But Jack and Jimmie were not to escape so easily.
Opening the gate which led from the front yard half an hour later, they came face to face with Jean Merritt and Olive MacDonnell.
"Trying to run away into your beloved outdoors in the usual fashion, Jack?" Olive said, smiling. "Well, you may go after a while, but Jean and I wish to talk to you first."
"Please don't," Jack murmured, slipping a hand into the hand of the two other original Rainbow ranch girls. "Frieda has already reduced me to tears by overmuch conversation this morning. One could scarcely describe the conversation as argument, as I was allowed to say nothing. Oh, I know, Olive, that you and Jean will not be so obdurate as Frieda and will allow me a point of view on the subject, but just the same, spare me, because I have made up my mind, provided Jim Colter does not positively refuse his consent. I shall not go against Jim's command, although I may against his wish. Otherwise I mean to accept the nomination, poor, uneducated, inefficient, stupid female person that I am and ever must remain."
"Jack, you have _one_ member of your family who will stand by you whatever comes, as you have stood by me in the past year," Jean Merritt announced. "I have not said a great deal while the rest of the family has been doing so much talking and yet I believe I am glad of your decision. I know one is prejudiced against the idea, not so much of women in politics as of a young woman like you, Jack, who is so beautiful and charming and sincere and one who happens to be so near one's own affections. I suppose disagreeable things will be said of you, yet I know of few women so brave and so straightforward, or better able to bear calumny. And I don't see why people think that marriage always protects a woman from unhappiness; it has not protected me."
Jean rarely spoke of her own sorrow and only in moments of the deepest emotion, so that Olive and Jack both flinched at the close of her little speech, and temporarily at least Jack's problem took second place.
In more than a year, since Ralph Merritt's departure to act as mining engineer in a gold mine in New Mexico, no human being who had ever known him before had laid eyes upon him. In all the time since, no word had arrived of his mysterious disappearance from the mine, and no word had ever been received from him addressed either to Jean or to any one of his family or friends. Utterly and completely he had vanished. Months had been spent by Professor Russell in investigating his whereabouts, every clue had been followed, yet from the moment Ralph was known to have gone into his own tent to lie down until the present, no other news of him had been unearthed.