Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

SCHOOL REOPENS

"And of course," drawled Laura Polk, she of the irrepressible spirits and what Mrs. Cupp called "flamboyant" hair, "she will come riding up to the Hall on her trusty pinto pony (whatever kind of pony that is), with a gun at her belt and swinging a lariat. She will yell for Dr. Beulah to come forth, and the minute the darling appears this Rude Rhoda from the Rolling Prairie will proceed to rope our dear preceptress and bear her off captive to her lair—"

"My—goodness—gracious—Agnes!" exclaimed Amelia Boggs, more frequently addressed as 'Procrastination Boggs', "you are getting your metaphors dreadfully mixed. It is a four-legged beast of prey that bears its victim away to its 'lair.'"

"How do you know Rollicking Rhoda from Crimson Gulch hasn't four legs?" demanded the red-haired girl earnestly. "You know very well from what we see in the movies that there are more wonders in the 'Wild and Woolly West' than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio-Amelia."

"One thing I say," said a very much overdressed girl who had evidently just arrived, for she had not removed her furs and coat, and was warming herself before the open fire in the beautiful reception hall where this conversation was going on, "I think Lakeview Hall is getting to be dreadfully common, when all sorts and conditions of girls are allowed to come here."

"Oh, I guess this Rhododendron-girl from Dead Man's Den has money enough to suit even you, Linda," Laura Polk said carelessly.

"Money isn't everything, I hope," said the girl in furs, tossing her head.

"Hear! Hear!" exclaimed Laura, and some of the other girls laughed.
"Linda's had a change of heart."

"Dear me!" sniffed Linda Riggs, "how smart you are, Polk. Just as though I was not used to anything but money—"

"True. You are. But you have never talked about much of anything else before this particular occasion," said the red-haired girl. "What has happened to you, Linda mine, since you separated from us all at the beginning of the winter holidays?"

Linda merely sniffed again and turned to speak to her particular chum, Cora Courtney.

"You should have been with me in Chicago, Cora—at my cousin, Pearl Graves', house. I tried to get Pearl—she's just about our age—to come to Lakeview Hall; but she goes to a private school right in her neighborhood—oh! a very select place. No girl like this wild Western person Polk is talking about, would be received there. No, indeed!"

"Hi, Linda!" broke in the irrepressible red-haired girl, "why didn't you try to enter that wonderful school?"

"I did ask to. But my father is so old-fashioned," complained Linda. "He would not hear of it. Said it would not be treating Dr. Beulah right."

"Oh, oh!" groaned Laura. "How the dear doctor would have suffered,
Linda, if you had not come back to her sheltering arms."

The laugh this raised among the party made Linda's cheeks flame more hotly than before. 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....