The Ranch Girls and Their Great AdventureVandercook, Margaret
General
The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure
Vandercook, Margaret
Family -- Fiction; Friendship -- Juvenile fiction; Love stories; Sisters -- Juvenile fiction
Jack turned aside and even in the dusk one could see she was
embarrassed.
"Oh, I was disobeying orders," she said with a pretence of lightness. "I
went over a rather high fence, which I had never taken before, without
waiting until Bryan could get up to me. I made the jump without trouble,
but the ground on the other side was so soft that my horse's forefeet
went down into it. He stumbled and fell. That is why I am such a
spectacle," she concluded, touching her mud-stained habit with her whip.
Whatever he may have felt, Frank would naturally not discuss a
difference between himself and his wife before another person. He
therefore made no comment, but instead suggested:
"Suppose you get on my horse, Jack, and ride up to the house. Frieda and
Olive are uneasy. Bryan and I will come along together."
According to the English custom, Lord and Lady Kent occupied separate
bedrooms, which opened into each other.
A half hour later Jack was dressing for dinner when she heard Frank
enter his room. But he did not come into her apartment or call out to
her, although they were usually in the habit of discussing various
questions through their open door, while they changed their clothes.
Jack, of course, recognized that her husband was angry with her. Also
she knew that he had a measure of right on his side. She had promised
him not to attempt dangerous jumping in her cross-country riding. Her
accident a number of years before had made him and all the members of
her family more nervous about her than they would ordinarily have been,
knowing that she had spent a large part of her life on horseback.
Moreover, Frank had very rigid ideas about keeping one's word, not
agreeing that one could swerve by a hair's breadth.
In a good deal of haste, since dinner was to be announced at any moment,
Jack put on a white satin dinner dress. It was an old one, but chanced
to be particularly becoming. The gown was simply made, with a square
neck and a fold of tulle about the throat and a long, severely plain
skirt. Only a woman with a figure as perfect as Jack's could have looked
well in it. Her hair was arranged with equal simplicity, being coiled
closely about her head and held in place with a carved ivory comb.
Half a dozen guests had been invited to dinner, nevertheless before
going downstairs Jack went first into her husband's room.
Jack had always had a lovely nature. In the old days at Rainbow Lodge in
any difficulty with one of the Ranch girls, although having a high
temper, she had been quick to confess herself in the wrong. Since her
marriage she had been more than ever inclined to do likewise with her
husband. So it was but natural that Frank should be under the impression
that she would at all times eventually come around to his point of view.
He did not realize that under some circumstances Jack might be as
inflexible as he was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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