MOVIE STUNTS
Jennie Stone slept in Ruth’s bed that night because, having been parted since they were both in France, they had a great deal to say to each other—thus proving true one of Tom Cameron’s statements regarding women.
Jennie was just as sympathetic—and as sleepy—as she could be and she “oh, dear, me’d” and yawned alternately all through the tale of the lost scenario and notebooks, appreciating fully how Ruth felt about it, but unable to smother the expression of her desire for sleep.
“Maybe we ought not to have come on this automobile trip,” said Jennie. “If the thief just did it to be mean and is somebody who lives around the Red Mill, perhaps you might have discovered something by mingling with the neighbors.”
“Oh! Tom did all that,” sighed Ruth. “And without avail. He searched the neighborhoodthoroughly, although he is confident that a tramp carried it off. And that seems reasonable. I am almost sure, Heavy, that my scenario will appear under the trademark of some other producing manager than Mr. Hammond.”
“Oh! How mean!”
“Well, a thief is almost the meanest person there is in the world, don’t you think so? Except a backbiter. And anybody mean enough to steal my scenario must be mean enough to try to make use of it.”
“Oh, dear! Ow-oo-ooo! Scuse me, Ruth. Yes, I guess you are right. But can’t you stop the production of the picture?”
“How can I do that?”
“I don’t——ow-oo!——know. Scuse me, dear.”
“Most pictures are made in secret, anyway. The public knows nothing about them until the producer is ready to make their release.”
“I—ow-oo!—I see,” yawned Jennie.
“Even the picture play magazines do not announce them until the first runs. Then, sometimes, there is a synopsis of the story published. But it will be too late, then. Especially when I have no notes of my work, nor any witnesses. I told no living soul about the scenario—what it was about, or——”
“Sh-sh-sh——”
“Why, Heavy!” murmured the scandalized Ruth.
“Sh-sh-sh—whoo!” breathed the plump girl, with complete abandon.
“My goodness!” exclaimed Ruth, tempted to shake her, “if you snore like that when you are married, Henri will have to sleep at the other end of the house.”
But this was completely lost on the tired Jennie Stone, who continued to breathe heavily until Ruth herself fell asleep. It seemed as though the latter had only closed her eyes when the sun shining into her face awoke the girl of the Red Mill. The shades of the east window had been left up, and it was sunrise.
Plenty of farm noises outside the Drovers’ Tavern, as well as a stir in the kitchen, assured Ruth that there were early risers here. Jennie, rolled in more than her share of the bedclothes, continued to breathe as heavily as she had the night before.
But suddenly Ruth was aware that there was somebody besides herself awake in the room. She sat up abruptly in bed and reached to seize Jennie’s plump shoulder. Ruth had to confess she was much excited, if not frightened.
Then, before she touched the still sleeping Jennie Stone, Ruth saw the intruder. The door from the anteroom was ajar. A steaming agatewarecan of water stood on the floor just inside this door. Before the bureau which boasted a rather large mirror for a country hotel bedroom, pivoted the thin figure of Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike!
From the neatly arranged outer clothing of the two girls supposedly asleep in the big four-poster, Bella had selected a skirt of Ruth’s and a shirt-waist of Jennie’s, arraying herself in both of these borrowed garments. She was now putting the finishing touch to her costume by setting Ruth’s cap on top of her black, fly-away mop of hair.
Turning about and about before the glass, Bella was so much engaged in admiring herself that she forgot the hot water she was supposed to carry to the various rooms. Nor did she see Ruth sitting up in bed looking at her in dawning amusement. Nor did she, as she pirouetted there, hear her Nemesis outside in the hall.
The door suddenly creaked farther open. The grim face of Miss Susan Timmins appeared at the aperture.
“Oh!” gasped Ruth Fielding aloud.
Bella turned to glance in startled surprise at the girl in bed. And at that moment Miss Timmins bore down upon the child like a shrike on a chippy-bird.
“Ow-ouch!” shrieked Bella.
“Oh, don’t!” begged Ruth.
“What is it? Goodness!Fire!” cried Jennie Stone, who, when awakened suddenly, always remembered the dormitory fire at Briarwood Hall.
“You little pest! I’ll larrup ye good! I’ll give ye your nevergitovers!” sputtered the hotel housekeeper.
But the affrighted Bella wriggled away from her aunt’s bony grasp. She dodged Miss Timmins about the marble-topped table, retreated behind the hair-cloth sofa, and finally made a headlong dash for the door, while Jennie continued to shriek for the fire department.
Ruth leaped out of bed. In her silk pajamas and slippers, and without any wrap, she hurried to reach, and try to separate, the struggling couple near the door.
Miss Timmins delivered several hearty slaps upon Bella’s face and ears. The child shrieked. She got away again and plunged into the can of hot water.
Over this went, flooding the rag-carpet for yards around.
“Fire! Fire!” Jennie continued to shriek.
Helen dashed in from the next room, dressed quite as lightly as Ruth, and just in time to see the can spilled.
“Oh! Water! Water!”
“Drat that young one!” barked Miss Timmins,ignoring the flood and everything else save her niece—even the conventions.
She dashed after Bella. The latter had disappeared into the hall through the anteroom.
“Oh, the poor child!” cried sympathetic Ruth, and followed in the wake of the angry housekeeper.
“Fire! Fire!” moaned Jennie Stone.
“Cat’s foot!” snapped Helen Cameron. “It’s water—and it is flooding the whole room.”
She ran to set the can upright—after the water was all out of it. Without thinking of her costume, Ruth Fielding ran to avert Bella’s punishment if she could. She knew the aunt was beside herself with rage, and Ruth feared that the woman would, indeed, give Bella her “nevergetovers.”
The corridor of the hotel was long, running from front to rear of the main building. The window at the rear end of it overlooked the roof of the back kitchen. This window was open, and when Ruth reached the corridor Bella was going head-first through the open window, like a circus clown diving through a hoop.
She had discarded Jennie’s shirt-waist between the bedroom and the window. But Ruth’s skirt still flapped about the child’s thin shanks.
Miss Timmins, breathing threatenings and slaughter, raced down the hall in pursuit. Ruthfollowed, begging for quarter for the terrified child.
But the housekeeper went through the open window after Bella, although in a more conventional manner, paying no heed to Ruth’s plea. The frightened girl, however, escaped her aunt’s clutch by slipping off the borrowed skirt and descending the trumpet-vine trellis by the kitchen door.
