Ruth Fielding At Sunrise Farm; Or, What Became of the Raby Orphans

Uncle Jabez had not yet said Ruth could go with the crowd to the Steeles’ summer home; Aunt Alvirah wrote that he was “studyin’ about it.” But there was so much to do at Briarwood as the end of the school year approached, that the girl of the Red Mill had little time to worry about the subject.

Although Ruth and Helen Cameron were far from graduation themselves, they both had parts of some prominence in the exercises which were to close the year at Briarwood Hall. Ruth was in a quartette selected from the Glee Club for some special music, and Helen had a small violin solo part in one of the orchestral numbers.

Not many of the juniors, unless they belonged to either the school orchestra or the Glee Club, would appear to much advantage at graduation. The upper senior class was in the limelight—and Madge Steele was the only one of Ruth’s close friends who was to receive her diploma.

“We who aren’t seniors have to sit around like bumps on a log,” growled Heavy. “Might as well go home for good the day before.”

“You should have learned to play, or sing, or something,” advised one of the other girls, laughing at Heavy’s apparently woebegone face.

“Did you ever hear me try to sing, Lluella?” demanded the plump young lady. “I like music myself—I’m very fond of it, no matter how it sounds! But I can’t even stand my own chest-tones.”

Preparations for the great day went on apace. There was to be a professional director for the augmented orchestra and he insisted, because of the acoustics of the hall, upon building an elevated extension to the stage, upon which to stand to conduct the music.

“Gee!” gasped Heavy, when she saw it the first time. “What’s the diving-board for?”

“That’s not a diving-board,” snapped Mercy Curtis. “It’s the lookout station for the captain to watch the high C’s.”

The bustle and confusion of departure punctuated the final day of the term, too. There were so many girls to say good-bye to for the summer; and some, of course, would never come back to Briarwood Hall again—as scholars, at least.

In the midst of the excitement Ruth received a letter in the crabbed hand of dear old Aunt Alvirah. The old lady enclosed a small money order, fearing that Ruth might not have all the money she needed for her home-coming. But the best item in the letter beside the expression of Aunt Alvirah’s love, was the statement that “Your Uncle Jabe, he’s come round to agreeing you should go to that Sunrise Farm place with your young friends. I made him let me hire a tramping girl that came by, and we got the house all rid up, so when you come home, my pretty, all you got to do is to visit.”

“And I will visit with her—the unselfish old dear!” Ruth told herself. “Dear me! how very, very good everybody is to me. But I am afraid poor Uncle Jabez wouldn’t be so kind if he wasn’t influenced by Aunt Alvirah.”

CHAPTER V—“THE TRAMPING GAL”

The sweet, clean, cool air breathed in upon her bare throat and shoulders, revealed through the lace trimming of her night robe. Ruth loved linen like other girls, and although Uncle Jabez gave her spending money with a rather niggardly hand, she and Aunt Alvirah knew how to make the pennies “go a long way” in purchasing and making her gowns and undergarments.

There lay over a chair, too, a pretty, light blue, silk trimmed crepe-cloth kimona, with warm, fur-edged slippers to match, on the floor. The moment she heard Uncle Jabez rattle the stove-shaker in the kitchen, Ruth slipped into this robe, and thrust her bare feet into the slippers. Her braids she drew over her shoulders—one on either side—as she hurried out of the little chamber and down the back stairs.

She had arrived home from Briarwood the night before. For more than eight months she had seen neither Uncle Jabez nor Aunt Alvirah; and she had been so tired and sleepy on her arrival that she had quickly gone to bed. She felt as though she had scarcely greeted the two old people.

Uncle Jabez was bending over the kitchen stove. He always looked gray of face, and dusty. The mill-dust seemed ground into both his clothes and his complexion.

The first the old man knew of her presence, the arms of Ruth were around his neck.

“Ugh-huh?” questioned the old man, raising up stiffly as the fire began to chatter, the flames flashing under the lids, and turned to face the girl who held him so lovingly. “What’s wanted, Niece Ruth?” he added, looking at her grimly under his bristling brows.

Ruth was not afraid of his grimness. She had learned long since that Uncle Jabez was much softer under the surface than he appeared. He claimed to be only just to her; but Ruth knew that his “justice” often leaned toward the side of mercy.

Her mother, Mary Potter, had been the miller’s favorite niece; when she had married Ruth’s father, Uncle Jabez had been angry, and for years the family had been separated. But when Uncle Jabez had taken Ruth in “just out of charity,” old Aunt Alvirah had assured the heartsick girl that the miller was kinder at heart than he wished people to suppose.

“He don’t never let his right hand know what his left hand doeth,” declared the loyal little old woman who had been so long housekeeper for the miller. “He saved me from the poorhouse—yes, he did!—jest to git all the work out o’ me he could—to hear him tell it!

“But it ain’t so,” quoth Aunt Alvirah, shaking her head. “He saw a lone ol’ woman turned out o’ what she’d thought would be her home till she come to death’s door. An’ so he opened his house and his hand to her. An’ he’s opened his house and hand to you, my pretty; and who knows? mebbe ’twill open wide his heart, too.”

Ruth had been hoping the old man’s heart was open, not only to her, but to the whole world. She knew that, in secret, Uncle Jabez was helping to pay Mercy Curtis’s tuition at Briarwood. He still loved money; he always would love it, in all probability. But he had learned to “loosen up,” as Tom Cameron expressed it, in a most astonishing way. One could not honestly call Uncle Jabez a miser nowadays.

He was miserly in the outward expression of any affection, however. And that apparent coldness Ruth Fielding longed to break down.

Now the girl, all flushed from her deep sleep, and smiling, lifted her rosy lips to be kissed. “I didn’t scarcely say ‘how-do’ to you last night, Uncle,” she said. “Do tell me you’re glad to see me back.”

