CHAPTER VIAN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM
Bethhad left the door of her stateroom wide open. When she went into the passage out of which it opened, she saw a girl looking in at the flowers, admiringly.
She was a merry-eyed girl, with short, fine, brown hair that had been blown about her face by the fresh, river breeze. This fact made her seem a little untidy; but she had a winning smile, was well dressed, and Beth found herself interested in the stranger even before the merry one spoke.
“How jolly!” she cried. “You certainly must have heaps and heaps of friends.”
“Why so?” asked Beth, demurely.
“Because they’ve just about filled your room with flowers. Or were they so glad to see you go that they over-speeded the parting guest?” added the girl, roguishly.
Beth laughed as she went by the other into the room and seized a bunch of roses. “Here,” she said, thrusting the flowers into the strange girl’shands. “I must divide with somebody. And my friends were not speeding the parting guest. I am going to school.”
“Bless us! so am I,” said the other, burying her rather retroussé nose in the fragrant blossoms. “But they didn’t waste any lovely flowers on poor little Molly—nay, nay, Pauline!”
“My name is not ‘Pauline,’” interposed Beth, her eyes dancing. “It’s Beth.”
“Oh, how jolly!” cried the other. “I never knew a girl named Beth outside of a story-book.”
“It’s my real name,” Beth said demurely.
“And are you going to school?”
“Yes.”
“Not to Rivercliff?”
“Yes; I am,” Beth said, her own eagerness increasing. “Are you?”
“How jolly!” ejaculated this rather exclamatory girl. “I certainly am going to Miss ’Ammersly’s hestablishment, as it would have been called in ‘dear hold Hengland,’ had she remained there to conduct her school.”
“Oh! is the principal English?” asked Beth.
“The nicest kind. And Madam Hammersly! Wait till you see her! She wears the cunningest caps.”
“Who is she?” asked the puzzled Beth.
“Miss Hammersly’s mother. And such a dear!She is really the housekeeper and general manager—and, oh! so particular! No end! But she’s a jolly old dear, at that.”
Beth saw that this girl overworked at least one word in the English language. But it was impossible to look at her without thinking of that very word. She was jolly, indeed.
Naturally, Beth Baldwin was greatly interested in this, the first of her future schoolmates whom she met and not a little curious about her. She learned at once that Molly Granger had been to Rivercliff for two years already, having entered what Miss Hammersly called the “primary department.”
“But I shall be a full-fledged first-grade with you ‘freshies’ this fall. I shall be in your classes,” she said cheerfully. “I believe I am going to like you a lot, Beth. And that’s more than I can say for some of the girls who have been with me as ‘primes’ and now will be in our grade too. There’s Maude Grimshaw, for instance.Thatgirl would try the patience of a Jobess.”
“Awhat?” gasped Beth.
“A Jobess. Female for Job. Isn’t that right?” asked Molly, her eyes dancing.
Beth laughed. Then she said suddenly:
“Oh, wait!” and, seizing some more of the flowers from Mrs. Euphemia Haven’s garden, shedarted out of the stateroom. She had been watching for several moments a girl who stood in plain view in the cabin and who had been staring at the flowers.
She was a slim, freckled girl, rather oddly dressed, Beth thought; but her big, dark eyes expressed a longing for the flowers that could not be mistaken.
“You’ll have some, won’t you?” demanded Beth, offering the flowers to this stranger, as she had to Molly Granger. “I have so many of them!”
Then she realized that the freckled girl’s eyes were blue. A shadow seemed to lift from them as she smiled. Whereas they had been dusky before, they shone as she looked first at the flowers and then at Beth.
“Oh, thank you!” she said, and her voice was delightfully gentle—“cultured,” Beth would have said, had that expression not so badly fitted the strange girl’s appearance. She wore a very odd combination of garments.
Her smile and her speech repaid Beth for her act. The freckled-faced girl crossed the cabin—she walked gracefully—and sat down upon a divan with the flowers. Before Beth turned back to her new friend, Molly Granger, the blue eyes had become clouded again and the tall figure of thegirl drooped over the handful of flowers. Beth whispered to Molly:
“I wonder who she is?”
“Haven’t the first idea,” said the jolly girl, carelessly.
“Do you think she is going to school with us?”
