The Girl from Sunset Ranch by AMY BELL MARLOWE (best ereader for manga .TXT) 📖

dress home, and the hat. Maybe you can find a cheap tailor who will make over the dress. There's enough material in it. That's an awful wide skirt, you know."

"But I couldn't walk in a skirt as narrow as the one you have on, Sadie."

"Chee! if it was stylish," confessed Sadie, "I'd find a way to walk in a piece of stove-pipe!" and she giggled.

So Helen left for uptown with her bundles, wearing her new suit and hat. She took a Fourth Avenue car and got out only a block from her uncle's house. As she hurried through the side street and came to the Madison Avenue corner, she came face-to-face with Flossie, coming home from school with a pile of books under her arm.

Flossie looked quite startled when she saw her cousin. Her eyes grew wide and she swept the natty looking, if cheaply-dressed Western girl, with an appreciative glance.

"Goodness me! What fine feathers!" she cried. "You've been loading up with new clothes--eh? Say, I like that dress."

"Better than the caliker one?" asked Helen, slily.

"You're not so foolish as to believe I liked that," returned Flossie, coolly. "I told Belle and Hortense that you weren't as dense as they seemed to think you."

"Thanks!" said Helen, drily.

"But that dress is just in the mode," repeated Flossie, with some admiration.

"Your father's kindness enabled me to get it," said Helen, briefly.

"Humph!" said Flossie, frankly. "I guess it didn't cost you much, then."

Helen did not reply to this comment; but as she turned to go down to the basement door, Flossie caught her by the arm.

"Don't you do that!" she exclaimed. "Belle can be pretty mean sometimes. You come in at the front door with me."

"No," said Helen, smiling. "You come in at the area door with me. It's easier, anyway. There's a maid just opening it."

So the two girls entered the house together. They were late to lunch--indeed, Helen did not wish any; but she did not care to explain why she was not hungry.

"What's the matter with you, Flossie?" demanded Hortense. "We've done eating, Belle and I. And if you wish your meals here, Helen, please get here on time for them."

"You mind your own business!" cried Flossie, suddenly taking up the cudgels for her cousin as well as herself. "You aren't the boss, Hortense! I got kept after school, anyway. And cook can make something hot for me and Helen."

"You need to be kept after school--from the kind of English you use," sniffed her sister.

"I don't care! I hate the old studies!" declared Flossie, slamming her books down upon the table. "I don't see why I have to go to school at all. I'm going to ask Pa to take me out. I need a rest."

Which was very likely true, for Miss Flossie was out almost every night to some party, or to the theater, or at some place which kept her up very late. She had no time for study, and therefore was behind in all her classes. That day she had been censured for it at school--and when they took a girl to task for falling behind in studies at that school, she was very far behind, indeed!

Flossie grumbled about her hard lot all through luncheon. Helen kept her company; then, when it was over, she slipped up to her own room with her bundles. Both Hortense and Belle had taken a good look at her, however, and they plainly approved of her appearance.

"She's not such a dowdy as she seemed," whispered Hortense to the oldest sister.

"No," admitted Belle. "But that's an awful cheap dress she bought."

"I guess she didn't have much to spend," laughed Hortense. "Pa wasn't likely to be very liberal. It puzzles me why he should have kept her here at all."

"He says it is his duty," scoffed Belle. "Now, you know Pa! He never was so worried about duty before; was he?"

These girls, brought up as they were, steeped in selfishness and seeing their father likewise so selfish, had no respect for their parent. Nor could this be wondered at.

Going up to her room that afternoon Helen met Mrs. Olstrom coming down. The housekeeper started when she saw the young girl, and drew back. But Helen had already seen the great tray of dishes the housekeeper carried. And she wondered.

Who took their meals up on this top floor? The maids who slept here were all accounted for. She had seen them about the house. And Gregson, too. Of course Mr. Lawdor and Mrs. Olstrom had their own rooms below.

Then who could it be who was being served on this upper floor? Helen was more than a little curious. The sounds she had heard the night before dove-tailed in her mind with these soiled dishes on the tray.

She was almost tempted to walk through the long corridor in which she thought she had heard the scurrying footsteps pass the night before. Yet, suppose she was caught by Mrs. Olstrom--or by anybody else--peering about the house?

"That wouldn't be very nice," mused the girl.

"Because these people think I am rude and untaught, is no reason why I should display any real rudeness."

She was very curious, however; the thought of the tray-load of dishes remained in her mind all day.

At dinner that night even Mr. Starkweather gave Helen a glance of approval when she appeared in her new frock.

"Ahem!" he said. "I see you have taken my advice, Helen. We none of us can afford to forget what is due to custom. You are much more presentable."

"Thank you, Uncle Starkweather," replied Helen, demurely. "But out our way we say: 'Fine feathers don't make fine birds.'"

"You needn't fret," giggled Flossie. "Your feather's aren't a bit too fine."

But Flossie's eyes were red, and she plainly had been crying.

"I hate the old books!" she said, suddenly. "Pa, why do I have to go to school any more?"

"Because I am determined you shall, young lady," said Mr. Starkweather, firmly. "We all have to learn."

