad we did not tell the girls at Primrose Hall that we were rich, because it may turn out that we are not after all; gold mines are often uncertain.”

“Then I suppose I will have to go to prison for debt,” Frieda murmured. And both older girls were heartless enough to laugh. “Oh, no, it need not go as far as that, Frieda,” Olive assured her, “for I have hardly spent a cent since coming to Primrose Hall, so I have nearly enough to help you out, so you need not worry. Besides Miss Winthrop says that however much I may dislike my grandmother and she me, I cannot refuse to allow her to do for me now that she has discovered my whereabouts, for the money that is now hers should _rightfully_ have come to my father even though she did not wish him to have it.”

“Remember the fortune the old gypsy told you, Olive,” Jean repeated, just as they were separating for the night. “‘And a fortune untold, Shall make for your feet a rich pathway of gold.’ I used to think she meant our mine.”