“Do let her go, Miss Timmins!” begged Ruth, as the panting woman, carrying Ruth’s skirt, returned to the window where the girl of the Red Mill stood. “She is scared to death. She was doing no harm.”
“I’ll thank you to mind your own business, Miss,” snapped Miss Timmins hotly. “I declare! A girl growed like you running ’round in men’s overalls—or, what be them things you got on?”
At this criticism Ruth Fielding fled, taking the skirt and Jennie’s shirt-waist with her. But Aunt Kate was aroused now and the four women of the automobile party swiftly slipped into their negligees and appeared in the hall again, to meet Tom and Colonel Marchand who came from their room only partly dressed.
The critical Miss Timmins had darted downstairs, evidently in pursuit of her unfortunate niece. The guests crowded to the back window.
“Where did she go?” demanded Tom, who hadheard some explanation of the early morning excitement. “Is she running away?”
“What a child!” gasped Aunt Kate.
“My waist!” moaned Jennie.
“Look at Ruth’s skirt!” exclaimed Helen.
“I do not care for the skirt,” the girl of the Red Mill declared. “It is Bella.”
“Her aunt will about give her those ‘nevergetovers’ she spoke of,” chuckled Tom.
“Ma foi!look you there,” exclaimed Colonel Marchand, pointing through the window that overlooked the rear premises of the hotel.
At top speed Miss Timmins was crossing the yard toward the big hay barn. Bella had taken refuge in that structure, and the housekeeper’s evident intention was to harry her out. The woman grasped a clothes-stick with which she proposed to castigate her niece.
“The cruel thing!” exclaimed Helen, the waters of her sympathy rising for Bella Pike now.
“There’s the poor kid!” said Tom.
Bella appeared at an open door far up in the peak of the haymow. The hay was packed solidly under the roof; but there was an air space left at either end.
“She has put herself into the so-tight corner—no?” suggested the young Frenchman.
“You’ve said it!” agreed Tom. “Why! it’s regular movie stunts. She’s come up the ladders tothe top of the mow. If auntie follows her, I don’t see that the kid can do anything but jump!”
“Tom! Never!” cried Ruth.
“He is fooling,” said Jennie.
“Tell me how she can dodge that woman, then,” demanded Tom.
“Ah!” murmured Henri Marchand. “She have arrive’.”
Miss Timmins appeared at the door behind Bella. The spectators heard the girl’s shriek. The housekeeper struck at her with the clothes stick. And then——
“Talk about movie stunts!” shouted Tom Cameron, for the frightened Bella leaped like a cat upon the haymow door and swung outward with nothing more stable than air between her and the ground, more than thirty feet below!
THE AUCTION BLOCK
Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone shrieked in unison when Miss Susan Timmins’ niece cast herself out of the haymow upon the plank door and swung as far as the door would go upon its creaking hinges. Ruth seized Tom’s wrist in a nervous grip, but did not utter a word. Aunt Kate turned away and covered her eyes with her hands that she might not see the reckless child fall—if she did fall.
“Name of a name!” murmured Henri Marchand. “Au secours!Come, Tom,mon ami—to the rescue!”
He turned and ran lightly along the hall and down the stairs. But Tom went through the window, almost as precipitately as had Bella Pike herself, and so over the roof of the kitchen ell and down the trumpet-vine trellis.
Tom was in the yard and running to the barn before Marchand got out of the kitchen. Several other people, early as the hour was, appeared running toward the rear premises of Drovers’ Tavern.
“See that crazy young one!” some woman shrieked. “I know she’ll kill herself yet.”
“Stop that!” commanded Tom, looking up and shaking a threatening hand at Miss Timmins.
For in her rage the woman was trying to strike her niece with the stick, as Bella clung to the door.
“Mind your own business, young man!” snapped the virago. “And go back and put the rest of your clothes on. You ain’t decent.”
Tom was scarcely embarrassed by this verbal attack. The case was too serious for that. Miss Timmins struck at the girl again, and only missed the screaming Bella by an inch or so.
Helen and Jennie screamed in unison, and Ruth herself had difficulty in keeping her lips closed. The cruel rage of the hotel housekeeper made her quite unfit to manage such a child as Bella, and Ruth determined to interfere in Bella’s behalf at the proper time.
“I wish she would pitch out of that door herself!” cried Helen recklessly.
Tom had run into the barn and was climbing the ladders as rapidly as possible to the highest loft. Scolding and striking at her victim, Miss Susan Timmins continued to act like the mad woman she was. And Bella, made desperate at last by fear, reached for the curling edges of the shingles on the eaves above her head.
“Don’t do that, child!” shrieked Jennie Stone.
But Bella scrambled up off the swinging door and pulled herself by her thin arms on to the roof of the barn. There she was completely out of her aunt’s reach.
“Oh, the plucky little sprite!” cried Helen, in delight.
“But—but she can’t get down again,” murmured Aunt Kate. “There is no scuttle in that roof.”
“Tom will find a way,” declared Ruth Fielding with confidence.
“And my Henri,” put in Jennie. “That horrid old creature!”
“She should be punished for this,” agreed Ruth. “I wonder where the child’s father is.”
“Didn’t you find out last night?” Helen asked.
“Only that he is ‘resting’.”
“Some poor, miserable loafer, is he?” demanded Aunt Kate, with acrimony.
“No. It seems that he is an actor,” Ruth explained. “He is out of work.”
“But he can’t think anything of his daughter to see her treated like this,” concluded Aunt Kate.
“She is very proud of him. His professional name is Montague Fitzmaurice.”
“Some name!” murmured Jennie.
“Their family name is Pike,” said Ruth, still seriously. “I do not think the man can know how this aunt treats little Bella. There’s Tom!”
The young captain appeared behind the enraged housekeeper at the open door of the loft. One glance told him what Bella had done. He placed a firm hand on Miss Timmins’ shoulder.
“If you had made that girl fall you would go to jail,” Tom said sternly. “You may go, yet. I will try to put you there. And in any case you shall not have the management of the child any longer. Go back to the house!”
For once the housekeeper was awed. Especially when Henri Marchand, too, appeared in the loft.
“Madame will return to the house. We shall see what can be done for the child.Gare!”
Perhaps the woman was a little frightened at last by what she had done—or what she might have done. At least, she descended the ladders to the ground floor without argument.
The two young men planned swiftly how to rescue the sobbing child. But when Tom first spoke to Bella, proposing to help her down, she looked over the edge of the roof at him and shook her head.
“No! I ain’t coming down,” she announced emphatically. “Aunt Suse will near about skin me alive.”