“To Rivercliff? I should say not!” gasped Molly. “Say! you don’t know what you’re up against there, Beth. Why, we girls of Rivercliff stand for the ‘acme of style.’ The only magazines we read are the fashion magazines—and we only look at the pictures in those. Maude Grimshaw could wear diamonds to each class recitation—and royal ermine, I presume, too—whatever that is,” and Molly laughed.
“Oh!” exclaimed Beth, greatly taken aback.
“Only, you see, Miss Hammersly won’t have it. She is for plain frocks in school. What the girls wear in the evenings or on holidays does not so much bother her. We’re all supposed to be from families who roll in wealth—whatever that may mean,” and Molly giggled again.
“Are—areyou?” asked Beth, somewhat timidly.
“Am I what, my dear?” returned Molly.
“From a rich family?”
“Goodness, no! My aunts send me to Rivercliff. I’m a poor, lone orphan. My poor, dearmother must have taken one look at me, have seen what an awful, ugly little sprite I was, and thankfully ceased to live. My father was a missionary and died of fever in Canton. There you have my history, saving that seven aunts—all my father’s sisters (do you wonder he went missionarying?)—took upon themselves the task of bringing up and educating ‘poor lil’ Molly.’ If I hadn’t a well developed sense of the ridiculous, it would have killed me long ago.”
Molly rattled on so recklessly that Beth was more than a little startled at first. Then it began to impress the girl from Hudsonvale that here was a person who had really never had a mother or a father, and had never learned the actual need of parents. Therefore, she could talk so indifferently about them.
Another thought was, however, buzzing in Beth’s brain.
“What do you suppose these wealthy girls at Rivercliff will say to my dresses?” she asked. “I’ve only one better than this—and that’s for evening wear.”
“Goodness! How long is a string?” demanded the other girl.
“What?”
“How long is a string?” repeated Molly, laughing. “You might as well ask me that as to askme how Maude Grimshaw and that tribe will look on you and your clothes. And I guess there’s no answer to that old wheeze.”
“Oh, yes there is,” said Beth, laughing too. “My sister Ella says the answer is ‘from here to there.’”
It did not take much to keep these two new friends laughing. And, at the moment, it did not seem a great trouble to Beth whether the wealthy girls at Rivercliff liked her and her clothes or not.
She carried most of Larry’s donation of flowers out into the cabin and told the stewardess to arrange them on one of the writing tables. Then she locked her stateroom door and went with Molly on a tour of the boat.
“You see, I’ve been up and down the river on this boat a dozen times,” said the jolly orphan. “I come from Hambro, ’way down the river. I started early this morning. We’ll get to the Rivercliff landing to-morrow evening—if the freight traffic isn’t too heavy. TheWater Wagtailstaggers from one side to the other of the river, picking up freight at the landings, and sometimes the trip is delayed long beyond sched. But never mind! school doesn’t really open till Monday. We’ve got three perfectly good days before us.”
Twice Beth noticed the freckled girl as they passed through the cabin. She still sat in hermelancholy attitude, and the flowers had dropped into her lap. Beth knew she must be in some trouble or sorrow; but she scarcely saw how she could help the stranger.
Molly Granger kept up a running fire of comment upon everybody and everything. The steamboat stopped at two small towns before dark, and the new chums watched the busy scenes on the docks and talked about the new faces they saw. Beth found Molly the very best of company; for while she was light-hearted and full of fun and mischief, she was sound at the root and had no unkindness or meanness in her make-up. Indeed, Beth Baldwin had never met one of her own age before whom she liked so well on such short acquaintance.
Left to herself for a short while, Beth was going over in her mind all the adventures of this busy and exciting day. How much had happened—and how much unexpected—since she had started from the little cottage on Bemis Street.
Then, for the very first time since she had slipped it into her bag, Beth thought of Larry’s present. Something in a jeweler’s box! How had she forgotten it for so long?
“That proves that this has been an exciting time,” murmured the girl, getting her bag and opening it. “Ah! here is the box.”
It was neatly wrapped and tied, and her fingers were engaged in untying the string for a minute or so. Then she opened the box. A puffy mass of pink cotton met her gaze. She pulled this aside.
“Oh! O-o-o-oh!” she breathed. “The beauty! Thebeauty!”
