Margaret Vandercook

“ Frank hardly dared look at Jack. He could see so clearly what would happen: the range-bred pony would take her straight in front of the furious bull, not knowing that her rider was not a cowboy and would be unequal to the task of turning the great brute aside. She would do her part and expected Jack to do the rest. Jack did not have so much as a small riding whip in her hand, having lost it in her pony's first plunge ahead. But she now realized her peril; one glimpse of her face would have revealed this. It was white as marble save for the flying, bronze gold of her hair. ”

“ JACQUELINE RALSTON was sitting alone in a quiet portion of the Princess Colonna's Italian garden, listening to the soft splashing of a fountain at no great distance away. Now and then she put her hands to her face. Why were her fingers so cold and her cheeks so warm? For Jack was no longer pale; indeed, her whole countenance was curiously flushed. No longer did she look the tall, stately goddess of a few hours before, but like a tremulous and startled girl. For Jack had just received her first proposal and could not for the life of her tell whether she had accepted or rejected it. ”

“ But Peace continued to adore her and Frieda would do nothing to frighten or grieve the child. The year or more spent at the ranch for the sake of the little girl's health had not been successful. Peace seemed to grow more ethereal, more fairylike with each passing day. She was like a spring flower, so fragile and delicate one feared the first harsh wind would destroy her. Yet if she were at all seriously ill, it was Jack she wanted, Jack who seemed able to give a part of her vitality to the child, when Frieda was oftentimes too frightened to be helpful. ”

“ As she felt the swing of his feet under her, the wind from the prairies sweeping across her cheeks and the fragrance of the purple clover in her nostrils, the new Mrs. Colter laughed aloud.
Instead of drawing her reins and pulling up, she touched her horse lightly with her whip and sped more swiftly ahead.
At the same instant there was a rushing and a patter of many hoofs across a nearby field.
Their manes flying, graceful and beautiful in the moonlight, their slender noses sniffing with curiosity and pleasure, half a dozen mares followed by their young colts raced close beside the rider. ”

“ Flying along on feet unconscious of fatigue, fighting through the storm and darkness and calling aloud when she had the strength, in about an hour Jack reached the ravine. No actual sight of the trail had guided her, but an instinctive feeling for the right direction. Now she sat down for a few minutes in the shelter of an overhanging rock, hoping the storm would blow over or that Jim would find her. But the thunder crashed on, and the wind in the jagged rocks of the ravine moaned and sighed like lost souls wandering in the walled chambers of the canyons, crying for release. ”

“ Frank was not at home when she arrived, so she saw her children and Olive and Frieda first. Then, after dressing for dinner, she went down into the library alone to wait for her husband.
Jack was very tired from the strain of her trip and from the sights she had witnessed in the past fourteen days. She felt as if she were entering a new world in coming back tonight to her home in the peaceful Kentish country. Whatever human beings might be suffering inwardly, there were at least no changes in the tranquillity of the blue hills and the gentle, mist-veiled English landscape. ”

“ Years before, Katherine Winthrop had been the belle and beauty of the countryside, a toast in New York City and in the homes of the old Dutch and English families along the Hudson River, until she had let her pride spoil the one romance of her life. By and by, when her father died and her family fortune disappeared, she had then opened up her old home as a girls’ boarding school and her aristocratic connections and old name immediately made Primrose Hall both fashionable and popular, until now its mere name lent its students an assured social prestige. ”

“ But look here, Aunt Patricia, if Polly and the Camp Fire girls object to being treated as if they were young and in need of advice and sometimes of discipline, while I am with you, suppose you devote yourself to me. It would be delightful to be treated as if I were a girl again, instead of the mother of a grown-up son and daughter.”
“You have a lovable nature, Betty Graham, which I think your daughter, Bettina, has in a measure inherited. Polly O’Neill Burton, I regret being forced to speak of it, is a spoiled and ungrateful woman.” ”

“ Although dinner was only beginning, Lady Dorian had risen and was leaving.
No wonder the girls admired her appearance. Barbara swallowed a little sigh of envy. Never, no never, could she hope to go trailing down a long room with all eyes turned upon her, looking so beautiful and cold and distinguished. This was one of the many trials of being small and darting about so quickly and having short hair and big blue eyes like a baby’s. One’s hair could grow, but, alas, not one’s self, after a certain age! ”

“ The veranda, extending from one end to the other, was so thickly covered with a flowering vine that even in the moonlight one could get the reflection of its brilliant color. The air was scented with the fragrant perfume of roses and the blossoms of orange and lemon trees. From behind the soft shading of the vine across the road came the brilliant twanging of a guitar and a mandolin. Two voices were singing a Spanish love song.
Farther away under the deeper shadow of the moon a white cross arose above a mass of fallen stone.
"I declare, Mollie, this is the old world, not the new, isn't it? ”

