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Ranch Girls at Rainbow Lodge

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<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> <div class='chaptertitle'>THE ESCAPE FROM THE DANCE. </div> <div class='cap'>"IT is all settled, Laura dear," Mrs. Simpson announced comfortably as the automobile drew up in front of her ranch-house door. "The Indian girl is to stay with us and be your maid, as your mother says you are accustomed to having some one to look after you, and Mrs. Merton tells me she has taught this Olilie how to behave about a house. She seems to have made quite a pet of her. I haven't talked it over with Jean and Jack yet, but I am sure it would be most unwise for them to attempt to keep the Indian girl at their ranch. They have Aunt Ellen and Zack to do their work, and indeed they ought to have some one to look after them, instead of undertaking to care for some one else." Mrs. Simpson nodded emphatically. She was fond of giving advice, a little more fond than Jean and Jack were of receiving it.</div> The ranch girls said nothing, but Frank broke in to the conversation, unexpectedly. "Oh, I say, Mrs. Simpson," he remarked[100] thoughtfully. "Don't you know, this Olilie, or Olive as you sometimes call her, don't strike me in the least as belonging to the servant class. Of course we look at these things differently in England from what you do out West, but this girl is so gentle and refined, it seems to me she ought to have a real chance." Jack smiled gratefully, with her head turned away. "I think so too," she murmured to herself. "I only wish we knew how to manage it." The house party was to have a dance at the ranch house that evening. Jean and Jack and Frieda had never had any real dancing lessons, but the two older girls were accustomed to going to the informal parties at the other ranch houses. They knew how to dance the waltz, two-step and quadrille, and it never occurred to them that Laura would try to introduce the new style dances at their Western party. Of course some of her guests had been to schools in the big Western cities and understood the latest dances. Dan Norton had spent a year at the Leland Stanford University, and, though he had not been able to pass his Sophomore exams., he considered himself very superior to the boys and girls[101] who had never been away either to college or school. The three ranch girls were not worried about their dancing, but they were about their costumes. Mrs. Simpson had suggested that Olive would feel shy, if she came to the party, and she was grateful to be left out. If only Jean and Jack would tell her what they had found out at the Indian village, and what they meant to do with her! But the girls did not realize that the Indian girl knew anything of their trip of the afternoon or that she was eating her heart out in silence rather than ask them what had occurred. Jean shook out her party dress anxiously; Jack surveyed hers with an expression half of affection and half of disdain. The dresses were their best last summer frocks and Jim had gone over to Laramie and brought them home with him in triumph. They were not what the girls would have chosen for themselves, but they had been proud of them until to-night. "Do you think she will laugh at us, Jack?" Jean inquired, bravely. "I am sure I don't care if she does." At least poor Jim had had a good eye for[102] color, if the materials he had chosen for the girls' gowns were odd. Jean's was a soft rose color, just the shade of the wild rose that covers the western prairies in the early spring and the girl smiled slightly as she looked at herself critically in the glass. The gown was becoming to her nut-brown hair and eyes and her clear, colorless skin. Jack was dressing Frieda in a corner. "You are pretty as a picture, Jean!" she insisted. "Please don't care so much about what Laura Post may think. Come and kiss Frieda, she is sweet enough to eat." Frieda's costume was the prettiest of the three, although it was of coarse white embroidery, such as only a man would buy. Her long blonde hair was freshly braided and tied with pale blue ribbons, and around her plump little waist was a blue sash which in color matched her eyes, sparkling now from excitement at attending her first dance. Jean marched Frieda over to a chair and held her in her lap, so that Jack could get ready to go to the reception room with them. Jacqueline Ralston thought little about her own appearance. She probably knew she was pretty, most pretty people are aware of it,[103] but Jack had really had so much to do and so many things to think about, that she had almost none of the vanities of most girls of sixteen. She coiled her gold-brown braids around