Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch Part 15

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.

"We scarcely know whether we have had you with us or not, Nan dear," said her mother. "But I suppose Rhoda wants to get home and see her folks, too; so we must not delay your journey. When you come back, however, mother wants her daughter to herself for a little while. We have been separated so much that I am not sure the fairies have not sent a changeling to me!" and she laughed.

At that, for it was not a hearty laugh and Momsey's eyes glistened, if Nan had not given her promise, "black and blue," to Rhoda, she would have excused herself and not gone to Rose Ranch at all. She knew that Momsey was lonely.

But Mrs. Sherwood did not mean to spoil her daughter's enjoyment.

And the opportunity to see this distant part of the country was too good to be neglected. Nan might never again have such a chance to go West.

So the three girls were sent off without any tears for the rendezvous with the Masons and Mrs. Janeway at Chicago.

They found Grace and Walter all right; but as the Masons had no idea what Mrs. Janeway looked like, and that lady had no description of the Masons, they had not met. Rhoda had to look up her mother's friend.

"What are you going to do, Rhoda?" asked the bubbling Bess. "Track her down as you would an Indian? Look for signs--?"

"I don't believe in signs," responded Rhoda. "I am going to look for the best dressed woman in Chicago. Such lovely clothes as she wears!"

"I guess that must be so," said Grace as Rhoda walked out of ear-shot, "for Mrs. Janeway chose Rhoda's own outfit, and you know there wasn't a better dressed girl at Lakeview."

"Wow!" murmured her brother. "What a long tale about dress! Don't you girls ever think of anything but what you put on?"

"Oh, yes, sir," declared Bess smartly. "And you know that Rhoda thinks less about what she wears than most. It's lucky her mother had somebody she could trust to dress her daughter before she appeared at the Hall."

"All on the surface! All on the surface!" grumbled Walter.

"Goodness, Walter," said his sister, "would you want us to swallow our dresses? Of course they are on the surface."

"It certainly is a fact," grinned Walter impudently, "that the curriculum of Lakeview Hall makes its pupils wondrous sharp. Hullo!

here comes Rhoda towing a very nice looking lady, I must admit."

In fact, at first sight the three other girls fell in love with Mrs. Janeway. She was a childless and wealthy widow, who, as she a.s.serted, "just doted on girls." She met them all warmly.

"I hope," said Walter, with gravity, as she shook hands with him, "that a mere boy may find favor in your eyes, too. Really, we're not all savages. Some of us are more or less civilized."

"Well," Mrs. Janeway sighed, but with twinkling eyes, "I shall see how well you behave. Now, for our tickets."

"I have the reservations," Walter said quietly. "A stateroom for you four ladies and a berth for me in the same car. In half an hour we pull out. And, girls!"

"Say it," returned Bess.

"Is it something nice, Walter?" asked his sister.

"There is an observation platform on our car--the end car on the train. It goes all the way through to Osaka, where we are going. I think we are fixed just right."

This proved to be the case. The young people pretty nearly lived on that rear platform, for the weather remained pleasant all through the journey. Mrs. Janeway sometimes found it hard work to get them in to go to bed.

The route this tourist car took was rather roundabout; but as Walter said, it landed them at the Osaka station, the nearest railroad point to Rose Ranch, in something like five days.

By this time they were getting a little weary of traveling by rail.

Walter declared he was "saddle-sore" from sitting so much. When long lines of corrals and cattle-pens came in sight, Rhoda told them they were nearing Osaka.