Two weeks had elapsed since the arrival of the three ranch girls at boarding school and so many changes appeared to have taken place in their lives that already the weeks seemed as many months. One of the changes they themselves did not realize, but nevertheless it was a serious one, for Jean, Frieda and Olive were no longer so intimate as they had been in the old days at Rainbow Lodge. Each girl was going her own way, keeping her own confidence, forming new friendships and apparently forgetting the importance of past ties.

And of the three girls it was Frieda who had become the most emancipated. Having conceived a tremendous devotion for Mollie Johnson, the two girls were rarely apart. Lucy Johnson was a good deal older than Frieda, but Mollie was a year younger than the youngest Miss Ralston and looked up to her as the most wonderful person in the world, insisting that the stories Frieda told of her life on the ranch made her appear like a heroine in a book. Now Frieda was tired of being treated like a baby by her family, and besides, as no one had ever told her before that she was in the least like a heroine, she found the idea distinctly pleasant. The two Johnson sisters were from Richmond, Virginia, and had vivacious manners and soft southern voices. Mollie was small and dark and fluttered about like a little brown bird, such a complete contrast to Frieda’s fairness and slow movements that it was small wonder the two girls were drawn together by their very unlikeness and that already their schoolmates were calling them the Siamese twins, because they went everywhere together with their arms locked about one another, wore one another’s clothes when their different sizes permitted, and were never without true lover’s knots of blue ribbon tied in their buttonholes, knots made from a sacrificial division of all Frieda’s best hair ribbons. Not that hair ribbons interested their owner any further, for the fifth day after Frieda’s arrival at boarding school, and in spite of Jean’s and Olive’s objections, her long braids had disappeared and in their place a Pysche knot of huge proportions could be seen at the back of her head. The Psyche knot was not becoming, because its wearer did not have a Greek face, but it was grown up and the latest fashion and of course nothing else really matters. As Frieda’s school work was not the same as Jean’s and Olive’s, on account of her age and the fact that she never had cared much about books, the division of her time was different from theirs, so perhaps it was but natural that in the excitement of her first independence and without Jack’s influence, she should be for the first time in her life “ganging her own gait.”

But with Jean Bruce the change was even more subtle and more unconscious. Why, Jean and Olive had actually laughed together over Frieda’s desertion of them and all the while they were laughing, though she had said nothing, Olive was wondering if Jean did not know that she saw almost as little of her as she did of Frieda these days. Without realizing it or having made any special effort, Jean Bruce, two weeks after her arrival at Primrose Hall, was one of the most popular girls in the school. As a proof of it she had already been invited to join both the two sororities and had not made up her mind which one she should choose. The fact that Winifred Graham belonged to the “Kappa” sorority certainly influenced Jean in the direction of the “Theta,” for from the hour of Geraldine Ferrows’ revelation of Winifred’s character there had been open war between Winifred and Jean. Of course, Winifred’s rudeness to Olive was the first cause of Jean’s offense, but now Olive was almost forgotten and overlooked in their personal rivalry. It was an open discussion that the choice for Junior class president, which must be made before the Christmas holidays, would lie between these two girls. For though Jean had continued her masquerade of poverty, the best girls in the school had not been influenced by it. Indeed, Jean’s closest friend, Margaret Belknap, belonged to one of the oldest and wealthiest families in New York City, people who looked down upon the Four Hundred as belonging to the dreadful “new rich.”

But while school life was apparently moving so pleasantly for Jean and Frieda, Olive, for some unexplained reason, was making no friends. Though it was customary to invite the new girls at Primrose Hall into one or the other of the secret societies almost immediately upon their arrival at school, Olive had not yet been chosen for either sorority. Too shy and sensitive to mention it even to her best friends, she did not dream that Jean was unaware of the slights put upon her. Only in secret Olive suffered tortures, wondering if her blood showed itself so plainly that her classmates disliked her for that reason or if she were more unattractive than all other girls. Still her beloved Jack, who was finer and more beautiful than anybody in the world, had cared for her and if only the doctors would say that Jack was strong enough to join them at Primrose Hall, nothing else would make any difference! Letters from Ruth Drew and now and then one from Peter Drummond had assured the girls that Jack was doing as well as could be expected, but as yet there had been no definite report from the surgeon?

However, if Olive Ralston had so far made no friends among her classmates, there were other persons in the school interested in her, who were more important. Among them was Jessica Hunt, the young teacher whom Olive had met on the morning of her unfortunate walk. There was something in the strange girl’s shyness and gentle dignity that made a strong appeal to Jessica, and though she had so far no opportunity to reveal her friendliness, she had noticed the slights put upon Olive and was trying her best to discover their cause. Some secret story might possibly be in circulation about the newcomer, but so far Jessica had not been able to find it out.