“She shall not touch you,” Tom promised.
“She’ll give me my nevergitovers, just as she says. You can’t stay here and watch her.”
“But we’ll find a way to keep her from beatingyou when we are gone,” Tom promised. “Don’t you fear her at all.”
“I don’t care where you put me, Aunt Suse will find me out. She’ll send Elnathan Spear after me.”
“I don’t know who Spear is——”
“He’s the constable,” sobbed Bella.
“Well, he sha’n’t spear you,” declared Tom. “Come on, kid. Don’t be scared, and we’ll get you down all right.”
He found the clothes-stick Miss Timmins had abandoned and used it for a brace. With a rope tied to the handle of the plank door and drawn taut, it was held half open. Tom then climbed out upon and straddled the door and raised his arms to receive the girl when she lowered herself over the eaves.
She was light enough—little more than skin and bone, Tom declared—and the latter lowered her without much effort into Henri’s arms.
When the three girls and Aunt Kate at the tavern window saw this safely accomplished they hurried back to their rooms to dress.
“Something must be done for that poor child,” Ruth Fielding said with decision.
“Are you going to adopt her?” Helen asked.
“And send her to Briarwood?” put in Jennie.
“That might be the very best thing that could happen to her,” Ruth rejoined soberly. “She haslived at times in a theatrical boarding house and has likewise traveled with her father when he was with a more or less prosperous company.
“These experiences have made her, after a fashion, grown-up in her ways and words. But in most things she is just as ignorant as she can be. Her future is not the most important thing just now. It is her present.”
Helen heard the last word from the other room where she was dressing, and she cried:
“That’s it, Ruthie. Give her a present and tell her to run away from her aunt. She’s a spiteful old thing!”
“You do not mean that!” exclaimed her chum. “You are only lazy and hate responsibility of any kind. We must do something practical for Bella Pike.”
“How easily she says ‘we’,” Helen scoffed.
“I mean it. I could not sleep to-night if I knew this child was in her aunt’s control.”
A knock on the door interrupted the discussion. Ruth, who was quite dressed now, responded. A lout of a boy, who evidently worked about the stables, stood grinning at the door.
“Miz Timmins says you folks kin all get out. She won’t have you served no breakfast. She don’t want none of you here.”
“My goodness!” wailed Jennie. “Dispossessed—and without breakfast!”
“Where is the proprietor of this hotel, boy?” Ruth asked.
“You mean Mr. Drovers? He ain’t here. Gone to Boston. But that wouldn’t make no dif’rence. Suse Timmins is boss.”
“Oh, me! Oh, my!” groaned Jennie, to whom the prospect was tragic. Jennie’s appetite was never-failing.
The boy slouched away just as Tom and Henri Marchand appeared with Bella between them.
“You poor, dear child!” cried Ruth, running along the hall to meet them.
Bella struggled to escape from the boys. But Tom and Colonel Marchand held her by either hand.
“Easy, young one!” advised Captain Cameron.
“I never meant to do no harm, Miss!” cried Bella. “I—I just wanted to see how I’d look in them clothes. I never do have anything decent to wear.”
“Why, my dear, don’t mind about that,” said Ruth, taking the lathlike girl in her arms. “If you had asked us we would have let you try on the things, I am sure.”
“Aunt Suse would near ’bout give me my nevergitovers—and she will yet!”
“No she won’t,” Ruth reassured her. “Don’t be afraid of your aunt any longer.”
“That is what I tell her,” Tom said warmly.
“Say! You won’t put me in no home, will you?” asked Bella, with sudden anxiety.
“A ‘home’?” repeated Ruth, puzzled.
“She means a charitable institution, poor dear,” said Aunt Kate.
“That’s it, Missus,” Bella said. “I knew a girl that was out of one of them homes. She worked for Mrs. Grubson. She said all the girls wore brown denim uniforms and had their hair slicked back and wasn’t allowed even to whisper at table or after they got to bed at night.”
“Nothing like that shall happen to you,” Ruth declared.
“Where is your father, Bella?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know. Last I saw of him he came through here with a medicine show. I didn’t tell Aunt Suse, but I ran away at night and went to Broxton to see him. But he said business was poor. He got paid so much a bottle commission on the sales of Chief Henry Red-dog’s Bitters. He didn’t think the show would keep going much longer.”
“Oh!”
“You know, they didn’t know he was Montague Fitzmaurice, the great Shakespearean actor. Pa often takes such jobs. He ain’t lazy like Aunt Suse says. Why, once he took a job as a ballyhoo at a show on the Bowery in Coney Island. But his voice ain’t never been what it was since.”
“Do you expect him to return here for you?” Ruth asked, while the other listeners exchanged glances and with difficulty kept their faces straight.
“Oh, yes, Miss. Just as soon as he is in funds. Or he’ll send for me. He always does. He knows I hate it here.”
“Does he know how your aunt treats you?” Aunt Kate interrupted.
“N—not exactly,” stammered Bella. “I haven’t told him all. I don’t want to bother him. It—it ain’t always so bad.”
“I tell you it’s got to stop!” Tom said, with warmth.
“Of course she shall not remain in this woman’s care any longer,” Aunt Kate agreed.
“But we must not take Bella away from this locality,” Ruth observed. “When her father comes back for her she must be here—somewhere.”
“Oh, lady!” exclaimed Bella. “Send me to New York to Mrs. Grubson’s. I bet she’d keep me till pa opens somewhere in a good show.”
But Ruth shook her head. She had her doubts about the wisdom of the child’s being in such a place as Mrs. Grubson’s boarding house, no matter how kindly disposed that woman might be.
“Bella should stay near here,” Ruth said firmly, “as long as we cannot communicate with Mr. Pike at once.”
“Let’s write a notice for one of the theatricalpapers,” suggested Helen eagerly. “You know—‘Montague Fitzmaurice please answer.’ All the actors do it.”
“But pa don’t always have the money to buy the papers,” said Bella, taking the suggestion quite seriously.
“At least, if Bella is in this neighborhood he will know where to find her,” went on Ruth. “Is there nobody you know here, child, whom you would like to stay with till your father returns?”
Bella’s face instantly brightened. Her black eyes flashed.
“Oh, I’d like to stay at the minister’s,” she said.
“At the minister’s?” repeated Ruth. “Why, if he would take you that would be fine. Who is he?”
“The Reverend Driggs,” said Bella.
“Do you suppose the clergyman would take the child?” murmured Aunt Kate.
