Girl Scouts -- Juvenile fiction; Ranch life -- Juvenile fiction; Western stories; Young women -- Societies and clubs -- Juvenile fiction
It would indeed have been hard to tell which was more eager to have
that train reach its destination--Marjorie or Dorothy. Both girls felt
that so much depended upon the meeting; both girls so dreaded the
possibility of a disappointment.
Marjorie sat in the first car, and was the first person to get out of
the train. Spying Mrs. Hadley almost immediately, she rushed excitedly
forward. To her joy, the girl was with her; a girl who, though without
the high color Daisy had described, fitted well to the description of
Olive. Mrs. Hadley introduced the girls, and they began to walk towards
the cottage.
“I was awfully glad you could come,” remarked Mrs. Hadley, just as if
she, instead of Marjorie, had done the inviting. “Can you stay until
the house party?”
“Oh, thanks, but I’m afraid not. I’m having the dressmaker, but I
was so bored and tired that I longed for a breath of sea air. Mother
wouldn’t let me go alone to a hotel, so I just begged to descend on
you. Mother thought it was an awful imposition.”
Thus she explained her visit.
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Hadley. “I am only too delighted to have you.
It’s so quiet here now, that if it weren’t for Dorothy, I simply
couldn’t stay.”
When Marjorie went to her room, she asked the other girl to go with
her. Dorothy was only too thankful to accept the invitation.
At first Marjorie talked of the seashore, the ranch, and the Girl
Scouts, tactfully leading up to the mention of the name of the girl
whom she hoped to be Dorothy’s sister.
“I just graduated from Miss Allen’s this summer, and I was so tired,”
she explained. “By the way, that reminds me--did you ever know a girl
named Daisy Gravers?”
Marjorie pretended to say this casually, as she unfastened the strap of
her pump, but really her hand was trembling so that she could hardly
accomplish it. To her joy, Dorothy jumped suddenly to her feet, and,
glancing up, Marjorie saw that her face was deathly white.
“Daisy Gravers--_my sister!_” she gasped. “And I’m Olive!”
Overcome by the realization, she sank to the floor in a dead faint.
Overjoyed as Marjorie was at the discovery, she was terrified at the
effect on Olive. Suppose she became sick again, and lost her memory
after this brief moment of recollection? She shuddered at the idea;
such a thing would be ghastly! But at least it would be something to
have found her. Then, suddenly, Marjorie pulled herself together; there
was no time now for the indulgence of such feelings. She must act, and
act quickly.
Summoning Mrs. Hadley to her aid, she succeeded in getting Olive in
bed. Then, while the older woman called a doctor, Marjorie sat at the
bedside, watching her patient gradually regain consciousness. When at
last she opened her eyes, she smiled faintly at Marjorie, but she made
no attempt to talk.
After the doctor had gone, and the patient had slipped into a peaceful
sleep, Marjorie told Mrs. Hadley the whole story.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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