By this time the usually self-contained Margaret was weeping bitterly in Jean’s arms, while she patted her reassuringly on the back. Gerry looked utterly exhausted, her hair was in a perfect tumble and a smut ornamented one of her cheeks. Frieda had turned toward the wall and Lucy and Mollie Johnson each had an arm about her.

“Well, girls, the game is up, isn’t it?” Jean spoke first, but Olive simply would not accept what her eyes had already told her.

“It isn’t true, Jean hasn’t been defeated, has she Gerry?” she entreated, squeezing the hand that held hers.

“Winifred Graham has just been elected president of the Junior class at Primrose Hall for the coming year!” Gerry announced stoically, and then there was a sudden sound of weeping from all parts of the sitting room.

“Why, goodness gracious, girls, don’t take things like this,” Jean insisted, being the only dry-eyed person on the scene. “Margaret dear, you are positively wetting my shirtwaist. Of course, I am sorry not to have been elected, but I’m not disappointed, as I haven’t thought lately that I could be. And please, this isn’t anybody’s funeral.” Then Jean kissed Margaret and walked over to shake hands with Gerry.

“You have both worked terribly hard for me and I never can cease to be grateful to you, but now that things are all over do let us show the girls that we can take defeat gracefully anyhow. Please everybody stop crying at once and come on with me to shake hands and offer my congratulations to Winifred Graham. Wouldn’t we look a sorry set if the next time she beheld us we should all appear to have been washed away in tears? The first person that looks cheerful in this room shall have a five-pound box of candy from me in the morning.”

Of course Jean’s suggestion that Winifred Graham should not learn the bitterness with which they accepted their defeat had an immediate effect, as she had guessed it would, upon Gerry and Margaret. Both girls stiffened up at once.

“Jean is perfectly right,” Margaret immediately agreed, “for it will never do in the world for us to make a split in our Junior class just because things have not gone as we wanted. Lots of the girls did vote for Jean and if we take our defeat bravely, why Winifred Graham and her set can’t crow over us half so much as if we show our chagrin.”

Gerry made such a funny face over the prospect of Winifred’s crowing that everybody was able to summon a faint laugh.

“Come on at once then, let us go and offer our congratulations to Winifred while we have our courage screwed to the sticking point. For my part I would rather do my duty and remember my manners without delay.”

And Jean opened the door, believing that all her friends would follow her. Once in the hall, however, she soon discovered that Olive was missing and going back called out softly: “Come on, Olive, and help us congratulate the winner. You wouldn’t have us show an ugly spirit now, would you?”

But Olive quietly shook her head. And as Jean was by no means sure how Winifred might receive any attention from Olive, she forbore to insist on her accompanying them. Should Winifred be disagreeable under the present circumstances Jean was not perfectly sure of being able to keep cool; and of all things she must not show temper at the present moment. Besides, her few minutes’ conversation with Olive, before the coming of the girls to announce her defeat, had evidently borne good fruit, for Olive did not appear particularly distressed at the result of the election. After a first moment of breaking down she had entirely regained her self-control. Truly Jean was delighted at seeing her so sensible.

One, two, three minutes passed after the other girls’ departure and an entire silence reigned in the room, Olive standing perfectly still. Had Jean been pleased because she had accepted her failure so sensibly? Sensibly! why Olive had not spoken simply because she could not trust herself to speak. She had not cried, because in the first moments of humiliation and regret, there are but few people who can at once summon tears. Of course, Olive was taking the affair too seriously and Jean’s view was the only reasonable one, but she had not been defeated herself, she had stood in the way of her friend’s victory and this last blow had come to her after months of coldness and neglect on the part of her classmates, which she had borne bravely and in silence. Now Olive was through with courage and with silence.

At last she seemed to have made up her mind to some action, for the relief of tears came. Going into her own room, Olive flung herself face downward on the bed, giving herself up to the luxury of this weakness. When she arose her face wore a look of unusual determination. Whatever her fight, it was ended now. First she walked over to her bureau and there unlocking a small iron safe took out a sandalwood box, a box which all who have followed her history, know to be the single possession she had rescued from the Indian woman before running away from her for the last time.

The girl carried her few treasures to her desk and before beginning the letter she plainly intended writing, she picked them up one by one, looking at them closely, the silver cross and chain worn on the evening of the dance, the small book only a few inches in size, and the watch with the picture of a woman’s face in it, the picture that Ruth and the ranch girls had always believed to look like Olive.

At the face she looked longest, but after a few moments this also was laid aside for the work she had in mind.

“DEAR RUTH” (her letter read):

“I write to tell you that I am not willing to remain longer as a student at Primrose Hall. I am sorry to trouble you with this news and if Jack is too ill to be worried, please do not mention this to her. I have tried very hard to bear my difficulties here and truly I would have gone on without complaining, for I can live without the friendship of other girls so long as you and the ranch girls care for me, but what I cannot bear is to be a drawback to Jean and Frieda and to stand in their way as I do here. I do not know what to ask you to do with me, for I cannot go back to live among the Indians until I know more than I do now and am able to teach them. Can I not go to some little school where the girls will not care so much about my past? But if you are not willing for me to do this, and I know how little I am worthy of all you and the ranch girls have done for me, you must not mind if I find some work to do, so that I can make my living. For no matter what happens, I can remain no longer at Primrose Hall.

“With all love, OLIVE.”

And when the letter was finished Olive, whose head was hot and aching, rested it for a moment on the desk upon her folded arms. When she lifted it, because of a noise nearby, Miss Katherine Winthrop was standing only a few feet away.