“Why do you want to go to live with the minister?” asked Tom with curiosity.
“’Cause he reads the Bible so beautifully,” declared Bella. “Why! it sounds just like pa reading a play. The Reverend Driggs is an educated man like pa. But he’s got an awful raft of young ones.”
“A poor minister,” said Aunt Kate briskly. “I am afraid that would not suit.”
“If the Driggs family is already a large one,” began Ruth doubtfully, when Bella declared:
“Miz Driggs had two pairs of twins, and one ever so many times. There’s a raft of ’em.”
Helen and Jennie burst out laughing at this statement and the others were amused. But to Ruth Fielding this was a serious matter. The placing of Bella Pike in a pleasant home until her father could be communicated with, or until he appeared on the scene ready and able to care for the child, was even more serious than the matter of going without breakfast, although Jennie Stone said “No!” to this.
“We’d better set up an auction block before the door of the hotel and auction her off to the highest bidder, hadn’t we?” suggested Helen, who had been rummaging in her bag. “Here, Bella! If you want a shirt-waist to take the place of that calico blouse you have on, here is one. One of mine. And I guarantee it will fit you better than Heavy’s did. She wears an extra size.”
“I don’t either,” flashed the plump girl, as the boys retreated from the room. “I may not be a perfect thirty-six——”
“Is there any doubt of it?” cried Helen, the tease.
“Well!”
“Never mind,” Ruth said. “Jennie is going to be thinner.”
“And it seems she will begin to diet this very morning,” Aunt Kate put in.
“Ow-wow!” moaned Jennie at this reminder that they had been refused breakfast.
Captain Tom, however, had handled too many serious situations in France to be browbeaten by a termagant like Miss Susan Timmins. He went down to the kitchen, ordered a good breakfast for all of his party, and threatened to have recourse to the law if the meal was not well and properly served.
“For you keep a public tavern,” he told the sputtering Miss Timmins, “and you cannot refuse to serve travelers who are willing and able to pay. We are on a pleasure trip, and I assure you, Madam, it will be a pleasure to get you into court for any cause.”
On coming back to the front of the house he found two of the neighbors just entering. One proved to be the local doctor’s wife and the other was a kindly looking farmer.
“I knowed that girl warn’t being treated right, right along,” said the man. “And I told Mirandy that I was going to put a stop to it.”
“It is a disgrace,” said the doctor’s wife, “that we should have allowed it to go on so long. I will take the child myself——”
“And so’ll Mirandy,” declared the farmer.
“It is an auction,” whispered Helen, overhearing this from the top of the stairs.
The party of guests came down with their bagsnow, bringing Bella in their midst—and in the new shirt-waist.
“Let her choose which of these kind people she will stay with,” Tom advised. “And,” he added, in a low voice to Ruth, “we will pay for her support until we can find her father.”
“Like fun you will, young feller!” snorted the farmer, overhearing Tom.
“I could not hear of such a thing,” said the doctor’s wife.
“I’d like to know what you people think you’re doing?” demanded Miss Timmins, popping out at them suddenly.
“Now, Suse Timmins, we’re a-goin’ to do what we neighbors ought to have done long ago. We’re goin’ to take this gal——”
“You start anything like that—taking that young one away from her lawful guardeen—an’ I’ll get Elnathan Spear after you in a hurry, now I tell ye. I’ll give you your nevergitovers!”
“If Nate Spear comes to my house, I’ll ask him to pay me for that corn he bought off’n me as long ago as last fall,” chuckled the farmer. “Just because you’re own cousin to Nate don’t putallthe law an’ the gospel on your side, Suse Timmins. I’ll take good care of this girl.”
“And so will I, if Bella wants to live with me,” said the doctor’s wife.
“Mirandy will be glad to have her.”
“And she’d be company for me,” rejoined the other neighbor. “I haven’t any children.”
“Bella must choose for herself,” said Ruth kindly.
“I guess I’ll go with Mr. Perkins,” said the actor’s daughter. “Miz Holmes is real nice; but Doctor Holmes gives awful tastin’ medicine. I might be sick there and have to take some of it. So I’ll go to Miz Perkins. She has a doctor from Maybridge and he gives candy-covered pellets. I ate some once. Besides, Miz Perkins is lame and can’t get around so spry, and I can do more for her.”
“Now listen to that!” exclaimed the farmer. “Ain’t she a noticing child?”
“Well, Mrs. Perkins will be good to her, no doubt,” agreed the doctor’s wife.
“I’d like to know what you fresh city folks butted into this thing for!” demanded Miss Timmins. “If there’s any law in the land——”
“You’llget it!” promised Tom Cameron.
“Go get anything you own that you want to take with you, Bella,” Ruth advised the shrinking child.
With another fearful glance at her aunt, Bella ran upstairs.
Miss Timmins might have started after her, but Tom planted himself before that door. The lout of a boy began bringing in the breakfast for the automobile party. Ruth talked privately withthe doctor’s wife and Mr. Perkins, and forced some money on the woman to be expended for a very necessary outfit of clothing for Bella.
Miss Timmins finally flounced back into the kitchen where they heard her venting her anger and chagrin on the kitchen help. Bella returned bearing an ancient extension bag crammed full of odds and ends. She kissed Ruth and shook hands with the rest of the company before departing with Mr. Perkins.
The doctor’s wife promised to write to Ruth as soon as anything was heard of Mr. Pike, and the automobile party turned their attention to ham and eggs, stewed potatoes, and griddle cakes.
“Only,” said Jennie, sepulchrally, “I hope the viands are not poisoned. That Miss Timmins would certainly like to give us all our ‘nevergetovers’.”
A DISMAYING DISCOVERY
“‘The Later Pilgrims’ are well out of that trouble,” announced Helen, when the cars were underway, the honeymoon car ahead and the other members of the party packed into the bigger automobile.
“And I hope,” she added, “that Ruth will find no more waifs and strays.”
“Don’t be knocking Ruthie all the time,” said Tom, glancing back over his shoulder. “She’s all right.”
“And you keep your eyes straight ahead, young man,” advised Aunt Kate, “or you will have this heavy car in the ditch.”
“Watch out for Henri and Heavy, too,” advised Helen. “They do not quite know what they are about and you may run them down. There! See his horizon-blue sleeve steal about her? He’s got only one hand left to steer with. Talk about a perfect thirty-six! It’s lucky Henri’s arm is phenomenally long, or he could never surroundthatbaby!”
“I declare, Helen,” laughed Ruth. “I believe you are covetous.”