One Friday afternoon Olive had been alone in their sitting room for several hours. Always books had been her consolation for loneliness since the days when her only white friend had been the teacher in the Indian school in her village, yet nevertheless, hearing an unexpected knock at the door, her face brightened. “Jean is sending for me to join her somewhere perhaps,” she thought happily, but on opening the door her eyes had widened with surprise.

“Please, may I come in? I’m not a teacher this afternoon: I am a visitor,” Jessica Hunt had said at once. “I have been looking for you everywhere in the garden and at the sorority houses and on the verandas. To quote Mr. Kipling, ‘over the world and under the world and back at the last to you,’ here in your sitting room. Why aren’t you with the other girls?” Knowing what she did, perhaps Jessica’s question to Olive may seem cruel, yet she asked it hoping that Olive might confide in her the unfriendliness of her classmates. Then they might talk the matter over sensibly together and she might be able to help. But alas for Olive! Though Ruth had warned her to try to overcome her reserve that day of the flower fortunes in Yellowstone Park, she was yet unable to give her confidence to any one but Jack! So now she only answered Miss Hunt quietly: “It is because I am stupider than the other girls that I have to stay in my room to study more. But I am through with my work now and awfully glad to see you,” and Olive’s rather misty smile of welcome revealed more of her real feeling than any number of words.

Once inside the ranch girls’ sitting room, Jessica Hunt gave a little cry of admiration and surprise. “Why, no wonder you don’t wish to be outdoors,” she exclaimed, “for this is the most charming girls’ room at Primrose Hall! It makes me think of that same poem of Kipling’s which I was misquoting a minute ago, ‘The Gypsy Trail.’ You must read it some day when you’re older, for you look like a Romany maid yourself. And surely in this room at least ‘the east and the west are one.’”

Truly the ranch girls’ sitting room was indeed what they had dreamed of making it in the last days at home, a bit of the Rainbow Lodge in miniature, their own beloved ranch house living room reproduced many miles across the continent. By Ruth’s request Miss Winthrop had allotted to the three ranch girls a large and almost empty room, containing only a divan, a few chairs and low bookshelves. Now the floor was covered with half a dozen gayly colored Indian rugs, bright shawls were thrown over the divan, piled with sofa cushions of leather and silk, and on the walls were prints of Indian heads, one of them a picture of a young girl looking singularly like Olive, and several Remington drawings of cowboys on lonely western plains. Over the open fireplace, about one-fourth the size of the one at The Lodge, was the head of an elk shot by Jim Colter himself on the border of their own ranch, and on the mantel the very brass candlesticks that belonged on the mantelpiece at home, besides several pieces of Indian crockery, the ancient ornaments discovered by Frieda in the Indian cave on the day when Olive had made her first appearance in the ranch girls’ lives.

But when Jessica had seen the beauties of the sitting room she began at once to look more closely at the few photographs which the ranch girls had placed on top of their bookshelves, knowing that there is no quicker way to learn to understand and enter the heart of a school girl than by taking an interest in her photographs. Of course, these must represent the persons nearest and dearest, their families and closest friends.

The ranch girls had not a very large collection of pictures, only an absurd one of Jim, taken at Laramie as a farewell present to them, but as he wore a stiff collar and shirt and his Sunday clothes, it was not in the least like their big, splendidly handsome friend. Next Jim’s was one of Ruth and alongside that one of Frank Kent, but almost instinctively Jessica’s hand reached forth to pick up a photograph of a girl on horseback and at the same instant she touched Olive’s heart.

“Who is this beautiful girl?” she asked quickly. “She is just the type of girl I admire the most, so graceful and vigorous and with such a lot of character. Oh, I hope I haven’t said anything I shouldn’t,” she ended suddenly, seeing that Olive’s eyes had filled with tears.

Olive shook her head.“No, it’s all right, only Jack isn’t vigorous any more.” And then, to her own surprise and relief, Olive poured forth the whole story of Jack’s accident and their reasons for coming east.

Strange, and yet no stranger than the same kind of thing that takes place every day, but just as Olive was on the point of telling Miss Hunt that she expected each day to hear more definite news of Jack, a message was sent upstairs to her from the office. A visitor was in the reception room desiring to see the Misses Ralston and Miss Bruce at once. Would Olive find the other girls and come to the reception room immediately?

With but one thought in her mind, that it must be Ruth Drew who had come to tell them that Jack was better, Olive, with a hurried apology to Jessica, begging her to wait until her return, fled out, of her room down through the lower part of the house and then out into the school grounds to search for Jean and Frieda, for much as she yearned to run at once to Ruth, it would be too selfish not to let the other girls hear the good news with her.

And Jessica Hunt was glad enough to be left alone in the ranch girls’ room for a few minutes longer, for standing near the photograph of Jacqueline Ralston was another photograph whose presence in the room puzzled her greatly. She did not feel that she had the right to ask curious questions and yet she must look at this picture more closely, for the exact, copy of it was at this moment lying in her own bureau drawer between folds of lavender-scented silk.