at their Western party. Of course some of
her guests had been to schools in the big Western cities and understood
the latest dances. Dan Norton had spent a year at the Leland Stanford
University, and, though he had not been able to pass his Sophomore
exams., he considered himself very superior to the boys and girls who
had never been away either to college or school.

The three ranch girls were not worried about their dancing, but they
were about their costumes. Mrs. Simpson had suggested that Olive would
feel shy, if she came to the party, and she was grateful to be left out.
If only Jean and Jack would tell her what they had found out at the
Indian village, and what they meant to do with her! But the girls did
not realize that the Indian girl knew anything of their trip of the
afternoon or that she was eating her heart out in silence rather than
ask them what had occurred.

Jean shook out her party dress anxiously; Jack surveyed hers with an
expression half of affection and half of disdain. The dresses were their
best last summer frocks and Jim had gone over to Laramie and brought
them home with him in triumph. They were not what the girls would have
chosen for themselves, but they had been proud of them until to-night.

"Do you think she will laugh at us, Jack?" Jean inquired, bravely. "I am
sure I don't care if she does."

At least poor Jim had had a good eye for color, if the materials he had
chosen for the girls' gowns were odd.

Jean's was a soft rose color, just the shade of the wild rose that
covers the western prairies in the early spring and the girl smiled
slightly as she looked at herself critically in the glass. The gown was
becoming to her nut-brown hair and eyes and her clear, colorless skin.

Jack was dressing Frieda in a corner. "You are pretty as a picture,
Jean!" she insisted. "Please don't care so much about what Laura Post
may think. Come and kiss Frieda, she is sweet enough to eat."

Frieda's costume was the prettiest of the three, although it was of
coarse white embroidery, such as only a man would buy. Her long blonde
hair was freshly braided and tied with pale blue ribbons, and around her
plump little waist was a blue sash which in color matched her eyes,
sparkling now from excitement at attending her first dance. Jean marched
Frieda over to a chair and held her in her lap, so that Jack could get
ready to go to the reception room with them.

Jacqueline Ralston thought little about her o