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
Afterwards, he went upstairs to the nursery and stayed half an hour
watching Vive and Jimmie being put to bed. When he came down to the
library to read, twilight was falling. But instead of reading Frank
found himself turning over the pages of the magazines, gazing at them,
and not knowing a word of their contents.
In a few moments it would be dinner time.
He got up and walked nervously up and down the room.
If Jack did not come in by dinner or send a message what would it be
wise to do?
A few moments later he telephoned two or three places where he thought
Jack might have remained later than she realized. But she had not been
at any one of the houses during the day, and naturally Frank did not
wish to ask too many questions, since she might return home at any
moment. It would then appear absurd to have started false rumors, or to
have created anxiety among their friends.
When the butler came in to announce dinner, Lord Kent explained that
Lady Kent was not yet at home and that dinner be kept waiting for
another half an hour.
Soon after Frieda joined him.
"I know I am silly, Frank," she confessed, "but I am worried. If Jack
had gone out on horseback, one might understand that she could have
gotten some distance away. But she did not ride, she walked, and could
not have continued walking since before noon."
"You are an infant, Frieda," Frank remarked. "Of course Jack has been
paying visits and has stayed too long. But perhaps I had best go and
look for her, unless she has found a friend to act as an escort it is
too late for her to be out alone."
"But where are you going to look?" Frieda questioned. And either her
brother-in-law did not hear her, or preferred to pretend he did not,
since he made no reply.
The fact of the matter was he had no plan. He thought it was rather
absurd for him to look at all, but had suddenly been overtaken with a
sense of uneasiness, a strange foreboding of disaster. We all yield to
these sensations now and then, but as they were not usual with Lord Kent
he was the more uncomfortable.
He could not even decide whether it would be wiser for him to ride or to
walk, but concluded he had best ride, in order to cover a greater
distance in a shorter time.
He searched very carefully for Jack down the long road which divided the
estate. And naturally he remembered the other evening, not so very many
months ago, when he had ridden down this same avenue peering through the
rain for her and Captain MacDonnell. Then he had discovered both of them
with but little difficulty.
Tonight Frank wished that he felt sure Jack had someone with her to take
care of her, as she had on that other evening. He would not then have
felt so ridiculously worried.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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