The day for the election of the president of the Junior Class had arrived at last. Lessons were over at noon and from three o’clock until six in the afternoon Jessica Hunt and Miss Sterne would remain in the library at Primrose Hall watching over the ballot box. Immediately after six the box would be opened, the ballots counted and the choice of the Juniors announced.

For December had come with her white frosts and cold, brilliant days and the fields about Primrose Hall were sere and brown. Now and then in the past few weeks a light snow had fallen and the shore waters of the Hudson River would then be trimmed with a fine fringe of ice. Once the election was over the Primrose Hall students would be making plans for the Christmas holidays, but until then nothing else, not even home and family, appeared of so great importance.

Do not think because Gerry’s appeal to Olive to save Jean had gone astray that she had given up the fight for her friend’s cause. Indeed, like many another brave campaigner, she had only worked the harder, rallying Jean’s friends closer around her, exhorting her enemies and trying to persuade the girls on the fence that there was no real point in their antagonism toward Olive. And in all the efforts Gerry had made she had had an able lieutenant in Margaret Belknap, Jean’s other devoted friend.

For herself Jean could do little electioneering, realizing that unless her classmates desired her to represent them by reason of the character she had already established among them, nothing she could do or say at this late day should influence them. And Jean had also never wavered from the attitude she had taken in regard to Olive on the afternoon of their final discussion of the subject. She had not needed that her resolution be strengthened, but if she had, letters from Ruth Drew and Jack Ralston would certainly have accomplished it. For Olive, true to her threat, had written them the entire situation, begging that Jean be persuaded from the error of her ways. Instead of the reply she hoped for, Ruth and Jack had both emphatically declared Jean’s position the only possible one.

All the morning in the hours just before the election Jean had been conscious that Olive’s eyes were fixed on her whenever their presence in one of the class rooms made it possible. Her expression was so wistful and apologetic that Jean began to care more for her own success on Olive’s account than her own. So as soon as luncheon was over and three o’clock had come around, slipping her arm through her adopted sister’s, she drew her along the hall toward the library door.

“Come on, Olive, child, and cast your vote for me and then let us go upstairs and stay hidden away until the election is over. Then Gerry and Margaret will let us know the result. If I were a really high-minded person I suppose I should now vote for my rival, Miss Graham, but as I can’t bring myself up to that point, I’ll just slip in a piece of paper for old Gerry.”

Ten minutes after this conversation Jean and Olive were in their own sitting room for the entire afternoon, having placed a sign outside announcing that no one could be admitted. Of course both ranch girls were excited and nervous, but of the two Olive was plainly the more affected, for while Jean talked and laughed in a perfectly natural fashion, she was pale and silent and oftentimes on the verge of tears.

The day was cold and lovely and outside the sun shone on the bare upturned branches of the trees and on the broad bosom of the earth.

“Silly child,” Jean began, arranging her paper and ink on the writing table before one of their windows, “why should you behave as though the question of my election was the only important thing in the world. On a day like this I only feel desperately homesick for Jack and the old ranch. What wouldn’t I give if we were all there to-day and just starting out on a long, hard ride? Sometimes I am so desperate about never seeing Jack that I don’t know what to do. I think I will write to Jim and to Ralph Merrit this afternoon, for it will help to make the time pass faster than anything else. I am afraid I have treated Ralph rather badly, as I promised to write him often and have only written twice. Then I want to ask Jim if he is really coming east to see how Jack is getting on. I wonder if he will hate to see Ruth again or like it? One never can tell about a person in love.”

Perhaps Jean’s thought of her old friends and affairs at the Rainbow Ranch may have had a cheering influence upon her, for no sooner had she put her pen to the paper than apparently all worry and suspense left her and she scratched away rapidly and clearly for several hours.

But poor Olive found no such distraction or solace; indeed, she kept up such a restless and unnecessary moving about the room that at any other time Jean most certainly would Lave scolded. First she tried studying her Shakespeare, since she was making a special effort to succeed in the Shakespeare class, and before coming east to school had read only a few plays with Ruth and the ranch girls in the big living room at the Lodge. But not the most thrilling historic drama nor the most delightful comedy by William Shakespeare could to-day take her mind from the one idea that engrossed it. After half an hour of merely pretending to read, she flung her book down on the floor, saying petulantly: “Tiresome stuff! I wonder what ever made me think for an instant I could stand any chance of getting the Shakespeare prize?”

