Part 7 (1/2)
”I wonder?” murmured Nan, somewhat moved herself by the incident.
As the days went by, Nan Sherwood wondered more and more about Rhoda Hammond. Was she deserving of some sympathy for her situation in the school or not? Frankly, Nan was puzzled.
Of course Rhoda was being absolutely left out of all the social good times and larks of the girls who should have been her mates.
Likewise in cla.s.ses and in indoor athletics she seemed out of place.
She had been schooled mostly at home, it appeared. Nan understood--although Rhoda did not say as much--that her mother had personally conducted much of her education until the last two years. Then she had had a governess.
The latter seemed to have been an English woman with rather old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas. Rhoda was grounded well in certain branches and densely ignorant in others which Dr. Prescott considered essential.
And in the athletic cla.s.ses!
”Why, I thought these Western cowgirls were just like boys--that they were even born with an ability to pitch a ball underhand, for instance, which we girls are not,” sighed Laura. ”And look at that thing! She doesn't know how to do anything right.”
”Oh, not as bad as that,” said Nan, smiling.
”Stop trying to make excuses for her, Nan Sherwood,” commanded the red-haired girl sharply. ”I won't have it. She never saw a basketball game before. She can scarcely lift herself waist-high on the parallel bars. Couldn't chin herself five times in succession on the trapeze to save her life. Why! she might as well be her own grandmother, she knows so little about athletics.”
”Huh!” added Bess Harley with equal disgust, ”I heard her tell Mrs.
Gleason she thought such things were only for boys. She's a regular sissy!” But this made her hearers laugh.
Nan joined in the laughter, but she added:
”You get into a wrestling match with her and see if she's a sissy.
She has developed her muscles by other means than gymnasium tricks.
She is so very wiry and strong--you have no idea!”
”But she walks so funny,” remarked Lillie Nevins.
”Perhaps that is because she has walked so little,” said Nan, wisely.
”Humph!” Amelia Boggs commented, ”has she been used to being pushed in a baby carriage?”
”Distances are long out in the cattle country. Everybody rides, I guess,” Nan observed.
”Well,” one of the older girls remarked, ”she's no material for basketball, or any other team. She can't even run, it seems. I guess we'll have to pa.s.s her up.”
Nor did Rhoda seem to mind being ”pa.s.sed up.” At least, if she missed the companions.h.i.+p of her schoolmates, she did not show it.
Perhaps Nan Sherwood worried more about Rhoda than Rhoda did about herself.
There came a day, however, when the girls of Lakeview Hall saw something in the girl from Rose Ranch that they were bound to admire. Rhoda Hammond possessed one faculty that raised her, head and shoulders, above most of her schoolmates who so derided her.
CHAPTER VI
THE MEXICAN GIRL