“Ha! Ye ain’t minded to stay long, it seems.”

“I won’t go to Sunrise Farm if you want me here, Uncle Jabez,” declared Ruth, still clinging to him, and with the same smiling light in her eyes.

“Ha! ye don’t mean that,” he grunted.

He knew she did. His wrinkled, hard old face finally began to change. His eyes tried to escape her gaze.

“I just love you, Uncle,” she breathed, softly. “Won’t—won’t you let me?”

“There, there, child!” He tried for a moment to break her firm hold; then he stooped shamefacedly and touched her fresh lips with his own.

Ruth nestled against his big, strong body, and clung a moment longer. His rough hand smoothed her sleek head almost timidly.

“There, there!” he grumbled. “You’re gittin’ to be a big gal, I swow! And what good’s so much schoolin’ goin’ ter do ye? Other gals like you air helpin’ in their mothers’ kitchens—or goin’ to work in the mills at Cheslow. Seems like a wicked waste of time and money.”

But he did not say it so harshly as had been his wont in the old times. Ruth smiled up at him again.

“Trust me, Uncle,” she said. “The time’ll come when I’ll prove to you the worth of it. Give me the education I crave, and I’ll support myself and pay you all back—with interest! You see if I don’t.”

“Well, well! It’s new-fashioned, I s’pose,” growled the old man, starting for the mill. “Gals, as well as boys, is lots more expense now than they used ter be to raise. The ‘three R’s’ was enough for us when I was young.

“But I won’t stop yer fun. I promised yer Aunt Alviry I wouldn’t,” he added, with his hand upon the door-latch. “You kin go to that Sunrise place for a while, if ye want. Yer Aunt Alviry got a trampin’ gal that came along, ter help her clean house.”

“Oh! and isn’t the girl here now?” asked Ruth, preparing to run back to dress.

“Nope. She’s gone on. Couldn’t keep her no longer. And my! how that young ’un could eat! Never saw the beat of her,” added Uncle Jabez as he clumped out in his heavy boots.

Ruth heard more about “that trampin’ girl” when Aunt Alvirah appeared. Before that happened, however, the newly returned schoolgirl proved she had not forgotten how to make a country breakfast.

The sliced corned ham was frying nicely; the potatoes were browning delightfully in another pan. Fluffy biscuits were ready to take out of the oven, and the cream was already whipped for the berries and the coffee.

“Gracious me! child alive!” exclaimed the little old woman, coming haltingly into the room. “You an’ Jabez air in a conspiracy to spile me—right from the start. Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” and she lowered herself carefully into a chair.

“I did sartain sure oversleep this day. Ben done the chores? An’ ye air all ready, my pretty? Jest blow the horn, then, and yer uncle will come in. My! what a smart leetle housekeeper you be, Ruth. School ain’t spiled ye a mite.”

“Uncle is still afraid it will,” laughed Ruth, kissing the old woman fondly.

“He only says that,” whispered Aunt Alvirah, with twinkling eyes. “He’s as proud of ye as he can stick—I know!”

“It—it would be nice, if he said so once in a while,” admitted the girl.

After the hearty breakfast was disposed of and the miller and his hired man had tramped out again, the old housekeeper and Ruth became more confidential.

“It sartain sure did please me,” said Aunt Alvirah, “when Jabez let me take in that trampin’ gal for a week an’ more. He paid her without a whimper, too. But, she did eat!”

“So he said,” chuckled Ruth.

“Yes. More’n a hired hand in thrashin’ time. I never seen her beat. But I reckon the poor little thing was plumb starved. They never feed ’em ha’f enough in them orphan ‘sylums, I don’t s’pect.”

“From an orphanage?” cried Ruth, with sudden interest born of her remembrance of the mysterious Sadie Raby.

“So I believe. She’d run away, I s’pect. I hadn’t the heart to blame her. An’ she was close-mouthed as a clam,” declared Aunt Alvirah.

“How did you come to get her?” queried the interested Ruth.

“She walked right up to the door. She’d been travelin’ far—ye could see that by her shoes, if ye could call ’em shoes. I made her take ’em off by the fire, an’ then I picked ’em up with the tongs—they was just pulp—and I pitched ’em onto the ash-heap.

“Well, she stayed that night, o’ course. It was rainin’. Your Uncle Jabez wouldn’t ha’ turned a dog out in sech weather. But he made me put her to bed on chairs here.

“It was plain she was delighted to have somebody to talk to—and as that somebody was ‘her pretty,’ the dear old soul was all the more joyful.

“So, one thing led to another,” pursued Aunt Alvirah, “and I got him to let me keep her to help rid the house up. You know, you wrote me to wait till you come home for house-cleanin’. But I worked Jabez Potter right; I know how to manage him,” said she, nodding and smiling.

“And you didn’t know who the girl was?” asked Ruth, still curious. “Nothing about her at all?”

“Not much. She was short-tongued, I tell ye. But I gathered she had been an orphan a long time and had lived at an institution.”

“Not even her name?” asked Ruth, at last.

“Oh, yes. She told her name—and it was her true one, I reckon,” Aunt Alviry said. “It was Sadie Raby.”

CHAPTER VI—SEEKING THE TRAIL

“You know one o’ them old dresses of yours you wore to Miss Cramp’s school—the one Helen give you?” said old Aunt Alvirah, hesitatingly.

“Yes, indeed!” said Ruth. “And how badly I felt when the girls found out they were ‘hand-me-downs.’ I’ll never forget them.”

“One of them I fitted to that poor child,” said Aunt Alvirah. “The poor, skinny little thing. I wisht I could ha’ kep’ her long enough to put some flesh on her bones.”