Jean smiled. “Oh, I suppose, Olive, because Ruth and all of us thought you had a lot of talent for reciting and acting and you dearly love to read and study at most times. But why don’t you go out for a walk, you can find Frieda somewhere around downstairs and make her go with you. I don’t want to.”

“And I don’t want to either and won’t,” Olive answered with a good deal more temper than usual with her, and flying into her own room, she banged the door behind her. Rummaging about for some occupation, she came across a piece of sewing which she had once started at the Lodge, some white silk cut in the shape of a round cap to be covered over with small white pearl beads.

Slipping back once more into the sitting room, Olive found a low stool by the fire and there tried to see whether sewing would have a more soothing influence upon her than reading for the two more hours that had somehow to be disposed of. Yes, sewing on this occasion was more distracting than reading, for very soon Olive’s fingers worked automatically while her brain began to concern itself with interesting and puzzling ideas. The many hours which she had spent alone at Primrose Hall had not been wholly unprofitable—lonely hours need never be unless we choose to make them so—but Olive perhaps had more to think of and to ponder over than most girls of her age who have not led such eventful lives.

After her afternoon call at “The Towers” and her conversation later with Miss Winthrop, Olive had been reading all the books in the school library that she could find, which might help her explain the curious experience—confided to no one—through which she had passed that afternoon. But it was not just this one experience that had puzzled and worried Olive, for many strange fancies, impressions, memories, she knew not what to call them, had been drifting into her mind since her first sight of that white house on the hill on the morning after her arrival at Tarry dale. The ideas had no special connection with anything that was definite, but Olive was lately beginning to believe that she could recall dim ideas and events having no connection with the years she had spent in the Indian tent with old Laska. But why had these far-off memories not assailed her in the two years at the Rainbow Ranch? Perhaps then the recollection of Laska, of her son Josef, who had treated her with such an odd mixture of respect and cruelty, of the Indian people about her whom she had so disliked, had been too close, too omnipresent in her mind. Had she needed to come far away from the West and its associations to feel that she had come home? No, it was impossible, for Olive felt sure that she had never been east before in her life.

Finally the clock struck five and then half-past and at last six.

Jean, some moments before, had ceased writing and now sat calmly folding up her pile of letters, placing them in their respective envelopes. She looked tired and perhaps a trifle pale but composed. At last she got up from her chair and crossing the floor knelt down in front of Olive, taking the piece of sewing from her cold fingers.

“Olive dear,” she said unexpectedly, “you are looking positively ill from thinking of something or other and worrying over me. For both our sakes I wish that Jack could be with us this afternoon just for the next hour. I know I have not been elected the Junior president. I never have really expected to be, but just as I sat there writing about half an hour ago I knew I had not been. Now see here, Olive, I have been thinking that I have been defeated for more than thirty minutes and yet look at me! Do I look heartbroken or as if I were very deeply disappointed?” And Jean smiled quietly and serenely at her companion. “Promise me that when the girls come in in a few minutes to tell me I have not been elected, that you will take things sensibly and not think that you have had anything to do with my failure.”

Olive shook her head. “How can I promise such a thing, Jean, when I know perfectly well it isn’t true,” she answered, vainly attempting to hide the fact that she was trembling with excitement and that her ears were strained forward to catch the first noise of footsteps coming toward their door.

Sighing, Jean continued, “Oh, you silly child, what shall I say or do with you? Don’t you know if the girls had really wanted me for president nothing and no one could have stood in my way?”

The shove which Olive gave her, slight though it was, nearly made Jean tumble backwards. “Why do you talk as though you knew positively you had not been elected, Jean Bruce, when you really know absolutely nothing about it. I am sorry I pushed you, but I thought I heard some one coming down the hall.”

As Olive had gotten to her feet, Jean now arose also. No one had appeared to interrupt them.

“I know by this time that I have not been elected,” Jean said, “because it must now be some little time after six o’clock and Miss Sterne and Jessica could never have taken so long a time as this to count the few ballots of the Junior class.”

However, there was no doubt at this instant of noises out in the hall approaching nearer and nearer the ranch girls’ sitting room.

It was Olive who rushed to the door and fairly tore it open, while Jean waited calmly in the center of the room.

Outside were Gerry and Margaret Belknap, Frieda and Lucy and Mollie Johnson, and one look at the five faces told the waiting girls the truth. Coming in, Margaret flung her arms about Jean and Gerry took a farm clasp of Olive’s hand.

“I never would have believed it in the world!” she exclaimed.