“I beg your pardon, I knocked at your door, Olive, but you must have failed to hear me and then I came inside, for I wanted to talk to you.”

The fact that Miss Katherine Winthrop in some remarkable fashion seemed always to know, almost before it happened, every event that transpired at Primrose Hall, with the causes that led to it, was well recognized by her pupils. So of course she now knew not only that Winifred Graham had been elected to the Junior Class presidency, but the particular reason why Jean had been defeated.

“I am sorry to have you see that I have been crying, Miss Winthrop,” Olive said, knowing that there was no use in trying to disguise the truth. “I know you think it very foolish and stupid of me.”

Miss Winthrop sat down in a big chair, beckoning the young girl to a stool near her feet. “Well, I suppose I do usually discourage tears,” she answered with a half smile; “at least, I know my girls think I am very unsympathetic about them. But I suppose now and then we women are just obliged to weep, being made that way. What I want to talk to you about is Jean’s defeat at the election this afternoon. You feel responsible for it, don’t you?”

Why be surprised at Miss Winthrop’s knowledge of her feelings, as apparently she knew everything? So Olive merely bowed her head.

“I want to ask you to tear up the letter which you have just written asking your friends to let you leave Primrose Hall because of what has happened.”

Miss Winthrop’s eyes had not apparently been turned for an instant toward the desk on which her letter lay, and even so she could not have seen inside a sealed envelope. Olive stared, almost gasped. “How could you know, Miss Winthrop?”

Miss Winthrop put her hand on Olive’s dark hair, so black that it seemed to have strange colors of its own in it. “I didn’t know about your letter, dear, I only guessed that after the experience you have passed through this afternoon, with what has gone before, you were almost sure to have written it. And I want to ask you to stay on at Primrose Hall.”

Olive shrank away, shaking her head quietly. “I have made up my mind,” she returned; “I have been thinking of it before and now I am quite determined.”

A moment’s silence followed and then in a different voice, as though she were not speaking directly to the girl before her, Miss Winthrop went on. “I believe there are but three types of people in this world, be they men or women, that I cannot endure,—a coward, a quitter and a snob. Unfortunately I have discovered that there are among the girls here in my school a good many snobs. I guessed it before you ranch girls came to me and now that I have seen what you have been made to suffer, I am very sure. But, Olive, I want you to help me teach my girls the weakness, the ugliness, the foolishness of snobbery. And can you help me, if though not a snob, you are one or both of the other two things I have mentioned?”

“A coward and a quitter?” Olive repeated slowly, wondering at the older woman’s choice of these two words and yet knowing that no others could express her meaning so forcibly.

“But I would not be going away on my own account, but for the sake of Jean and Frieda,” she defended.

“I think not. You may just now be under that impression, but if you think things over, does it not come back at last to you? You feel you have endured the slights and coldness of your classmates without flinching and it has hurt. Yes, but not like the hurt that comes to you with the feeling that your presence in the school is reflecting on Frieda and Jean. They do not wish you to go away, Olive, they will be deeply sorry if you do and whatever harm you may think you have done them has already been done and can’t be undone. No, dear, if you go away from Primrose Hall now it is because of your own wounded feelings, because your pride which you hide way down inside you has been touched at last!”

Miss Winthrop said nothing more, but turned and looked away from her listener.

For Olive was trying now to face the issue squarely and needed no further influence from the outside. By and by she put her small hand on Miss Winthrop’s firm, large one. “I won’t go,” she replied. “I believe I have been thinking all this time about myself without knowing it, You made me think of Jack when you spoke of a coward and a quitter, for they are the kind of words she would have been apt to use.”

Miss Winthrop laughed. “Oh, I have been a girl in my day too, Olive, and I haven’t forgotten all I learned. Indeed, I believe I learned those two words and what they stood for from a boy friend of mine long years ago. Now I want to talk to you about yourself.” The woman leaned over, and putting her two fingers under Olive’s sharply pointed chin, she tilted her head back so that she could see in sharp outline every feature of the girl’s face.

“Olive, your friend Miss Drew told me on bringing you here to Primrose Hall what she and your friends knew of your curious story, of their finding you with an old Indian woman with whom you had apparently lived a great many years. I believe that the woman claimed you as her daughter, but though no one believed her, your Western friends have never made any investigation about your past, fearing that this Indian woman might again appear to claim you.”

“Yes,” the girl gratefully agreed.

“Well, Olive, I have seen a great deal of the world and very many people in it and since the idea that you are an Indian worries you so much, I want to assure you I do not believe for a moment you have a trace of Indian blood in you. Except that you have black hair and your skin is a little darker than Anglo-Saxon peoples, there is nothing about you to carry a remote suggestion of the Indian race. Why, dear, your features are exquisitely thin and fine, your eyes are large. The idea is too absurd! I wonder if you could tell me anything about yourself and if you would like me to try to find out something of your history. Perhaps I might know better how to go about it than your Western friends.”

For answer Olive rose and going over to her desk, returned with the sandalwood box containing her three treasures. “This is all I have of my own,” she said, first putting the box into Miss Winthrop’s lap and then tearing up the letter just written to Ruth, before sitting down again on her stool near the older woman. Gratefully she touched her lips to Miss Winthrop’s hand, saying: “I would like very much to tell you all I can recall about myself, for lately queer ideas and impressions have come to me and I believe I can remember a time and people in my life, whom I must have known long before old Laska and the Indian days.”