Ruth hugged the little old woman. “You’re a dear, Aunty! I bet you fixed her up nice before she went away.”

“Wal, she didn’t look quite sech a tatterdemalion,” granted Aunt Alvirah. “But I was sorry for her. I am allus sorry for any young thing that’s strayin’ about without a home or a mother. But natcherly Jabez wouldn’t hear to keepin’ her after the cleanin’ was done. It’s his nearness, Ruthie; he can’t help it. Some men chew tobacco, and your Uncle Jabez is close. It’s their nater. I’d ruther have a stingy man about, than a tobacco chewin’ man—yes, indeed I had!”

Ruth laughed and agreed with her. Yet she was very sorry that Sadie Raby, “the tramping girl,” had been allowed to move on without those at the Red Mill, who had sheltered her, discovering her destination.

She learned that Sadie had gone to Cheslow—at least, in that direction—and when Helen came spinning along in one of her father’s cars from Outlook that afternoon, and wanted to take Ruth for a drive, the latter begged to ride “Cheslowward.”

“Besides, we both want to see Dr. Davison—and there’s Mercy’s mother. And Miss Cramp will be glad to see me, I know; we’ll wait till her school is out,” Ruth suggested.

“You’re boss,” declared her chum. “And paying calls ‘all by our lonesomes’ will be fun enough. Tom’s deserted me. He’s gone tramping with Reno over toward the Wilkins Corner road—you know, that place where he was hurt that time, and you and Reno found him,” Helen concluded.

This was “harking back” to the very first night Ruth had arrived at Cheslow from her old home at Darrowtown. But she was not likely to forget it, for through that accident of Master Tom Cameron’s, she had met this very dear friend beside her now in the automobile.

“Oh, dear me! and the fun we used to have when we were little girls—‘member, Ruthie?” demanded Helen, laughing. “My! isn’t it warm? Is my face shiny?”

“Just a little,” admitted Ruth.

“Never can keep the shine off,” said Helen, bitterly. “Here! you take the wheel and let me find my powder-paper. Tom says he believes I smoke cigarettes and roll them myself,” and Helen giggled.

Ruth carefully changed seats with her chum, who immediately produced the booklet of slips from her vanity case and rubbed the offending nose vigorously.

“Have a care, Helen! you’ll make it all red,” urged Ruth, laughing. “You do go at everything so excitedly. Anybody would think you were grating a nutmeg.”

“Horrid thing! My nose doesn’t look at all like a nutmeg.”

“But it will—if you don’t look out,” laughed Ruth. “Oh, dear, me! here comes a big wagon. Do you suppose I can get by it safely?”

“If he gives you any room. There! he has begun to turn out. Now, just skim around him.”

Ruth was careful and slowed down. This did not suit the fly-away Helen. “Come on!” she urged. “We’ll never even get to the old doctor’s house if you don’t hurry.”

She began to manipulate the levers herself and soon they were shooting along the Cheslow road at a speed that made Ruth’s eyes water.

They came safely to the house with the green lamps before it, and ran in gaily to see their friend, Dr. Davison. For the moment the good old gentleman chanced to be busy and waved them into the back office to wait until he was free.

Old Mammy, who presided over the doctor’s old-fashioned establishment, had spied the girls and almost immediately the tinkling of ice in a pitcher announced the approach of one of Mammy’s pickaninny grandchildren with a supply of her famous lemonade and a plate of cakes.

“Mammy said you done git hungery waitin’,” declared the grinning, kinky-haired child who presented herself with the refreshments. “An’ a drink on one o’ dese yere dusty days is allus welcome, misses.”

Then she giggled, and darted away to the lower regions of the house, leaving the two chums to enjoy the goodies. Helen was cheerfully curious, and had to go looking about the big office, peeking into the bookcases, looking at the “specimens” in bottles along the shelf, trying to spell out and understand the Latin labels on the jars of drugs.

“Miss Nosey!” whispered Ruth, admonishingly.

“There you go! hitting my nose again,” sighed Helen. And then she jumped back and almost screamed. For in fooling with the knob of a narrow closet door, it had snapped open, the door swung outward, and Helen found herself facing an articulated skeleton!

“Goodness gracious me!” exclaimed Helen.

“Oh, no,” giggled Ruth. “It’s not you at all. It’s somebody else.”

“Funny!” scoffed Helen. Then she laughed, too. “It’s somebody the doctor’s awfully choice of. Do you suppose it was his first patient?”

“Hush! Suppose he heard you?”

“He’d laugh,” returned Helen, knowing the kindly old physician too well to be afraid of him in any case. “Now, behave! Don’t say a word. I’m going to dress him up.”

“What?” gasped Ruth.

“You’ll see,” said the daring Helen, and she seized an old hat of the doctor’s from the top of the bookcase and set it jauntily upon the grinning skull.

“My goodness! doesn’t he look terrible that way? Oh! I’ll shut the door. He wiggles all over—just as though he were alive!”

Just then they heard the doctor bidding his caller good-bye, or Helen might have done some other ridiculous thing. The old gentleman came in, rubbing his hands, and with his eyes twinkling. He was a man who had never really grown old, and he liked to hear the girls tell of their school experiences, chuckling over their scrapes and antics with much delight.

“And how has my Goody Two-sticks gotten along this year?” he asked, for he was much interested in Mercy Curtis and her improvement, both physically and mentally. Had it not been for the doctor, Mercy might never have gotten out of her wheelchair, or gone to Briarwood Hall.

“She’s going to beat us all,” Helen declared, with enthusiasm. “Isn’t she, Ruth?”

“She will if we don’t work pretty hard,” admitted the girl of the Red Mill, who was hoping herself to be finally among the first few members of her class at the Hall. “But I would rather see Mercy win first place, I believe, than anybody else—unless it is you, Helen.”