“Well, Henri is an awfully nice fellow—for a Frenchman.”
“And you are the damsel who declared you proposed to remain an old maid forever and ever and the year after.”
“I can be an old maid and still like the boys, can’t I? All the more, in fact. I sha’n’t have to be true to just one man, which, I believe, would be tedious.”
“You should live in that part of New York called Greenwich Village and wear a Russian blouse and your hair bobbed. Those are the kind of bon mots those people throw off in conversation. Light and airy persiflage, it is called,” said Tom from the front seat.
“What do you know about such people, Tommy?” demanded his sister.
“There were some co-eds of that breed I met at Cambridge. They were exponents of the ‘new freedom,’ whatever that is. Bolshevism, I guess. Freedom from both law and morals.”
“Those are not the kind of girls who are helping in France,” said Ruth soberly.
“You said it!” agreed Tom. “That sort are so busy riding hobbies over here that they have no interest in what is going on in Europe unless it may be in Russia. Well, thank heaven, there arecomparatively few nuts compared with us sane folks.”
Such thoughts as these, however, did not occupy their minds for long. Just as Tom had declared, they were out for fun, and the fun could be found almost anywhere by these blithe young folk.
Ruth’s face actually changed as they journeyed on. She was both “pink and pretty,” Helen declared, before they camped at the wayside for luncheon.
The hampers on the big car were crammed with all the necessities of food and service for several meals. There were, too, twin alcohol lamps, a coffee boiler and a teapot.
Altogether they were making a very satisfactory meal and were having a jolly time at the edge of a piece of wood when a big, black wood-ant dropped down Jennie Stone’s back.
At first they did not know what the matter was with her. Her mouth was full, the food in that state of mastication that she could not immediately swallow it.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” choked the plump girl, trying to get both hands at once down the neck of her shirt-waist.
“Whatisthe matter, Heavy?” gasped Helen.
“Jennie, dear!” murmured Ruth. “Don’t!”
“Ma chere!” gasped Henri Marchand. “Is she ill?”
“Jennie, behave yourself!” cried her aunt.
“I saw a toad swallow a hornet once,” Tom declared. “She acts just the same way.”
“As the hornet?” demanded his sister, beginning to giggle.
“As the toad,” answered Tom, gravely.
But Henri had got to his feet and now reached the wriggling girl. “Let me try to help!” he cried.
“If you even begin wiggling that way, Colonel Marchand,” declared Helen, “you will be in danger of arrest. There is a law againstthatdance.”
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” burst out Jennie once more, actually in danger of choking.
“Whatisit?” Ruth demanded, likewise reaching the writhing girl.
“Oh, he bit me!” finally exploded Jennie.
Ruth guessed what must be the trouble then, and she forced Jennie’s hands out of the neck of her waist and ran her hand down the plump girl’s back. Between them they killed the ant, for Ruth finally recovered a part of the unfortunate creature.
“But just think,” consoled Helen, “how much more awful it would have been if you had swallowed him, Heavy, instead of his wriggling down your spinal column.”
“Oh, don’t! I can feel him wriggling now,” sighed Jennie.
“That can be nothing more than his ghost,” said Tom soberly, “for Ruth retrieved at least half of the ant’s bodily presence.”
“You’ll give us all the fidgets if you keep on wriggling, Jennie,” declared Aunt Kate.
“Well, I don’t want to sit on the grass in a woodsy place again while we are on this journey,” sighed Jennie. “Ugh! I always did hate creepy things.”
“Including spiders, snakes, beetles and babies, I suppose?” laughed Helen. “Come on now. Let us clear up the wreck. Where do we camp to-night, Tommy?”
“No more camping, I pray!” squealed Jennie. “I am no Gypsy.”
“The hotel at Hampton is recommended as the real thing. They have a horse show every year at Hampton, you know. It is in the midst of a summer colony of wealthy people. It is the real thing,” Tom repeated.
They made a pleasant and long run that afternoon and arrived at the Hampton hotel in good season to dress for dinner. Jennie and her aunt met some people they knew, and naturally Jennie’s fiancé and her friends were warmly welcomed by the gay little colony.
Men at the pleasure resorts were very scarce that year, and here were two perfectly gooddancers. So it was very late when the automobile party got away from the dance at the Casino.
They were late the next morning in starting on the road to Boston. Besides, there was thunder early, and Helen, having heard it rumbling, quoted:
“‘Thunder in the morning,Sailors take warning!’”
“‘Thunder in the morning,Sailors take warning!’”
and rolled over for another nap.
Ruth, however, at last had to get up. She was no “lie-abed” in any case, and in her present nervous state she had to be up and doing.
“But it’s going to ra-a-ain!” whined Jennie Stone when Ruth went into her room.
“You’re neither sugar nor salt,” said Ruth.
“Henri says I’m as sweet as sugar,” yawned Jennie.
“He is not responsible for what he says about you,” said her aunt briskly. “When I think of what that really nice young man is taking on his shoulders when he marries you——”
“But, Auntie!” cried Jennie, “he’s not going to try to carry me pickaback, you know.”
“Just the same, it is wrong for us to encourage him to become responsible for you, Jennie,” said her aunt. “He really should be warned.”
“Oh!” gasped the plump girl. “Let anybody dare try to get between me and my Henri——”
“Nobody can—no fear—when you are sitting with him in the front seat of that roadster of Tom’s,” said Ruth. “You fill every atom of space, Heavy.”
She went to the window and looked out again. Heavy rolled out of bed—a good deal like a barrel, her aunt said tartly.
“What is it doing outside?” yawned the plump girl.
“Well, it’s not raining. And it is a long run to Boston. We should be on our way now. The road through the hills is winding. There will be no time to stop for a Gypsy picnic.”
“Thank goodness for that!” grumbled Jennie, sitting on the floor, schoolgirl fashion, to draw on her stockings. “I’ll eat enough at breakfast hereafter to keep me alive until we reach a hotel, if you folks insist on inviting wood ants and other savage creatures of the forest to our luncheon table.”
When the party finally gathered for breakfast in the hotel dining room on this morning, it was disgracefully late. Tom had been over both cars and pronounced them fit. He had ordered the tanks filled with gasoline and had tipped one of the garage men liberally to see that this was properly done.
Afterward Captain Tom declared he would never trust a garage workman again.
“The only way to get a thing done well is to do it yourself—and a tip never bought any special service yet,” declared the angry Tom. “It is merely a form of highway robbery.”
