"Oh, that's so! Who has seen Roistering Rhoda of the Staked Plains?
Mrs. Cupp said she was due tonight," cried Laura.

"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Bess, "who is that?"

"A sawney!" cried one of the other girls.

"They say she is Rhoda Hammond, from the very farthest West there
is," Laura said gravely. "Of course she will ride in on a mustang,
or something like that."

"What! with the snow two feet deep?" laughed the brown-eyed girl,
tossing off her furs and smiling at the group of her schoolmates
with happy mien.

"Say not so!" begged Laura. "No pony? What is the use of having a
cow-girl fresh from the wildest West come to Lakeview Hall unless
she comes in proper character?"

Nan Sherwood, having swept her old friends with her quick glance,
now looked back at the group that had followed her into the hall.
The bus had been so crowded and so dark that she had not known half
of those who had been with her coming up from the Freeling railroad
station.

"How nice it is to get back, isn't it?" she murmured to her special
chum, Bess Harley.

"I should say!" agreed Elizabeth, warmly and emphatically.