“Don’t you fret,” laughed Helen. “You’ll never see little me at the head of the class—and you know it.”

The two friends did not bore the physician by staying too long, but after he bade them good-bye at the door, Helen ran down the path giggling.

“What do you suppose he’ll say when he finds that hat on the skeleton?” she demanded, her eyes dancing.

“He’ll say, ‘That Helen Cameron was in here—that explains it!’ You can’t fool Dr. Davison,” laughed Ruth.

Ruth had taken Helen into her confidence ere this about the strange runaway, Sadie Raby, and during their call at the doctor’s, she had asked that gentleman if he had seen the tramping girl, after the latter had left the Red Mill. But he had not. Oddly enough, however, Ruth found some trace of Sadie at Mercy’s house, where the girls in the automobile next went to call.

Mercy’s mother had taken the girl in for a night, and fed her. The latter had asked Mr. Curtis about the trains going west, but he had sold Sadie no ticket.

“She was very reticent,” Mrs. Curtis told Ruth. “She was so independent and capable-acting, in spite of her tender years, that I did not feel as though it was my place to try to stop her. She seemed to have some destination in view, but she would not tell me what it was.”

“I wonder if that wasn’t what Aunt Alvirah meant?” queried Ruth, thoughtfully, as she and Helen drove away. “That Sadie is awfully independent. I wish you had seen her.”

“Maybe she’s going to find her twin brothers that she told you about,” suggested Helen. “I wish I had seen her.”

“And maybe you’ve guessed it!” cried Ruth. “But that doesn’t help us find her, for she didn’t say where Willie and Dickie had been taken when they were removed from the orphanage.”

“Gracious, Ruthie!” exclaimed her chum, laughing. “You’re always worrying over somebody else’s troubles.”

CHAPTER VII—WHAT TOM CAMERON SAW

“Reno! dear old fellow!” Ruth said, as Helen shut off the power. “He knows us.”

“Tom must be near, then. That’s the Wilkins Corner road,” Helen observed.

As the car came to a halt and the big mastiff tried to jump in and caress the girls with his tongue—poor fellow! he knew no better, though Helen scolded him—Ruth stood up and shouted for her friend’s twin brother.

“Tom! Tom! A rescue! a rescue! We’re being eaten up by a great four-legged beast—get down, Reno! Oh, don’t!”

She fell back in her seat, laughing merrily, and keeping the big dog off with both hands. A cheery whistle came from the wood. Reno started and turned to look. He had had his master back for only a day, but Tom’s word was always law to the big mastiff.

“Down, sir!” sang out Tom Cameron, and then he burst into view.

“Oh, Tom! what a sight you are!” gasped Ruth.

“My goodness me!” exclaimed his sister. “Have you been in a fight?”

“Down, Reno!” commanded her brother again. He came striding toward them. If he had not been so disheveled, anybody could have seen that, dressed in his sister’s clothes, and she in his, one could scarcely have told them apart. A boy and a girl never could look more alike than Tom and Helen Cameron.

“What has happened to you?” demanded Ruth, quite as anxious as Tom’s own sister.

“Look like I’d been monkeying with the buzz-saw—eh?” he demanded, but a little ruefully. “Say! I’ve had a time. If it hadn’t been for Reno——”

“Why, Reno has hurt himself, too!” exclaimed Ruth, hopping out of the car and for the first time noticing that there was a cake of partially dried blood on the dog’s shoulder.

“He isn’t hurt much. And neither am I. Only my clothes torn——”

“And your face scratched!” ejaculated Helen.

“Oh—well—that’s nothing. That was an accident. She didn’t mean to do it.”

“Who didn’t mean to do it? What are you talking about?” screamed his sister, at last fully aroused. “You’ve been in some terrible danger, Tom Cameron.”

“No, I haven’t,” returned Tom, beginning to grin again. “Just been playing the chivalrous knight.”

“And got his face scratched!” tittered Ruth.

“Aw—well—— Now wait! let me tell you,” he began.

“Now he’s going to make excuses,” cried Helen. “You have gotten into trouble, you reckless boy, and want to make light of it.”

“Gee! I’d like to see you make light of it,” exclaimed Tom, with some vexation. “If you can make head or tail of it—— And that girl!”

“There he goes again,” said Ruth. “He has got to tell us. It is about a girl,” and she laughed, teasingly.

“Say! I don’t know which one of you is the worse,” said Tom, ruefully. “Listen, will you?”

“Go ahead,” said Helen, solemnly.

“Well, Reno and I were hiking along the Wilkins Corner road yonder. It was just about where your Uncle Jabe’s wagon, Ruth, knocked me down into the gully that time—remember?”

Ruth nodded.

“Well, I heard somebody scream. It was a girl. Reno began to growl and I held him back till I located the trouble. There was a campfire down under that bank and the scream came from that direction.

“‘Go to it, old boy!’ I says, and let Reno go. I had no reason to believe there was real trouble,” Tom said, wagging his head. “But I followed him down the bank just the same, for although Reno wouldn’t bite anybody unless he had to, he does look ugly—to strangers.

“Well, what do you think? There were a couple of tramps at the fire, and Reno was holding them off from a girl. He showed his teeth all right, and one of them had his knife out. He was an ugly looking customer.”

“My goodness! a girl?” gasped his sister. “What sort of a looking girl?”

“She wasn’t bad looking,” Tom said. “Younger than us—mebbe twelve, or so. But she’d been sleeping out in her clothes—you could see she had. And her face and hands were dirty.

“‘What were they trying to do to you?’ I asked her.

“‘Trying to get my money,’ says she. ‘I ain’t got much, but you bet I want that little.’

