From the time Ruth had been a little girl she had never had the disposition for making many friends. Always she had been timid and retiring, devoting herself to her father until after his death. Except for the year spent at the Ranch and the winter at the hospital in New York with Jack, Ruth had never known anything outside the narrow circle of a Vermont village life. Not that a village does not furnish almost all there is to learn of human nature, but that she had shut herself in from most of it. The freedom of the wonderful ranch life, the contact and friendship with Jim Colter, which for a while had looked like something more than friendship, had widened the little Vermont school teacher's horizon. Then had come the break with Jim, and the past winter at home she had shut herself up even more completely. During the many evenings alone in her small cottage there had been plenty of opportunity for Ruth Drew to regret her decision against Jim, but whatever passed in her mind she had kept to herself. Not even to Jacqueline Ralston, who at one time had been her confidante, had she made any confession.
So perhaps from the standpoint of worldly wisdom the Rainbow Ranch party was none too well equipped for a long journey or for the meeting with many different types of people and the making of friendships which might be of grave importance in after years.
And, notwithstanding the fact that Ruth and the four girls were singularly devoted to one another, there was no question but that they were five widely unlike characters, and that their interests must often lie in as many different directions now that their opportunities were to be so much broader.
For a disinterested observer (if ever there is such an one) it would have been difficult at this time in the Ranch girls' lives to have decided which one was the most attractive--beauty and charm are in themselves so much a matter of personal taste. But perhaps to older and more thoughtful persons it was now Jacqueline Ralston who would make the strongest appeal.
Jack was only a few months older than her friend, Olive Van Mater, less than a year older than her cousin, Jean Bruce, and yet looked a good deal more mature and felt so. This was true, not only because after her father's death she had been in a measure the head of the Rainbow Ranch, but because her year of illness had given her more time for introspection than is allowed most girls of her age. Sometimes she believed that this whole year had been completely lost, and then again came the knowledge that she could have learned certain lessons in no other way. Yet now she was determined to waste no further time, but to get as much as possible out of each passing day and to live fully and completely.