"Hortense doesn't go."

"But you are not Hortense's age," returned her father, coolly. "Remember that. And I must have better reports of your conduct in school than have reached me lately," he added.

Flossie sulked over the rest of her dinner. Helen, going up slowly to her room later, saw the door of her youngest cousin's room open, and glancing in, beheld Flossie with her head on her book, crying hard.

Each of these girls had a beautiful room of her own. Flossie's was decorated in pink, with chintz hangings, a lovely bed, bookshelves, a desk of inlaid wood, and everything to delight the eye and taste of any girl. Beside the common room Helen occupied, this of Flossie's was a fairy palace.

But Helen was naturally tender-hearted. She could not bear to see the younger girl crying. She ventured to step inside the door and whisper:

"Flossie?"

Up came the other's head, her face flushed and wet and her brow a-scowl.

"What do you want?" she demanded, quickly.

"Nothing. Unless I can help you. And if so, that is what I want," said the ranch girl, softly.

"Goodness me! You can't help me with algebra. What do I want to know higher mathematics for? I'll never have use for such knowledge."

"I don't suppose we can ever learn too much," said Helen, quietly.

"Huh! Lots you know about it. You never were driven to school against your will."

"No. Whenever I got a chance to go I was glad."

"Maybe I'd be glad, too, if I lived on a ranch," returned Flossie, scornfully.

Helen came nearer to the desk and sat down beside her.

"You don't look a bit pretty with your eyes all red and hot. Crying isn't going to help," she said, smiling.

"I suppose not," grumbled Flossie, ungrateful of tone.

"Come, let me get some water and cologne and bathe your face." Helen jumped up and went to the tiny bathroom. "Now, I'll play maid for you, Flossie."

"Oh, all right," said the younger girl. "I suppose, as you say, crying isn't going to help."

"Not at all. No amount of tears will solve a problem in algebra. And you let me see the questions. You see," added Helen, slowly, beginning to bathe her cousin's forehead and swollen eyes, "we once had a very fine school-teacher at the ranch. He was a college professor. But he had weak lungs and he came out there to Montana to rest."

"That's good!" murmured Flossie, meaning bathing process, for she was not listening much to Helen's remarks.

"I knew it would make you feel better. But now, let me see these algebra problems. I took it up a little when--when Professor Payton was at the ranch."

"You didn't!" cried Flossie, in wonder.

"Let me see them," pursued her cousin, nodding.

She had told the truth--as far as she went. After Professor Payton had left the ranch and Helen had gone to Denver to school, she had showed a marked taste for mathematics and had been allowed to go far ahead of her fellow-pupils in that study.

Now, at a glance, she saw what was the matter with Flossie's attempts to solve the problems. She slipped into a seat beside the younger girl again and, in a few minutes, showed Flossie just how to solve them.

"Why, Helen! I didn't suppose you knew so much," said Flossie, in surprise.

"You see, that is something I had a chance to learn between times--when I wasn't roping cows or breaking ponies," said Helen, drily.

"Humph! I don't believe you did either of those vulgar things," declared Flossie, suddenly.

"You are mistaken. I do them both, and do them well," returned Helen, gravely. "But they are not vulgar. No more vulgar than your sister Belle's golf. It is outdoor exercise, and living outdoors as much as one can is a sort of religion in the West."

"Well," said Flossie, who had recovered her breath now. "I don't care what you do outdoors. You can do algebra in the house! And I'm real thankful to you, Cousin Helen."

"You are welcome, Flossie," returned the other, gravely; but then she went her way to her own room at the top of the house. Flossie did not ask her to remain after she had done all she could for her.

But Helen had found plenty of reading matter in the house. Her cousins and uncle might ignore her as they pleased. With a good book in her hand she could forget all her troubles.

Now she slipped into her kimono, propped herself up in bed, turned the gas-jet high, and lost herself in the adventures of her favorite heroine. The little clock on the mantel ticked on unheeded. The house grew still. The maids came up to bed chattering. But still Helen read on.

She had forgotten the sounds she had heard in the old house at night. Mrs. Olstrom had mentioned that there were "queer stories" about the Starkweather mansion. But Helen would not have thought of them at this time, had something not rattled her doorknob and startled her.

"Somebody wants to come in," was the girl's first thought, and she hopped out of bed and ran to unlock it.

Then she halted, with her hand upon the knob. A sound outside had arrested her. But it was not the sound of somebody trying the latch.

Instead she plainly heard the mysterious "step--put; step--put" again. Was it descending the stairs? It seemed to grow fainter as she listened.

At length the girl--somewhat shaken--reached for the key of her door again, and turned it. Then she opened it and peered out.

The corridor was faintly illuminated. The stairway itself was quite dark, for there was no light in the short passage below called "the ghost-walk."

The girl, in her slippers, crept to the head of the flight. There she could hear the steady, ghostly footstep from below. No other sound within the great mansion reached her ears. It was queer.

To and fro the odd step went. It apparently drew nearer, then receded--again and again.

Helen could not see any of the corridor from the top of the flight. So she began to creep down, determined to know for sure if there really was something or