“‘I guess you can keep it,’ I said. ‘But if I were you, I’d hike out of this.’

“‘I’m going to,’ says she. ‘I’m going just as fast as I can to the railroad and jump a train. These fellers have been bothering me all day. I’m glad you came along. Thanks.’

“And with that she started to move off. But the tramps were real ugly, and one of them jumped for her. I tripped him up,” said Tom, grinning again now in remembrance of the row, “and then there certainly was a fuss.”

“Oh, Tom!” murmured Helen.

“Well, I had Reno, didn’t I? The man I tripped fell into the fire, but was more scared than hurt. But the other fellow—the one with the knife—slashed at Reno, and cut him.

“Well! you never saw such a girl as that tramping girl was——”

“What’s that?” gasped Ruth. “Oh, Helen!”

“It might be Sadie Raby—eh?” queried her chum.

“Hel-lo!” exclaimed Master Tom, turning curious. “What do you girls know about her? Sadie Raby—that’s what she said her name was.”

“My goodness me! What do you think of that?” cried his sister.

“And where is she now?” demanded Ruth.

“Aw, wait till I tell you all about it,” complained Tom. “You girls take the wind all out of my sails.”

“All right. Go ahead,” begged his sister.

“So, that Sadie girl, she came back to my help, and when one of the fellows had me down, and Reno was holding the other by the wrist, she started to dig into the face of the rascal who held me. And once she scratched me by mistake,” added Tom, laughing.

“But between us—mostly through Reno’s help—we frightened them off. They hobbled away through the bushes. Then I took her to the railroad, and waited at the tank till a train came along and stopped.”

“And put her aboard, Tom!” cried Ruth.

“Yes. It was a freight. I bribed the conductor with two dollars to let her ride as far as Campton. I knew those two tramps would never catch her there. Why! what’s the matter?”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed Helen, with disgust. “Doesn’t it take a boy to spoil everything?”

“Why—what?” began Tom.

“And her name was Sadie Raby?” demanded Ruth.

“That’s what she said.”

“We just wanted to see her, that’s all,” said his sister. “Ruth did, anyway. And I’d have been glad to help her.”

“Well, I helped her, didn’t I?” demanded Tom, rather doggedly.

“Yes. Just like a boy. What do you suppose is to become of a girl like her traveling around the country?”

“She seemed to want to get to Campton real bad. I reckon she has folks there,” said Tom, slowly.

“She’s got no folks—if her story is true,” said Ruth, quietly, “save two little brothers.”

“And they’re twins, like us, Tom,” said Helen, eagerly. “Oh, dear! it’s too bad Ruth and I didn’t come across Sadie, instead of you.”

Tom began to laugh at that. “You’d have had a fine time getting her away from those tramps,” he scoffed. “She didn’t have but a little money, and they would have stolen that from her if it hadn’t been for Reno and me.”

CHAPTER VIII—TRAVELING TOWARD SUNRISE FARM

“That’s so,” agreed her chum. “And she even stayed night before last with Mercy’s mother. My! but she’s as elusive as a will-o’-the-wisp.”

“We could telegraph to Campton and have her stopped,” suggested Tom.

“By the police?” demanded his sister.

“Oh! what for?” asked Ruth.

“There! nothing I suggest is any good,” said the boy.

“Not unless you suggest something better than that,” laughed Ruth. “The poor thing doesn’t need to be arrested. And she might refuse any help we could give her. She’s very independent.”

“She sure is,” admitted Tom, ruefully.

“And we don’t know why she wanted to go to Campton,” his sister remarked.

“Nor if she got there safely,” added Ruth.

“Pshaw! if that’s worrying you two, I’ll find out for sure to-morrow,” quoth Master Tom.

He knew the conductor of the freight train with whom he had entrusted the strange girl. The next day he went over to the tank at the right hour and met the conductor again.

“Sure, I got her on to Campton—poor kid,” said the man. “She’s a smart one, too. When the boys wanted to know who she was, I said she was my niece, and she nodded and agreed to it. We had a big feed back here in the hack while she was aboard, and she had her share.”

“But where was she going?” asked Tom.

“Didn’t get much out of her,” admitted the conductor. “But she’d lived in Harburg, and I reckon she had folks in or near Campton. But I’m not sure at all.”

This was rather unsatisfactory; but whatever point the strange girl was journeying to, she had arrived safely at Campton. This Tom told Ruth and the latter had to be content with this information.

The incident of the runaway girl was two or three days old when Ruth received a letter from Madge Steele urging them all to come on soon—that Sunrise Farm was ready for them, and that she was writing all the girls to start on Monday.

The train would take them to Darrowtown. There a conveyance would meet and transport the visitors fifteen miles through the country to Mr. Steele’s big estate.

Mercy Curtis joined the Camerons and Ruth at the Cheslow Station, and on the train they boarded were Heavy Stone and The Fox. The girls greeted each other as though they had been separated for a year.

“Never was such a clatter of tongues,” declared the plump girl, “since the workmen struck on the tower of Babel. Here we are—off for the sunrise—and traveling due west. How do you make that out?”

“That’s easy—anybody could see it with half an eye,” said The Fox.

“Half an eye, eh?” demanded Heavy. “And Cyclops had a whole one. Say! did you hear about the boy in school who was asked by his teacher (he must have been in Tommy’s class) ‘Who was Cyclops?’ He was a bright boy. He answered: ‘The man who wrote the encyclopædia.’ The association of ideas was something fierce—eh?”

“Dear me, Jennie,” admonished The Fox, “you are getting slangier every day.”

“Never mind; I’m not losing flesh over it. Don’t you,” returned the careless “heavyweight.”