She took out the pin. It was delicately wrought of platinum and studded with diamond chips and tiny half-pearls. It was not very expensive; but it showed skilled workmanship and was an ornament that would surely attract attention. Yet it was simple enough to look well if worn by a young girl.
Larry Haven’s taste could not be criticized. If he had selected the pin himself (and Beth believed he had, from what he had said at its presentation), it showed that he thought of her—that he still considered Beth his little friend and comrade.
Yet, if so, why had he neglected coming to the Bemis Street cottage all summer? This still puzzled and troubled the girl.
At supper time Beth and Molly went up to the saloon deck and the captain of the waiters found the two friends seats at a pleasant table. Beth looked for the freckled girl but did not see her. Yet Beth was sure she had not gone ashore at either of the landings.
While the girls ate and enjoyed their supper,a mist arose and enfolded the steamboat and enshrouded the face of the river. When they came out on the open deck again, the clammy breath of the mist fanned their cheeks, and all they could see of the banks on either hand were occasional twinkling lights—either on scattered farmsteads or in tiny villages or ferry-houses.
“B-r-r-r-r! It’s going to be a nasty night,” said Molly Granger. “I shall go to bed early. No fun sitting up unless the moon shines. Then it is lovely to be out here and watch the shores. The old steamer won’t stop again till we reach Marbury—about midnight.”
“I was hoping for a moonlit night,” said Beth, disappointedly.
“Better to get a good sleep, for to-morrow will be a long day,” said Molly, showing a streak of good sense that Beth had not known she possessed. “We may not get to bed to-morrow night till late; for we may be delayed in reaching Rivercliff. I’ve been as late as eleven o’clock getting off this boat at that landing.”
“I guess you know best, Molly,” agreed Beth.
But she was not sleepy herself—not even when Molly bade her a warm good-night and went into her own stateroom, which was not far from Beth’s. The latter encircled the outer main deck again. TheWater Wagtailwas in midstream. She wasa side-wheeler, and the splashing of her buckets and the creak of her walking-beam, added to the hiss! hiss! of the spray from overside, played an accompaniment to Beth’s thoughts.
Her first night away from home! Never had she slept from under her parents’ roof before. Her own little room, shared with Ella, was the only chamber in which the girl had ever spent the night.
Little wonder that she felt nervous, if not apprehensive. There were two berths in her room—an upper and lower. She would have been glad to share the stateroom with Molly Granger; but she shrank from admitting to even that easy-going, jolly chum that she felt the need of company at night.
She shrank, too, from going to her stateroom and locking herself in.
Instead, she wandered about the boat again. She spent more than two hours going from deck to deck—sitting a while in one place, then getting up and wandering about, wrapped well in her raincoat to keep out the thick mist.
Several times she saw the freckled-faced girl. Either she had no stateroom, or else, with Beth, she did not feel like going to it. And her expression of countenance and deeply despondent manner troubled the girl from Hudsonvale.
“I wish I could do something for her,” thought Beth. “She must be poverty poor with that get-up. Dear me! I haven’t any too much money myself; but if a little would help her——”
She finally started toward the strange girl, determined to accost her; but just then the latter arose from her seat and approached one of the uniformed officers of the boat, then just passing through the cabin.
“Are we near Brakelock, yet?” Beth heard the girl ask.
“We’re not far from that landing, Miss; but we stop there only on the down trip unless we’re signalled to take passengers. Nothing doing to-night, Miss.”
“Thank you,” said the girl, quietly.
The man went about his business. The girl immediately descended the stairs to the lower, or freight, deck. Beth, hesitating whether she should speak to her or not, followed unobserved.
Nobody seemed to be about. The way was open aft to the outer deck behind the paddle-wheels. The tall girl went swiftly to the port side, slid open one of the doors, and stepped out upon the misty, open deck. Beth went out by another door. There was nobody aft but herself and that other girl—not another soul.
The girl did not see Beth and the latter hesitatedagain. What should she say to her? How accost her?
And then—the discovery set Beth’s heart to beating madly—she saw that the strange girl was leaning far over the rail of this lower deck, so close below which the black water hissed and gurgled. In a moment she had a knee upon the flat top of the rail, flinging up her tight skirts with an impatient kick to free her limbs of their entanglement.
She was teetering—almost head downward—on the rail, about—it seemed—to plunge into the swift current of the river!