The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure Part 9

When Frieda entered she bobbed up and down as quickly as an old brown cork on a running stream.

"Sure, I've been waitin' and longin' for the sight of you these two hours," she said, taking Frieda's packages, or as many as she could get hold of, as if she thought them too burdensome for the young woman to carry.

Frieda laughed and slipped out of her rain coat, which she hung carefully on a small wooden chair. Then she also laid her hat on the chair and, as a matter of habit, fluffed up her pretty hair which the rain and her hat had flattened, and then followed her old hostess.

"You know you have had half a dozen visitors during the two hours you say you have been waiting, Mrs. Huggins," Frieda returned. For it was true that the tiny house and the old woman were the center of all the gossip in the village. "I expect you to tell me a lot of news."

The old woman nodded.

"It is true these are news days in England and elsewhere. Times were, when the days might be dull without a birth or a death, or a mating. But now one wakes up to something stirrin' every day--a lad goin' off to the war, or maybe one gettin' killed; and the girls coomin' in to tell me their troubles; some of them just married, and some of them not married at all yet. But all of them worryin' their hearts out. Sure, and if war is goin' on forever--and it looks like it is--I'm for the women goin'

into battle along with their men."

While she was talking Frieda had followed her hostess back into her kitchen--the room in which she really lived and had her being. It was also of stone, but the floor had a number of bright rag rugs as covering and the walls were lined with pictures cut from papers and magazines, and with picture postcards. One could have gotten a pretty fair knowledge of English history at the moment by studying Mrs. Huggins'

picture gallery. She had on her walls a photograph of nearly every British officer then in command of the army or navy. She had replicas of innumerable battleships and also of statesmen. But in the place of honor over a shelf that held her Bible and a tiny daguerreotype of the late, lamented Mr. Huggins, hung a picture of England's big little man--Lloyd George. The aged woman received the old age pension which Lloyd George had given to the poor of England a few years before the outbreak of the present war.

Frieda sat down on a little chair which lovers of antiques would have given much to possess. There was a small fire burning in the tiny stove, and its red coals looked more cheerful than the great log fire at Kent House.

Frieda knew that Dame Quick would wish to prepare the tea herself.

She had rather a happy feeling as she watched Mrs. Huggins, as if she had been a little girl who had gone out one day and grown suddenly tired and forlorn, and then been unexpectedly invited into the very gingerbread house itself. But a gingerbread house presided over by a good spirit, not an evil one.

Her own little Dame Quick looked like a child's idea of an ancient good fairy. She may not have been so small to begin with, but at ninety she was bent over until she seemed very tiny indeed. Her face was brown and wrinkled and her eyes shone forth as black as elderberries in the late gathering time.

She placed a small wooden table in front of Frieda and not far from the fire and her own chair. Then she got out some heavy plates and two cups and saucers. And whatever the difference in elegance, tea is never so good served in a thin cup as in a thick one. Afterwards she opened the package containing Frieda's biscuits and jam and finally poured boiling water into her own brown stone tea kettle.

Then she and Frieda, sitting on opposite sides of the tea table, talked and talked.

Several times, as she sat there, Frieda thought that if she had been an English girl she would like to have had just such an old nurse or foster mother as Mrs. Huggins. For she might then have been able to confide a number of things to her--matters she could not talk about even to her sister, since she was not clear enough how she felt concerning them herself, and so Jack might get wrong impressions.

"But you have not told me any special news this afternoon," Frieda protested, having lifted her cup for a second helping of tea, and making up her mind that she could not think of herself while visiting, as she usually did at home. "My sister and brother always expect me to know something interesting after a visit to you."

Dame Quick poured the tea carefully.

"I don't care for gossip," she returned, "yet it seems as if they like it as much in big houses as in little." Her eyes snapped, so that Frieda found herself watching them, fascinated.

"Since you came in I've been wonderin' whether certain information should be sent to Lord and Lady Kent. I don't think much of it myself, as there has been such a steady stream of spy talk these months past.

But they are tellin' in Granchester that there is a man there who has taken a house a short distance from the village, on the road to Kent House. It seems he keeps to himself too much to please the village. He says he has been ill, and I'm sure has a right to a mite of peace if he wants it. It's only the village that's talking. Those higher up must know things are what they should be, since they don't bother him."

Frieda was scarcely listening. Mrs. Huggins' news was often uninteresting in itself. It was only that she so much enjoyed repeating it.

She had already finished her second cup of tea and was looking down at the collection of tea leaves in the bottom of her cup.

"Suppose you tell my fortune," she suggested rather shyly. For some time past she had been thinking of just this. "Didn't you say you sometimes told the fortunes of the boys and girls in Granchester, and that a great many things you predict come true?"

