"Says she doesn't see any reason for getting in a perspiration
running down here, when she might be using her spare time upstairs
reading a book, or knitting that sweater for Nan's Beautiful
Beulah."

So, after all, Rhoda Hammond did not become very popular with her
schoolmates during those two long and dreary months, February and
March, when outdoor exercise was almost impossible in the locality
of Lakeview Hall.

Best of all, Rhoda liked to sit in Number Seven, Corridor Four,
with Nan and Bess and others who might drop in and talk. If Rhoda
herself talked, it was almost always about Rose Ranch. Sometimes
about her mother, though she did not often speak of Mrs. Hammond's
affliction.

To Nan, Rhoda had once said her mother had been a school-teacher
who had gone from the East to the vicinity of the Mexican Border to
conduct a school. Her eyes had been failing then; and the change of
climate, of course, had not benefited her vision.

"Daddy Hammond," said Rhoda, speaking lovingly of her father, "is
twenty years older than mother; but he was so kind and good to her,
I guess, when she had to give up teaching, that she just fell in
love with him. You know, I fell in love with him myself when I got
big enough to know how good he was," and she laughed softly.

"You see, he knows me a whole lot better than mother does, for she
has never seen me."