It was a long, but not a tedious, ride to Darrowtown. The young folk had left Cheslow just before dark, and their sleeper was sidetracked at the end of the journey, some time in the very early morning. When Ruth first opened her eyes she could scarcely—for the moment—think where she was.

Then she peered out of the narrow window above her berth and saw a section of the railroad yard and one side of Railroad Avenue beyond. The right of way split Darrowtown in two halves and there were grade crossings at the intersections of the principal cross streets.

Long as she had been away from the place, the girl recognized the houses and the stores, and every other landmark she could see. No further sleep for her, although it was scarcely dawn.

She hopped softly out of the berth, disturbed none of her companions or even the porter nodding in his corner, and dressed hurriedly. She made her toilette and then went into the vestibule and from thence climbed down to the cinder path.

There was an opening in the picket fence, and she slipped through in a moment. Dear old Darrowtown! Ruth’s heart throbbed exultantly and she smiled, although there were tears in her eyes.

There was the Brick Church on the corner. The pastor and his wife had been so kind to her! And up this next street was the way to the quiet cemetery where her father and mother were buried. Ruth turned her steps in that direction first of all.

The sun came up, red and jovial; the birds twittered and sang in the great maples along the way; even in the graveyard a great flock of blackbirds “pumped” and squeaked in noisy, joyous chorus.

The dew sparkled on leaf and bush, the flowers were fragrant, the cool breeze fanned her cheek, and the bird chorus rose higher and higher. How could one be sad long on such a beautiful, God-made morning?

Impossible! Ruth plucked a spray of a flowering shrub for both graves, and laid them on the mounds tenderly, with a little prayer. Here slept the dead peacefully, and God had raised her up many, many friends!

The early chimneys were smoking in the suburbs of the town. A screen-door slammed now and then. One man whom she knew slightly, but who did not remember her, was currying his horse in an alley by his stable. Mrs. Barnsworth, notably the smartest housewife in Darrowtown, was starting already with her basket for market—and woe be to the grocer or marketman if the shops were not open when she arrived!

Stray cats ran along the back fences. A dog ran out of a yard to bark at Ruth, but then thought better of it and came to be patted instead.

And then, suddenly, she came in sight of the back garden of Miss True Pettis!

It was with that kind-hearted but peculiar spinster lady that Ruth had lived previous to being sent to the Red Mill. Miss Pettis was the neighborhood seamstress and, as she often had told Ruth, she worked hard “with both tongue and needle” for every dollar she earned.

For Miss True Pettis had something more than dressmaking to do when she went out “by the day” to cut and fit and run the sewing machine. Darrowtown folk expected that the seamstress should have all the latest gossip at her tongue’s end when she came to sew!

Now, Miss True Pettis often laid down the law. “There’s two kinds of gossip. One the Bible calls the seventh abomination, an’ I guess that’s right. But for shut-in folks like most housekeepers in Darrowtown, a dish of harmless gossip is more inspiritin’ than a bowl of boneset tea!

“Lemme have somethin’ new to tell folks about folks—that’s all. But it must be somethin’ kind,” Miss Pettis declared. “No backbitin’, or church scandal, or neighborhood rows. If Si Lumpkin’s cat has scratched Amoskeag Lanfell’s dog, let the cat and the dog fight it out, I say; no need for Si and Amoskeag, who have been friends and neighbors for years an’ years, gettin’ into a ruction over it.

“I never take sides in any controversy—no, ma’am! If ye can’t say a good word for a neighbor, don’t say nothin’ to me. That’s what I tell ’em. But if ye know anythin’ good about ’em, or they’ve had any streak o’ good luck, or the like, tell me. For the folks in this town—‘specially the wimmen folks that don’t git out much—is just a-honin’ for news, and True Pettis, when she goes out by the day, has gotter have a full and plenty supply of it.”

Ruth, smiling quietly to herself, remembered how the thin, sallow, quick spoken lady looked when she said all this. Miss Pettis’s eyes were black and snapping; her nose was a beak; she bit off threads as though her temper was biting, too. But Ruth knew better. A kinder-hearted mortal never lived than the little old seamstress.

Now the visitor ran across the garden—neatly bedded and with graveled paths in which the tiniest weed dared not show its head—and reached the kitchen porch. Miss Pettis was always an early riser, and the smoke of her chimney was now only a faint blue column rising into the clear air.

Yes! there was a rattle of dishes in the kitchen. Ruth tiptoed up the steps. Then she—to her amazement—heard somebody groan. The sound was repeated, and then the seamstress’s voice murmured:

“Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, dear, oh, dear! whatever shall I do——”

Ruth, who had intended opening the door softly and announcing that she had come to breakfast, forgot all about the little surprise she was bent on giving Miss Pettis. Now she peered fearfully in at the nearest window.

Miss Pettis was just sitting down in her rocker, and she rocked to and fro, holding one hand with the other, continuing to groan.

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Ruth, bursting in at the door. “What in the world is the matter, my dear?”

“It’s that dratted felon—— Why, Ruthie Fielding! Did you drop from the sky, or pop up out o’ the ground? I never!”

The dressmaker got up quickly, but struck her hand against the chair-arm. Instantly she fell back with a scream, and Ruth feared she had fainted. A felon is a terribly painful thing!

Ruth ran for a glass of water, but before she could sprinkle any of it on Miss Pettis’ pale face the lady’s eyes opened and she exclaimed:

“Don’t drop any of that on my dress, child—it’ll spot. I’m all right now. My mercy! how that hurt.”

“A felon, Miss Pettis? How very dreadful,” cried Ruth, setting down the glass of water.

“And I ain’t been able to use my needle for a week, and the dishwashin’—well, it jest about kills me to put my hands in water. You can see—the sight this kitchen is.”