The old country woman looked at Frieda sharply.

"I tell the fortunes, child, of boys and girls whose grandfathers and grandmothers I once knew. That isn't difficult fortune telling. I know certain tricks in the faces, I remember what their own people thought and did long before their day. Like father, like son; or maybe like mother, like son; and like father, like daughter. But you--" The old woman shook her head. "I know nothing about you, child; or your country, or your people, or what you have made of life for yourself with that pretty face of yours."

Still Frieda held out her tea cup.

"Oh, well; just let the tea leaves show you a little," she pleaded, in the spoiled fashion by which Frieda usually accomplished her purpose.

Still the old peasant continued to look, not at the tea leaves but at her young companion. Perhaps she saw something with her fine, tired old eyes, that were too dim to read print, which even Frieda's own family did not see.

"You have had too many of the things you wish without ever having to work for them, or to wait, little lady," she repeated slowly. Then she glanced down into the extended tea cup. "I think I see that you will have to lose something before you find out that you care for it. I also see a long journey, some clouds and at last a rainbow."

Frieda put down her cup and laughed a little uncertainly.

"Oh, the Rainbow Ranch is the name of my own home. I wonder if I have ever told you that?" she inquired. "But you are mistaken if you think I have had the things I wish." For, of course, Frieda did not believe she had been a fortunate person. So few people ever do believe this of themselves, until misfortune makes them learn through contrast.

Later, she read a chapter in the Bible and the war news from one of the morning papers. Then, before six o'clock, she started to return to Kent House.

Frieda walked quickly as the distance was not short. Moreover, she had never entirely recovered from the fright of her unexpected encounter with her husband several months before. Yet, since then, she had not only never seen him again, but never heard anything about him, except the scant information of his departure to France, which she had acquired through Frank Kent.

Frieda did think--no matter what the difference between them--that her husband might have let her know that he was at least alive and well. Of course she was a selfish, cold-hearted person, as her family and undoubtedly her own husband believed her to be. However, one could be interested in the welfare of even a comparative stranger in war times.

Later, after Frieda left the village, she pa.s.sed by the little house which her old friend had tried to involve in a mystery in order to supply her with gossip. The house was set in a yard by itself. The lights were lighted and the curtains drawn down, but, as she hurried by, either a woman's or a man's figure made a dark shadow upon the closed blind.

CHAPTER IX

CHURCH AND STATE

THE family and a number of the servants from Kent House were on their way to the small Episcopal church at the edge of the estate.

Jack and Frank were walking in front, with Olive and Frieda strolling a little more slowly behind them, and the rest of the company followed in scattered groups.

At the beginning of her marriage the English Sundays had been a trial to Jack. They were so much more quiet, so much more sedate than those of her rather too unconventional girlhood in Wyoming. Then they had sometimes held church in the open air, or if they wished to go into the nearest town, a big wagon was loaded with as many persons as could be persuaded from the ranch, and ordinarily they stopped on the way back and had lunch somewhere. Now and then Jack even remembered having ridden on her own broncho to the church door and fastened it on the outside, while she went in to the service in a costume which was an odd cross between a riding habit and a church outfit.

But now, although the walk across Kent Park was only a short one, Jack was as correctly attired as if she were in London. Beside her brown velvet costume which was very smart and becoming, she wore a hat with feathers, which she particularly disliked. The hat was of the kind affected by Queen Mary of England, who always wears feather-trimmed hats.

However, the mere matter of her hat would not have made Jack feel out of sorts, if she had not had another more potent reason. Frank was nearly always cross on Sunday mornings and this morning was no exception.

It is strange that Sunday should have this effect on many persons, when one should be more cheerful than usual, and yet it does.

Frank was really worn out with all his worries and responsibilities, Jack decided to herself, as she had a number of times recently. It was a privilege many people take advantage of, by saving their bad humors for their families.

"But, Frank, I don't think you understand the situation in the United States," Jack argued, speaking good naturedly. "You see, we represent so many nationalities, so many differences of opinion and training, that we can't all think alike. The President is supposed to represent everybody."

"Nonsense," Frank interrupted his wife not too politely. "The United States has been thinking about nothing but getting rich. They are a nation of shirkers, willing to stand back and let others do the work and suffer the loss."

"There are a good many millions of us for us all to be shirkers, Frank,"

Jack answered, still speaking quietly, although her cheeks had flushed and her eyes darkened.

Really she and Frank tried very hard not to discuss any differences of opinion they felt concerning the war. During the last few years the marriages between men and women of different nationalities have had a great strain put upon them. At present, Frank as an Englishman, thought that the United States should immediately have gone in upon the side of the Allies, while Jack did not; and now and then they unfortunately fell into a discussion of the subject.