Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch | Page 2

She would not look at the laughing group again. A flaxen-haired girl with pink cheeks and blue eyes--one of the smallest though not the youngest in the party--came timidly to Linda Riggs' elbow.
"Did you spend all your vacation in Chicago?" she asked gently. "I was to go to visit Grace; but there was sickness at home, and so I couldn't. Didn't the Masons come back with you, Linda?"
"And Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley?" questioned Amelia Boggs, the homely girl. "They went to the Masons' to visit, didn't they?"
"I'm sure I could not tell you much about them," Linda said, shrugging her shoulders. "I had something else to do, I can assure you, than to look up Sherwood and Harley."
"Why!" gasped the fair-haired girl, "Grace wrote me that you were at her house, and went to the theater with them, and that--that--"
"Well, what of it, Lillie Nevins?" demanded the other sharply.
"In her letter she said you had a dreadful accident. That you were run away with in a sleigh and that Nan Sherwood and Walter saved your life."
"That sounds interesting!" cried Laura Polk. "So Our Nan has been playing the he-ro-wine again? How did it happen?"
"She has been putting herself forward the same as usual," snapped Linda Riggs. "I suppose that is what you mean. And Grace is crazy. Walter did help me when Madam Graves' horses ran away; but Nan Sherwood had nothing to do with it. Or, nothing much, at least."
"Keep on," said Laura Polk, dryly, "and I guess we'll get the facts of the case."
"If you think I am going to join this crew that praises Nan Sherwood to the skies, you are mistaken," cried Linda.
"All right. We'll hear all about it when Bess Harley comes," said Laura, laughing. She did like to plague Linda Riggs.
"Where are Nan and Bess, to say nothing of Gracie?" Amelia Boggs wanted to know. "You came on the last train, didn't you, Linda?"
"Oh, I did not pay much attention to those on the train," said Linda airily. "Father had his private car put on for me, and I rode in that."
Mr. Riggs was president of the railroad, and by no chance did his daughter ever let her mates lose sight of that fact.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Cora, "didn't you have anybody with you?"
"Well, no. You see, I invited Walter and Grace Mason, but they had people in the chair car they thought they must entertain," and she sniffed again.
"Oh, you Linda!" laughed Laura. "I bet I know who they were entertaining."
"Here comes the bus!" cried Amelia suddenly.
A rush of more than half the girls gathered about the open hearth for the great main entrance door of Lakeview Hall followed the announcement. This hall was almost like a castle set upon a high cliff overlooking Lake Huron on one side and the straggling town of Freeling, and Freeling Inlet, on the other.
The girls flung open the door. The school bus had just stopped before the wide veranda. Girls were fairly "boiling out of it," as Laura declared. Short, tall, thin, stout girls and girls of all ages between ten and seventeen tramped merrily up the steps with their handbags. Such a hullabaloo of greeting as there was!
"Come on, Cora," said Linda, haughtily. "Let us go up to our room. They are positively vulgar."
"Oh, no, Linda!" Cora cried. "I want to stay and see the fun."
"Fun!" gasped the disdainful Linda.
"Yes," said Cora, who was a terrible toady, but who showed some spirit on this occasion. "I want to have fun with the other girls. I don't want to be left out of everything just because of you. Even if you are going to flock by yourself this term, as you did most of last, because you are all the time quarreling with the girls that have the nicest times, I'm going to get into the fun."
This, according to Linda Riggs' opinion, was crass ingratitude and treachery. Besides, she and Cora had the nicest room in the Hall, for it had been fixed up especially for his daughter by Mr. Riggs; and Cora, who was poor, was allowed to be Linda's roommate without extra charge.
"You mean that you want to run with that Nan Sherwood and Bess Harley crew!" exclaimed Linda.
"I want to get into some of the fun. And so do you, Linda! Don't act offish," and Cora walked toward the open door to meet the new arrivals.
It was a terrible shock to the railroad magnate's daughter--this. The defection of her chief henchman and ally would rather break up the little group which Laura Polk had unkindly dubbed "the School of Snobs." With all her wealth Linda had but few retainers.
In the van of the newcomers were a rather comely, brown-eyed girl with a bright and cheerful expression of countenance, a dark beauty with curls