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
Now, as Olive studied her companion's face, she believed that Frieda had
decided wisely. When they were the four Ranch girls, Jack, Jean, Olive
and Frieda, they had always relied upon Jacqueline Ralston's judgment.
Now, as a woman, she seemed even finer than she had been as a girl.
Well, fortunately Jack's marriage seemed to have turned out ideally
happy, although there were reasons why it might not. Jack had never been
fond of society or a conventional life, had hated the indoors and the
management of even so small and casual an establishment as they had at
Rainbow Lodge before the coming of Ruth as governess to take the
responsibility out of Jack's hands. Now Jack was not only mistress of a
great home, but must play "Lady Bountiful" to an entire village, as well
as to the people on the Kent estate, and she was really the most
democratic person in the world.
They were entering the adjoining village of Granchester now and Lady
Kent had actually forgotten to put on her hat. Yet all the people they
met along the little narrow streets bowed to her, as if she were not
unpopular. Several times Jack stopped to inquire about sick babies and
old ladies in the most approved fashion. However, Olive remembered that
she had been great friends with all the cowboys on her own ranch and the
adjoining ones in the old days, and was interested in their families,
when they chanced to have them, which was not often. Nevertheless this
new life of her friend's did seem extraordinarily different from her old
life.
Only once since Jack's marriage had Olive visited her and then only for
a few weeks, when her mother-in-law was alive and Frank's sisters had
not yet married. Therefore she had never really seen Frank and Jack
alone.
As they came to the little railroad station, covered with roses and
surrounded by flower beds, Jack hastily put on her hat.
"Gracious! why didn't you tell me to do that before, Olive?" she asked
"I must have looked ridiculous. Frank would have been discouraged if he
had seen me. After all, you see, Olive, Frank is an Englishman and fond
of the proprieties. At least I don't think he minds so much himself, but
he does not enjoy having the country people talk about me, especially
now that we have come into the title."
"But they don't criticize you, do they?" Olive demanded with a good deal
of feeling.
However, Lady Kent only laughed, "Not more than I deserve." And then
forgetting what she had just said, she took off her hat for the second
time to wave it boyishly at the approaching train.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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