“Now, isn’t it lucky that I came this morning—and came so early, too?” cried Ruth. “I was going to take breakfast with you. Now I’ll get the breakfast myself and fix up the house—— Oh, yes, I shall! I’ll send word down to the hotel to my friends—they’ll take breakfast there—and we can have a nice visit, Miss True,” and Ruth very carefully hugged the thin shoulders of the seamstress, so as not to even jar the felon on her right fore-finger.

CHAPTER IX—THE SUNRISE COACH

All the time, she was as cheerful as a bluebird—and just as chatty as one, too! She ran out and caught a neighbor’s boy, and sent him scurrying down to the sidetracked sleeping car with a note to Helen. The rest of the crowd expected at Sunrise Farm would arrive on an early morning train on the other road, and both parties were to meet for breakfast at the Darrowtown Inn.

The vehicle to transport them to the farm, however, was not expected until ten o’clock.

Therefore, Ruth insisted, she had plenty of time to fix up the house for Miss Pettis. This she proceeded to do.

“I allus did say you was the handiest youngun that ever was born in Darrowtown,” said the seamstress, with a sigh of relief, as Ruth, enveloped in a big apron, set to work.

Ruth did more than wash dishes, and sweep, and clean, and scrub. All the time she told Miss Pettis about her life at the Red Mill, and her life at the boarding school, and of many and various things that had happened to her since, two years before, she had gone away from Darrowtown to take up her new life with Uncle Jabez.

Not that she had not frequently written to Miss Pettis; but one cannot write the particulars that can be told when two folks are “gossiping.” Miss True Pettis had not enjoyed herself—felon and all!—so much for ages as she did that forenoon.

And she would have a long and interesting story to tell regarding “Mary Fielding’s little girl” when again she took up her work of going out by the day and bringing both her nimble needle and her nimble tongue into the homes of the busy Darrowtown housewives.

On the other hand, Miss Pettis told Ruth all the news of her old home; and although the girl from the Red Mill had no time then to call upon any other of her one-time friends—not even Patsy Hope—she finally went away feeling just as though she had met them all again. For little of value escaped Miss Pettis, and she had told it all.

The Brick Church clock was striking ten when Ruth ran around the corner and came in sight of the Darrowtown Inn. There was a crowd of girls and boys on the porch, and before it stood a great, shiny yellow coach, drawn by four sleek horses.

“Bobbins” himself—Madge Steele’s big, white-haired brother, who attended the military academy with Tom Cameron, was already on the coachman’s seat, holding the reins in most approved style. Beside him sat a man in livery, it was true; but Bob himself was going to drive the four-in-hand.

“Isn’t that scrumptious, Ruth?” demanded Belle Tingley, one of those who had arrived on the other railroad. “Where have you been all the time? Helen was worried for fear you wouldn’t get here.”

“And here’s Ralph!” exclaimed Ruth, heartily shaking hands with one of Belle’s brothers. “I’m all right. I used to live here in Darrowtown, you know, and I was making calls. And here is Isadore!”

“Oh, I say, Ruth!” exclaimed the chap in knickerbockers, who was so sharp and curious that he was always called “Busy Izzy” Phelps. “Where have you been all the time? We were going to send a searching party after you.”

“You needn’t mind, sir. I can find my way around a bit yet,” laughed Ruth.

“All ready, now!” exclaimed Bob, importantly, from the high seat. “Can’t keep these horses standing much longer.”

“All right, little boy,” said his sister, marshaling the girls down the steps of the hotel. “Don’t you be impatient.”

“It’s the horses,” he complained. “See that nigh leader beginning to dance?”

“Tangoing, I suppose?—or is it the hesitation?” laughed Lluella Fairfax. “May anybody sit up there beside you, Mr. Bob?”

“I’m afraid not. But there’s room on top of the coach for all of you, if you’ll crowd a bit.”

“Me behind with the horn!” cried Tom, swinging himself up into the little seat over the luggage rack.

“Now, girls, there are some steep places on the road,” said Madge. “If any of you feel nervous, I advise you to come inside with me.”

“Ha!” ejaculated Heavy. “It’s not my nerves that keep me from climbing up on that thing—don’t think it. But I’ll willingly join you, Madge,” and the springs creaked, while the girls laughed, as Heavy entered the coach.

They were all quickly seated—the boys of course riding on the roof. Ruth, Helen, Lluella and Belle occupied the seat directly behind the driver. Jane Ann Hicks, who had been spending the intervening week since school closed with Heavy, and would return to Montana after their sojourn at Sunrise Farm, was the only other girl who ventured to ride a-top the coach.

“All ready?” sang out Bobbins, with a backward glance.

Tom put the long silver horn to his lips and blew a blast that startled the Darrowtown echoes, and made the frisky nigh leader prance again. Bob curled the long lash of the yellow whip over the horses’ ears, and at the crack of it all four plunged forward.

There was a crowd to see the party off. Darrowtown had not become familiar with the Steeles’ yellow coach. In fact, there were not many wealthy men’s estates around the town as yet, and such “goings-on” as this coaching party of girls and boys was rather startling to the staid inhabitants of Darrowtown.

The road through the town proper was very good, and the heavy coach wheels rolled over it smoothly. As soon as they reached the suburbs, however, the way was rough, and the horses began to climb, for Darrowtown was right at the foot of the hills, on the very highest of which Sunrise Farm lay.

There were farms here and there along the way, but there was a great deal of rough country, too. Although it was a warm day, those on top of the coach were soon well shaded by the trees. The road wound through a thick piece of wood, where the broad-branched trees overhung the way and—sometimes—almost brushed the girls from their seats.

“Low bridge!” called Bobbins, now and again, and they would all squeal and stoop while the leafy branches brushed above them.