But this was afterward. The party started off from Hampton in high fettle and with a childlike trust in the honesty of a garage attendant.
There were banks of clouds shrouding the horizon both to the west and north—the two directions from which thunder showers usually rise in this part of New England in which they were traveling. And yet the shower held off.
It was some time past noon before the thunder began to mutter again. The automobile party was then in the hilly country. Heretofore farms had been plentiful, although hamlets were few and far between.
“If it rains,” said Ruth cheerfully, “of course we can take refuge in some farmhouse.”
“Ho, for adventure among the savage natives!” cried Helen.
“I hope we shall meet nobody quite as savage as Miss Susan Timmins,” was Aunt Kate’s comment.
They ran into a deep cut between two wooded hills and there was not a house in sight. Indeed, they had not passed a farmstead on the road for the last five miles. Over the top of the wooded crest to the north curled a slate colored stormcloud, its upper edge trembling with livid lightnings. The veriest tyro of a weather prophet could see that a storm was about to break. But nobody had foretold the sudden stopping of the honeymoon car in the lead!
“What is the matter with you?” cried Helen, standing up in the tonneau of the big car, when Tom pulled up suddenly to keep from running the maroon roadster down. “Don’t you see it is going to rain? We want to get somewhere.”
“I guess we have got somewhere,” responded Jennie Stone. “As far as we are concerned, this seems to be our stopping place. The old car won’t go.”
Tom jumped out and hurried forward to join Henri in an examination of the car’s mechanism.
“What happened, Colonel?” he asked the Frenchman, worriedly.
“I have no idea,mon ami,” responded Marchand. “This is a puzzle, eh?”
“First of all, let’s put up the tops. That rain is already beating the woods on the summit of the hill.”
The two young men hurried to do this, first sheltering Jennie and then together dragging the heavy top over the big car, covering the baggage and passengers. Helen and Ruth could fasten the curtains, and soon the women of the party were snug enough. The drivers, however, had to getinto rain garments and begin the work of hunting the trouble with the roadster.
The thunder grew louder and louder. Flashes of lightning streaked across the sky overhead. The electric explosions were soon so frequent and furious that the girls cowered together in real terror. Jennie had slipped out of the small car and crowded in with her chums and Aunt Kate.
“I don’t care!” she wailed, “Henri and Tom are bound to take that car all to pieces to find what has happened.”
But they did not have to go as far as that. In fact, before the rain really began to fall in earnest, Tom made the tragic discovery. There was scarcely a drop of gasoline in the tank of the small machine. Tom hurried back to the big car. He glanced at the dial of the gasoline tank. There was not enough of the fluid to take them a mile! And the emergency tank was turned on!
It was at this point that he stated his opinion of the trustworthiness of garage workmen.
A WILD AFTERNOON
This was a serious situation. Five miles behind the automobile party was the nearest dwelling on this road, and Tom was sure that the nearest gasoline sign was all of five miles further back!
Ahead lay more or less mystery. As the rain began to drum upon the roofs of the two cars, harder and harder and faster and faster, Tom got out the road map and tried to figure out their location. Ridgeton was ahead somewhere—not nearer than six miles, he was sure. And the map showed no gas sign this side of Ridgeton.
Of course there might be some wayside dwelling only a short distance ahead at which enough gasoline could be secured to drive the smaller car to Ridgeton for a proper supply for both machines. But if all the gasoline was drained from the tank of the big car into that of the roadster, the latter would be scarcely able to travel another mile. And without being sure that such a supply of gascould be found within that distance, why separate the two cars?
This was the sensible way Tom put it to Henri; and it was finally decided that Tom should start out on foot with an empty can and hunt for gasoline, while Colonel Marchand remained with the girls and Aunt Kate.
When the two young men ran back through the pouring rain to the big car and announced this decision, they had to shout to make the girls hear. The turmoil of the rain and thunder was terrific.
“I really wish you’d wait, Tom, till the tempest is over,” Ruth anxiously said. “Suppose something happened to you on the road?”
“Suppose something happened toushere in the auto?” shrieked Helen.
“But Henri Marchand will be with you,” said her brother, preparing to depart. “And if I delay we may not reach Boston to-night.”
“Oh!” gasped Jennie. “Do please find some gas, Tom. I’d be scared to death to stay out here in these woods.”
“One of the autos may bite her,” scoffed Helen, ready to scorn her own fears when her friend was even more fearful. “These cars are the wildest thing in these woods, I warrant.”
“Of course you must do what you think is best, Tom,” said Ruth, gravely. “I hope you will not have to go far.”
“No matter how long I am gone, Ruth, don’t be alarmed,” he told her. “You know, nothing serious ever happens to me.”
“Oh, no!” cried his sister. “Of course not! Only you get carried away on a Zeppelin, or are captured by the Germans and Ruth has to go to your rescue. We know all about how immune you are from trouble, young man.”
“Thanks be! there are no Boches here in peaceful New England,” exclaimed Jennie, after Tom had started off with the gasoline can. “Oh!”
A sharp clap of thunder seemingly just overhead followed the flash that had made the plump girl shriek. The explosion reverberated between the hills in slowly passing cadence.
Jennie finally removed her fingers from her ears with a groan. Aunt Kate had covered her eyes. With Helen they cowered together in the tonneau. Ruth had been sitting beside Tom in the front seat when the cars were stalled, and now Henri Marchand was her companion.
“I heard something then, Colonel,” Ruth said in a low tone, when the salvo of thunder was passed.
“You are fortunate, Mademoiselle,” he returned. “Me, I am deafened complete’.”
“I heard a cry.”
“Not from Captain Cameron?”
“It was not his voice. Listen!” said the girl of the Red Mill, in some excitement.
Despite the driving rain she put her head out beyond the curtain and listened. Her face was sheltered from the beating rain. It would have taken her breath had she faced it. Again the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed on its trail.
Ruth did not draw in her head. She wore her raincoat and a rubber cap, and on her feet heavy shoes. The storm did not frighten her. She might be anxious for Tom’s safety, but the ordinary chances of such a disturbance of the elements as this never bothered Ruth Fielding at all.
As the rolling of thunder died away in the distance again, the splashing sound of the rain seemed to grow lighter, too; or Ruth’s hearing became attuned to the sounds about her.
There it was again! A human cry! Or was it? It came from up the hillside to the north of the road on which the automobiles were stalled.
Was there somebody up there in the wet woods—some human creature lost in the storm?
