Part 12 (2/2)
”She was just as cool as a cuc.u.mber,” Walter told Nan and his sister afterward. ”Why! I never saw such a girl.”
”I guess,” Nan Sherwood said shrewdly, ”that we don't know much about girls who are born and brought up in the far West. Rhoda Hammond is a friend to be proud of. She has such good sense.”
”And pluck to beat the band!” cried Walter. ”I'd like to see that country she comes from.”
”And me, too,” agreed Bess Harley, who overheard this statement.
”'Rose Ranch,'” murmured Grace. ”Such a pretty name! After all, she has said just enough about it to be very tantalizing,” and the smaller girl smiled.
”Maybe she does that purposely,” Bess remarked. ”Perhaps she thinks we have so many things she hasn't obtained yet, that she wants to make us jealous a bit.”
”I really don't think that Rhoda worries about what she doesn't have,” Nan put in. ”Perhaps she doesn't even see that she lacks anything that we have.”
”Well, she never will go in for athletics,” Bess declared.
”Athletics!” burst out Walter. ”Why, there isn't another girl at Lakeview Hall who could do what she did just now.”
They were all agreed on that point. Even Dr. Prescott and the staff of instructors commented upon Rhoda's stopping the runaway.
Professor Krenner, the mathematics teacher, and with whom Nan and Amelia Boggs took architectural drawing, selected Rhoda to be one of a small party at his cabin up the lake one spring afternoon. And the professor's parties were famous and very much enjoyed by those girls who understood the queer and humorous old gentleman.
He played his key-bugle for them, showed them how to bark birches for the purpose of making canoes (he was building one for his own use) and finally gave them a supper of wild duck, served on birch-bark platters, and corn pone baked on a plank before the embers of a campfire and seasoned mildly with wood smoke.
This incident cheered Rhoda up. She had begun to be dreadfully homesick as the good weather came. She confessed to Nan that she was very much tempted to run away from school and return to the ranch. Only she knew her father and mother would be terribly disappointed in her if she did such a thing.
”And besides that,” Rhoda said, with a quiet little smile, ”I want company when I go back to Rose Ranch.”
”Oh, yes,” said the innocent Nan. ”You do know people in Chicago, don't you?”
”Humph! Mamma's friend, Mrs. Janeway. Yes,” said Rhoda, still secretly amused, ”I don't want to go away out to Rose Ranch alone and come back alone next fall. For I've got to come back, I suppose.”
”Why, Rhoda!” exclaimed Nan, ”I can't see why you don't like Lakeview Hall.”
”Wait till you see Rose Ranch. Then you'll know.”
”But I don't expect ever to see that,” sighed Nan; for she really had begun to think so much about Rhoda's home, and had listened so closely to the tales the Western girl related, that Nan felt herself drawn strongly toward an outdoor experience such as Rhoda enjoyed at home. It would be even more free and primitive, Nan thought, than her sojourn at Pine Camp.
”You are terribly pessimistic,” laughed the Western girl in rejoinder to Nan's last observation. ”How do you know you'll never see Rose Ranch?”
Even this remark did not make Nan suspect what was coming. Nor did Bess Harley or the Masons have any warning of the plan Rhoda Hammond had so carefully thought out. But the surprise ”broke” one afternoon at mail time.
Both Nan and Bess received letters from home, and they ran at once to Room Seven, Corridor Four, to read them. Scarcely had they broken the seals of the two fat missives when the door was flung open and Grace Mason fairly catapulted herself into the room in such a state of excitement that she startled the Tillbury chums.
”What is the matter, Grace?” gasped Bess, as the smaller girl threw herself into Nan's arms.
”Why! she's only happy,” said Nan, holding her off and viewing her flushed and animated countenance. ”Do get your breath, Gracie.”
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