Page:Ruth Fielding at Silver Ranch.djvu/205

Rh "I reckon we can find one."

"Then I'm going," declared Mary, getting promptly into the tonneau with the doctor and Sally. "I've just as good a reason for being over there—maybe a better reason for going—than Ruth Fielding."

None of her girl friends made any comment upon this statement in Mary's hearing; but Madge declared, as the car chugged away from the ranchhouse:

"I'll never again go anywhere with that girl unless she has a change of heart! She is just as mean as she can be."

"She's the limit!" said Heavy, despondently. "And I used to think she wasn't a bad sort."

"And once upon a time," said Helen Cameron, gravely, "I followed her leadership to the neglect of Ruth. I really thought The Fox was the very smartest girl I had ever met."

"But she couldn't hold the Up and Doing Club together," quoth the stout girl.

"Ruth's Sweetbriars finished both the Upedes and the Fussy Curls," laughed Madge, referring to the two social clubs at Briarwood Hall, which had been quite put out of countenance by the Sweetbriar Association which had been inaugurated by the girl from the Red Mill.

"And The Fox has never forgiven Ruth," declared Heavy.