For a third time Ruth heard the wailing, long-drawn cry. Henri had his hands full soothing Jennie. Helen and Aunt Kate were clinging together in the depths of the tonneau. Possibly their eyes were covered against the glare of the lightning.
Ruth slipped out under the curtain on theleeward side. The rain swept down the hillside in solid platoons that marched one after another from northwest to southeast. Dashing against the southern hillside, these marching columns dissolved in torrents that Ruth could hear roaring down from the tree-tops and rushing in miniature floods through the forest.
The road was all awash. The cars stood almost hub-deep in a yellow, foaming flood. The roadside ditches were not deep here, and the sudden freshet was badly guttering the highway.
Sheltered at first by the top of the big car, Ruth strained her ears again to catch that cry which had come down the wind from the thickly wooded hillside.
There it was! A high, piercing scream, as though the one who uttered it was in great fear or agony. Nor did the cry seem to be far away.
Ruth went around to the other side of the automobile. The rain was letting up—or seemed to be. She crossed to the higher ground and pushed through the fringe of bushes that bordered the road.
Already her feet and ankles were saturated, for she had waded through water more than a foot in depth. Here on the steep hillside the flowing water followed the beds of small rivulets which carried it away on either side of her.
The thick branches of the trees made an almostimpervious umbrella above her head. She could see up the hill through the drifting mist for a long distance. The aisles between the rows of trees seemed filled with a sort of pallid light.
Across the line of her vision and through one of these aisles passed a figure—whether that of an animal or the stooping body of a human being Ruth Fielding could not at first be sure.
She had no fear of there being any savage creature in this wood. At least there could be nothing here that would attack her in broad daylight. In a lull in the echoing thunder she cried aloud:
“Hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo! Where are you?”
She was sure her voice drove some distance up the hillside against the wind. She saw the flitting figure again, and with a desire to make sure of its identity, Ruth started in pursuit.
Had Tom been present the girl of the Red Mill would have called his attention to the mystery and left it to him to decide whether to investigate or not. But Ruth was quite an independent person when she was alone; and under the circumstances, with Henri Marchand so busy comforting Jennie, Ruth did not consider for a moment calling the Frenchman to advise with her.
As for Helen and Aunt Kate, they were quite overcome by their fears. Ruth was not really afraid of thunder and lightning, as many people are. She had long since learned that “thunderdoes not bite, and the bolt of lightning that hits you, you will never see!”
Heavy as the going was, and interfering with her progress through her wet garments did, Ruth ran up the hill underneath the dripping trees. She saw the flitting, shadowy figure once more. Again she called as loudly as she could shout:
“Wait! Wait! I won’t hurt you.”
Whoever or whatever it was, the figure did not stay. It flitted on about two hundred yards ahead of the pursuing girl.
At times it disappeared altogether; but Ruth kept on up the hill and her quarry always reappeared. She was quite positive this was the creature that had shrieked, for the mournful cry was not repeated after she caught sight of the figure.
“It is somebody who has been frightened by the storm,” she thought. “Or it is a lost child. This is a wild hillside, and one might easily be lost up here.”
Then she called again. She thought the strange figure turned and hesitated. Then, of a sudden, it darted into a clump of brush. When Ruth came panting to the spot she could see no trace of the creature, or the path which it had followed.
But directly before Ruth was an opening in the hillside—the mouth of a deep ravine which had not been visible from the road below.
Down this ravine ran a noisy torrent which had cut itself a wider and deeper bed since the cloudburst on the heights. Small trees, brush, and rocks had been uprooted by the force of the stream, but its current was now receding. One might walk along the edge of the brook into this hillside fastness.
Determined to solve the mystery of the strange creature’s disappearance, and quite convinced that it was a lost child or woman, Ruth Fielding ventured through the brush clump and passed along the ragged bank of the tumbling brook.
Suddenly, in the muddy ground at her feet, the girl spied a shoe. It was a black oxford of good quality, and it had been, of course, wrenched from the foot of the person she pursued. This girl, or woman, must be running from Ruth in fear.
Ruth picked up the shoe. It was for a small foot, but might belong to either a girl of fourteen or so or to a small woman. She could see the print of the other shoe—yes! and there was the impress of the stockinged foot in the mud.
“Whoever she may be,” thought Ruth Fielding, “she is so frightened that she abandoned this shoe. Poor thing! What can be the matter with her?”
Ruth shouted again, and yet again. She went on up the side of the turbulent brook, staring all about for the hiding place of her quarry.
The rain ceased entirely and abruptly. But thewhole forest was a-drip. Far up through the trees she saw a sudden lightening of the sky. The clouds were breaking.
But the smoke of the torrential downpour still rose from the saturated earth. When Ruth jarred a bush in passing a perfect deluge fell from the trembling leaves. The girl began to feel that she had come far enough in what appeared to be a wild-goose chase.
Then suddenly, quite amazingly, she was halted. She plunged around a sharp turn in the ravine, trying to step on the dryer places, and found herself confronted by a man standing under the shelter of a wide-armed spruce.
“Oh!” gasped Ruth, starting back.
He was a heavy-set, bewhiskered man with gleaming eyes and rather a grim look. Worst of all, he carried a gun with the lock sheltered under his arm-pit from the rain.
At Ruth’s appearance he seemed startled, too, and he advanced the muzzle of the gun and took a stride forward at the same moment.
“Hello!” he growled. “Be you crazy, too? What in all git out be you traipsing through these woods for in the rain?”
MR. PETERBY PAUL AND “WHOSIS”
Ruth Fielding was more than a little startled, for the appearance of this bearded and gruff-spoken man was much against him.
She had become familiar, however, during the past months with all sorts and conditions of men—many of them much more dangerous looking than this stranger.
Her experiences at the battlefront in France had taught her many things. Among them, that very often the roughest men are the most tender with and considerate of women. Ruth knew that the girls and women working in the Red Cross and the “Y” and the Salvation Army might venture among the roughestpoilus, Tommies and our own Yanks without fearing insult or injury.
After that first startled “Oh!” Ruth Fielding gave no sign of fearing the bearded man with the gun under his arm. She stood her ground as he approached her.
“How many air there of ye, Sissy?” he wanted to know. “And air ye all loose from some bat factory? That other one’s crazy as all git out.”
“Oh, did you see her?”
“If ye mean that Whosis that’s wanderin’ around yellin’ like a cat-o’-mountain——”
“Oh, dear! It was she that was screaming so!”
“I should say it was. I tried to cotch her——”
“And that scared her more, I suppose.”
