Part 15 (1/2)
CHAPTER XII
ROSE RANCH AT LAST
The closing of school came at length. Bess had said frankly that she feared it never would come, the time seemed to pa.s.s so slowly; but Nan only laughed at her.
”Do you think something has happened to the 'wheels of Time' we read about in cla.s.s the other day?” she asked her chum.
”Well, it does seem,” said merry Bess, ”as though somebody must have stuck a stick in the cogs of those wheels, and stopped 'em!”
Both Tillbury girls stood well in their cla.s.ses; and they were liked by all the instructors--even by Professor Krenner, who some of the girls declared wickedly was the school's ”self-starter, Lakeview Hall being altogether too modern to have a crank.”
In a.s.sociation with their fellow pupils, Nan and Bess had never any real difficulty, save with Linda Riggs and her clique. But this term Linda had not behaved as she had during the fall and winter semester. This change was partly because of her chum, Cora Courtney. Cora would not shut herself away from the other girls just to please Linda.
Linda had even begun to try to cultivate the acquaintance of Rhoda Hammond--especially when she had heard more about Rose Ranch. But Rhoda refused to yield to the blandishments of the railroad magnate's daughter.
”I suppose it might be good fun to take a trip across the continent to your part of the country,” Linda said to the Western girl on one occasion. ”You get up such a party, Rhoda, and I'll tease father for his private car, and we will go across in style.”
”Thank you,” said Rhoda simply. ”I prefer to pay my own way.”
”No use for Linda to try to 'horn in'--isn't that the Westernism--to our crowd,” laughed Bess, when she heard of this.
”The 'Riggs Disease' is not going to afflict us this summer, I should hope!”
Cora Courtney, too, had tried to cultivate an acquaintance with Rhoda. But the girl from Rose Ranch made friends slowly. Too many of the girls had ignored her when she first came to Lakeview Hall for Rhoda easily to forget, if she did forgive.
The good-bys on the broad veranda of Lakeview Hall were far more lingering than they had been at Christmas time. The girls were separating for nearly three months--and they scattered like sparks from a bonfire, in all directions.
A goodly company started with the Tillbury chums from the Freeling station; but at each junction there were further separations until, when the time came for the porter to make up the berths, there were only Nan, Bess and Rhoda of all their crowd in the Pullman car.
Even Grace and Walter had changed for a more direct route to Chicago.
They awoke in the morning to find their coach sidetracked at Tillbury and everybody hurrying to get into the washrooms. Nan could scarcely wait to tidy herself and properly dress, for there was Papa Sherwood in a great, new, beautiful touring car--one of those, in fact, that he kept for demonstration purposes.
Nan dragged Rhoda with her, while Bess ran merrily to meet what she called ”a whole nest of Harley larks” in another car on the other side of the station. It had been determined that Rhoda should go home with Nan.
”Here she is, Papa Sherwood!” cried Nan, leaping into the front of the big car to ”get a strangle hold” around her father's neck.
”This is our girl from Rose Ranch, Rhoda Hammond. Isn't she nice?”
”I--I can't see her, Nan,” said her father. ”Whew! let me get my breath and my eyesight back.”
Then he welcomed Rhoda, and both girls got into the tonneau to ride to the Sherwood cottage. ”Such richness!” Nan sighed.
The little cottage in amity looked just as cozy and homelike as ever. Nothing had been changed there save that the house had been newly painted. As the car came to a halt, the front door opened with a bang and a tiny figure shot out of it, down the walk, and through the gateway to meet Nan Sherwood as she stepped down from the automobile.
”My Nan! My Nan!” shrieked Inez, and the half wild little creature flung herself into the bigger girl's arms. ”Come in and see how nice I've kept your mamma. I've learned to brush her hair just as you used to brush it. I'm going to be every bit like you when I get big. Come on in!”
With this sort of welcome Nan Sherwood could scarcely do less than enjoy herself during the week they remained in Tillbury. Inez, the waif, had become Inez, the home-body. She was the dearest little maid, so Momsey said, that ever was. And how happy she appeared to be!
Her old worry of mind about the possibility of ”three square meals”
a day and somebody who did not beat her too much, seemed to have been forgotten by little Inez. The kindly oversight of Mrs.
Sherwood was making a loving, well-bred little girl of the odd creature whom Nan and Bess had first met selling flowers on the wintry streets of Chicago. Of course, during that week at home, the three girls from Lakeview Hall did not sit down and fold their hands. No, indeed! Bess Harley gave a big party at her house; and there were automobile rides, and boating parties, and a picnic. It was a very busy time.