her head in simple fashion, though she usually wore them down, as it was so difficult to keep her hair up when she was on horseback. But to-night, in honor of the party, she wished to look more grown up. Jack's hair waved from the roots to the ends and broke out all over her forehead in wayward curls and was particularly becoming to her, arranged in a simple coronet. In five minutes she had on her blue cotton crêpe gown and the three went into Mrs. Simpson's big living-room. The room had a hardwood floor and had been charmingly decorated with evergreens, which the men had brought in from the woods at the far end of the Simpson Ranch. "Oh, Jack, Jean, look!" Frieda suddenly gasped. A vision of fashionable loveliness swept before their girlish eyes. Miss Laura Post was crossing the room followed by her mother. Jack and Jean felt like creeping back to their bedroom, not realizing how inappropriate Laura's and her mother's costumes were for such a simple home party.[104] Laura was a picture and looked as if she had just stepped out of the pages of a magazine. She wore a white lace gown over silk and chiffon, trimmed in silver lace. Her hair was elaborately dressed in a bewildering mass of small, blonde puffs and around her neck a string of pearls shone softly. Mrs. Post was in violet satin, and wore a diamond crescent, which made Frieda's round eyes open wider and wider. She had never seen real diamonds, only their crystal imitations shining in the great Wyoming rocks. For a little while Jean and Jack felt as dowdy as old rag dolls, but when the dancing began they forgot to care about their clothes. There were a number of other guests besides the house party, who had driven over to the dance, and most of them were friends of the ranch girls. Frank did not ask Jack to dance nor did he make any effort to talk to her. She had said she could not be friends with him and he did not mean to take advantage of their being at the same house party together, to thrust himself upon her, as his attentions seemed unwelcome. After supper, Laura Post grew tired of the simple old-fashioned waltz which had entertained[105] her visitors the first of the evening, and insisted that the Spanish waltz was the newest thing in her set, and that she wanted to try it. She managed to get half a dozen young people to attempt it with her while others sat around the wall. Jean dearly loved to dance, and had no intention of being a wall flower, so she and Harry Pryor slipped out on the big ranch veranda to talk. It was a wonderful moonlight night, as clear and brilliant as the day, and across the wide stretch of lowlands the moon shimmered and shone, as if reflected on the still surface of the ocean. Jacqueline Ralston saw Jean and Harry disappear; slowly she followed them and stood for a moment drinking in the wonderful beauty of the Western night, then crossed to Jean and Harry. "Jean, Harry, wouldn't it be a glorious night for a ride?" she asked breathlessly. "Do you think it would be wrong if we should go for a little run across the prairies? We could easily find the trail, for it is as bright as daytime." Jean clapped her hands softly. "Bully!" Harry announced quietly. "It is not ten[106] o'clock yet and we can be back long before the dance breaks up. I'll go saddle the ponies while you girls slip into your riding togs." "Be sure to get Hotspur and Frisk, Jean's pony," Jack entreated. "Jim sent over our own ponies from the ranch, and I simply hate to ride any horse but dear little Hotspur." Just as Jean and Jack slipped into the front hall to go to their room, Frank Kent stepped out on the porch. He was looking pale and ill, for the heat of the room and the effort of dancing had brought the old weakness back on him that he had felt only a few times since his coming to Wyoming. Jack felt a sudden wave of sympathy and friendliness. She touched Frank lightly on the arm: "My cousin and I and Harry Pryor are going to steal away from the dance for a little horseback ride. Would you care to come with us?" she asked. Frank's face lost most of its pallor. He immediately insisted that the one thing in the world he most wished to do was to take a moonlight ride across the prairies. Ten minutes later the two girls and two boys cantered away from the Simpson ranch. They had no thought of staying out long, and[107] had left word with Mrs. Simpson's maid that they would be back in about an hour. Aunt Sallie was too busy with her other guests to be interrupted, and it never dawned on the girls that they should not have gone for a ride at night, for they were just like a couple of careless boys. <hr style="width: 65%;" />[108] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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