“ From the window Esther could see the snow-crowned peak of Sunrise Hill from which the dawn colors were now slowly fading and beyond a long line of the crystal hills. Wherever the Sunrise Camp Fire girls should go in after years, to whatever places their destinies should call them, the scene surrounding their camp could never be forgotten, nor could there be found many places in the world more beautiful. ”

“ Betty nodded. "Now, Polly, you may have the next guess, though you are sure to say the wrong thing. What is the next greatest thing to love?"
Polly shrugged her thin shoulders, her face still moody in spite of her recently awakened interest. "Oh, I told you the answer to that question when you first came into this room, Betty Ashton, though none of you chose to believe me. It is plain as a pipe-stem to me that wealth is the next best thing to love and sometimes it is better when you happen to love the wrong thing--or person." ”

“ Yet Olive knew she must keep moving if she wished to live. She did not suffer the same agony from the cold, that she had at first. The wind blew her about, as though she had been a bit of paper. She staggered and fell in the snowdrifts, got up and pressed on wishing that even a wild animal would scurry past her on the way to its retreat. But animals are always wiser than human beings before the approach of a storm. Every head of cattle, every horse on the plains, every beast in the forest had found a rude shelter. Olive felt herself entirely alone in a savage, white world. ”

“ It was an exquisite summer day and the French landscape held a peculiar softness and beauty of form and color.
Perhaps it is well for us to recall now and then that nature has gone on with her same unchanging seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter for these past three years, when human nature has suffered such strange transformation. So Nona was glad to enjoy the landscape and her new acquaintance and to forget everything else for a little while. ”

“ Betty was holding her big flowered hat pressed close against her white dress, her lips were scarlet and her face so pale that her gray eyes looked almost smoke-colored. The wind and the long walk had loosened her hair until it was curling and blowing about her forehead like tiny red-gold clouds. Honestly no young man could have remained angry with her for any great length of time. ”

“ Jean smiled and sighed almost in the same breath. She could not pretend to any such highmindedness, she was afraid that she was the kind of girl whom she had heard people describe as "loving luxury like a cat." Certainly she did care more than she should for beautiful clothes, handsome houses, travel, society and everything that money alone could buy. And yet, after all, the wealth of Rainbow Mine was not hers: it belonged to Jack and Frieda, though they had always shared their income with her as though she had been their sister instead of their cousin. ”

“ It was the noise of the imprisoned soldiers being marched back to their jail. The tread was slow and dead, without animation or life. It was as if the men had been engaged in tasks in which they had little concern and were being returned to a place they hated.
Barbara stood close to the edge of the road along which the men must pass. She was naturally not thinking of herself. So it had not occurred to her that the soldiers might be surprised by her unexpected appearance. ”

“ And kissing Esther hastily on the hair, Polly seized her hat and fled out the door.
Yet halfway down the long stairs the girl hesitated and stopped for an instant as if intending to return.
"Perhaps I ought to give up and be good for once," she whispered to herself. "It won't be fair, and mother and Mollie and Betty may be angry with Esther for not telling. Even if I have the right to get into trouble myself, I haven't the right to drag in other people. But, oh dear! what fun it will be! And with Esther for my duenna, things are sure to turn out all right." ”

“ Across the lake at any hour of the day or night one could see blue curls of smoke rising from the cabin, or at dusk the lights gleaming from the windows, but now no human habitation was visible.
Sally was in a world of complete loneliness. There is no loneliness, no silence so absolute as the forest in winter. Except for the snow birds, all the other birds have departed. Save when they must seek food, the animals keep their own cloisters; there are no leaves to rustle on the trees, only the little crackling noises due to intense cold. ”

“ Mildred too shared the almost morbid curiosity which everybody of intelligence feels today. What is a modern battlefield really like, what is the daily life of the soldier, and what is this strange new world of the trenches, where men live and work underground as if all humanity had developed the tendencies of the mole?
Mildred did not share Nona Davis’ desire to go and find out these things for herself, but being so near the scene of action as they were could not but stimulate one’s interest. And daily the motor ambulances brought the wounded from the nearby battlefield to their door. ”

“ In the old bookshelves were the self-same books she and Olive and Jean and Frieda had read and studied in their girlhood, studied far too little until the coming of Ruth to act as their governess.
Outside the big living-room windows Jack could see the long double row of tall cottonwood trees now grown through the years to mammoth proportions and away and beyond the purple fields of the blossoming alfalfa and the newly sprouting tender green spears of grain, all her own beloved and familiar background. ”