“Huh! Be I so scareful to look at?” the stranger demanded. “Or, mebbeyouain’t loony, lady?”
“I should hope not,” rejoined Ruth, beginning to laugh.
“Then how in tarnation,” demanded the bearded man, “do you explain your wanderin’ about these woods in this storm?”
“Why,” said Ruth, “I was trying to catch that poor creature, too.”
“That Whosis?” he exclaimed.
“Whatever and whoever she is. See! Here’s one of her shoes.”
“Do tell! She’s lost it, ain’t she? Don’t you reckon she’s loony?”
“It may be that she is out of her mind. But she couldn’t hurt you—a big, strong man like you.”
“That’s as may be. I misdoubted me she was some kind of a Whosis,” said the woodsman. “Iseen her a couple of times and heard her holler ev’ry time the lightning was real sharp.”
“The poor creature has been frightened half to death by the tempest,” said Ruth.
“Mebbe. But where did she come from? And where did you come from, if I may ask? This yere ain’t a neighborhood that many city folks finds their way into, let me tell ye.”
Ruth told him her name and related the mishap that had happened to the two cars at the bottom of the hill.
“Wal, I want to know!” he responded. “Out o’ gasoline, heh? Wal, that can be mended.”
“Tom Cameron has gone on foot for some.”
“Which way did he go, Ma’am?”
“East,” she said, pointing.
“Towards Ridgeton? Wal, he’ll have a fine walk.”
“But we have not seen any gasoline sign for ever so far back on the road.”
“That’s right. Ain’t no reg’lar place. But I guess I might be able to scare up enough gas to help you folks out. Ye see, we got a saw mill right up this gully and we got a gasoline engine to run her. I’m a-watchin’ the place till the gang come in to work next month. That there Whosis got me out in the rain——”
“Oh! Where do you suppose the poor thinghas gone?” interrupted Ruth. “We should do something for her.”
“Wal, if she don’t belong to you folks——”
“She doesn’t. But she should not be allowed to wander about in this awful way. Is she a woman grown, or a child?”
“I couldn’t tell ye. I ain’t been close enough to her. By the way, my name is Peterby Paul, and I’m well and fav’rably knowed about this mounting. I did have my thoughts about you, same as that Whosis, I must say. But you ’pear to be all right. Wait, and I’ll bring ye down a couple of cans of gasoline, and you can go on and pick up the feller that’s started to walk to Ridgeton.”
“But that poor creature I followed up here, Mr. Paul? Wemustfind her.”
“You say she ain’t nothin’ to you folks?”
“But she is alone, and frightened.”
“Wal, I expect so. She did give me a start for fair. I don’t know where she could have come from ’nless she belongs over toward Ridgeton at old Miz Abby Drake’s. She’s got some city folks stopping with her—”
“There she is!” cried Ruth, under her breath.
A hobbling figure appeared for a moment on the side of the ravine. The rain had ceased now, but it still dripped plentifully from the trees.
“I’m going after her!” exclaimed Ruth.
“All right, Ma’am,” said Mr. Peterby Paul. “I guess she ain’t no Whosis, after all.”
Ruth could run much faster than the strange person who had so startled both the woodsman and herself. And running lightly, the girl of the Red Mill was almost at her quarry’s elbow before her presence was suspected by the latter.
The woman turned her face toward Ruth and screeched in evident alarm. She looked wild enough to be called a “Whosis,” whatever kind of supernatural apparition that might be. Her silk dress was in rags; her hair floated down her back in a tangled mane; altogether she was a sorry sight, indeed.
She was a woman of middle age, dark, slight of build, and of a most pitiful appearance.
“Don’t be frightened! Don’t be afraid of me,” begged Ruth. “Where are your friends? I will take you to them.”
“It is the voice of God,” said the woman solemnly. “I am wicked. He will punish me. Do you know how wicked I am?” she added in a tense whisper.
“I have no idea,” Ruth replied calmly. “But I think that when we are nervous and distraught as you are, we magnify our sins as well as our troubles.”
Really, Ruth Fielding felt that she might takethis philosophy to herself. She had been of late magnifying her troubles, without doubt.
“I have been a great sinner,” said the woman. “Do you know, I used to steal my little sister’s bread and jam. And now she is dead. I can never make it up to her.”
Plainly this was a serious matter to the excited mind of the poor woman.
“Come on down the hill with me. I have got an automobile there and we can ride to Mrs. Drake’s in it. Isn’t that where you are stopping?”
“Yes, yes. Abby Drake,” said the lost woman weakly. “We—we all started out for huckleberries. And I never thought before how wicked I was to my little sister. But the storm burst—such a terrible storm!” and the poor creature cowered close to Ruth as the thunder muttered again in the distance.
“It is the voice of God——”
“Come along!” urged Ruth. “Lots of people have made the same mistake. So Aunt Alvirah says. They mistake some other noise for the voice of God!”
The woman was now so weak that the strong girl could easily lead her. Mr. Peterby Paul looked at the forlorn figure askance, however.
“You can’t blame me for thinkin’ she was a Whosis,” he said to Ruth. “Poor critter! It’slucky you came after her. She give me such a start I might o’ run sort o’ wild myself.”
“Perhaps if you had tried to catch her it would only have made her worse,” Ruth replied, gently patting the excited woman’s hand.
“The voice of God!” muttered the victim of her own nervousness.
“And she traipsing through these woods in a silk dress!” exclaimed Mr. Paul. “I tell ’em all, city folks ain’t got right good sense.”
“Maybe you are right, Mr. Paul,” sighed Ruth. “We are all a little queer, I guess. I will take her down to the car.”
“And I’ll be right along with a couple of cans of gasoline, Ma’am,” rejoined Peterby Paul. “Ain’t no use you and your friends bein’ stranded no longer.”
“If you will be so kind,” Ruth said.
He turned back up the ravine and Ruth urged the lost woman down the hill. The poor creature was scarcely able to walk, even after she had put on her lost shoe. Her fears which had driven her into this quite irresponsible state, were the result of ungoverned nervousness. Ruth thought seriously of this fact as she aided her charge down the hillside.
She must steady her own nerves, or the result might be quite as serious. She had allowed the loss of her scenario to shake her usual calm. Sheknew she had not been acting like herself during this automobile journey and that she had given her friends cause for alarm.
Then and there Ruth determined to talk no more about her loss or her fears regarding the missing scenario. If it was gone, it was gone. That was all there was to it. She would no longer worry her friends and disturb her own mental poise by ruminating upon her misfortune.