Bobbins had been practicing a good deal, so as to have the honor of driving his friends home from Darrowtown, and they all praised him for being so capable.

As for Tom, he grew red in the face blowing that horn to warn the foxes in the hills and the rabbits in the bushes that they were coming.

“You look out, Tommy!” advised Madge from below. “You’ll blow yourself all away tooting so much, and goodness knows, we don’t want any accident before luncheon. Mother is expecting all manner of things to happen to us after we get to the farm; but I promised faithfully I’d bring you all home to one o’clock luncheon in perfect order.”

“A whole lot you’ve got to do with it,” grunted Busy Izzy, ungallantly. “It’s Bobbins that’s doing the chief work.”

Three hours to Sunrise Farm, yet it was only fifteen miles. The way was not always uphill, but the descents were as hard to get over as the rising ground, and the coach rolled and shook a good deal over the rougher places.

Bye and bye they began to look down into the valleys from the steeps the horses climbed. At one place was a great horseshoe curve, around which the four steeds rattled at a smart pace, skirting a precipice, the depth of which made the girls shriek again.

“I never did see such a road,” complained Lluella.

“We saw worse at Silver Ranch—didn’t we, Ann?” demanded Ruth of the Montana girl.

“Well, this is bad enough, I should hope,” said Belle Tingley. “Lucky there is a good brake on this coach. Where’d we be——?”

As it chanced, the coach had just pitched over the brow of another ridge. Bob had been about to point out proudly the white walls of the house at Sunrise Farm which surmounted the next hill.

But there had been a rain within a week, and a hard one. Right here there was a small washout in the road, and Bob overlooked it. He did not swerve the trotting horses quickly enough, and the nigh fore-wheel dropping into this deep, deep rut.

It is true Bob became a little excited. He yelled “Whoa!” and yanked back on the lines, for the nigh leader had jumped. The girls screamed as the coach came to an abrupt stop.

The four horses were jerked back by the sudden stoppage; then, frightened, they all leaped forward together.

“Whoa, there!” yelled Bob again, trying to hold them in. Something broke and the nigh leader swung around until he was at right angles with his team-mate.

The leader had snapped a tug; he forced his mate over toward the far side of the road; and there the ground broke away, abruptly and steeply, for many, many yards to the bottom of the hill.

There was neither fence, nor ditch, to guard passengers on the road from catastrophe.

CHAPTER X—“TOUCH AND GO”

There was at least one quick-witted person aboard the Sunrise coach in this “touch and go” emergency. Ruth was not afraid of horses. She had not been used to them, like Ann Hicks, all her life, but she was the person now in the best position to help Bob.

To reach the ground on the nigh side of the coach Ann Hicks would have to climb over a couple of boys. Ruth was on that end of the seat and she swung herself off smartly, and landed firmly on the road.

“Look out, Ruth!” shrieked her chum, “you’ll be killed!”

Ruth had no intention of getting near the heels of the horse that had broken its harness. She darted around to his head and seized his bridle. His mate was already scattering gravel down the hillside as he plunged.

Ruth, paying no attention to the shrieks of the girls or the commands of the groom and the boys, jerked the nigh horse’s head around, and so gave his mate a chance to obtain firm footing again. She instantly led both horses toward the inside of the road.

Tom was off his perch by now and had dashed forward to her aid. Amid the gabble of the others, they seemed the only two cool persons in the party.

“Oh! hold them tight, Tom!” cried his sister. “Don’t let them run.”

“Pshaw! they don’t want to run,” growled Bobbins.

The groom climbed carefully over him and leaped down into the road. Tom was looking at Ruth with shining eyes.

“You’re the girl for me, Ruthie,” he whispered in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. “I never saw one like you. You always have your wits about you.”

Ruth smiled and blushed. A word of approbation from Tom Cameron was sweeter to her than the praise of any other of her young friends. She gave him a grateful look, and then turned back to the coach, where the girls were still as excited as a swarm of bees.

They all wanted to get down into the road, until Madge positively forbade it, and Ruth swung herself up to her seat again.

“You can’t do any good down there, and you’d only be in the way,” Madge said. “And the danger’s over now.”

“Thanks to Ruthie!” added Helen, squeezing her chum.

“Oh, you make too much fuss about it,” said Ruth. “I just grabbed the bridle.”

“Yes,” said Mercy, from inside. “I thought I’d need my aeroplanes to fly with, when that horse began to back over the edge of the hill. You’re a good child, Ruthie. I always said so.”

The others had more or less to say about Ruth’s action and she was glad to turn the conversation to some other subject.

Meanwhile the groom had mended the harness, and now he and Tom led the leaders to straighten out the team, and the four horses threw themselves into their collars and jerked the coach-wheel out of the gutter.

The trouble had delayed them but slightly, and soon Tom was cheerfully winding the horn, and the horses were rattling down a more gentle descent into the last valley.

From this to the top of the hill on which the Steele home stood was a steady ascent and the horses could not go rapidly. Bob and Madge pointed out the objects of interest as they rolled along—the farmhouses that were to be torn down, the fences already straightened, and the dykes and walls on which Mr. Steele’s men were at work.

“When this whole hill is father’s, you’ll see some farm,” crowed Bobbins.

“But whose place is that?” demanded one of the girls, behind him, suddenly.

The coach had swung around a turn in the road where a great, bald rock and a border of trees on the right hand, hid all that lay beyond on this gentle slope. The other girls cried out at the beauty of the scene.

A gable-roofed farmhouse, dazzlingly white, with green blinds, stood end to the road. There were great, wide-branched oaks all about it. The sod was clipped close and looked like velvet. Yet the surroundings of the homestead were rather wild, as though Nature had scarcely been disturbed by the hand of man since the original clearing was made here in the hillside forest.

There were porches, and modern buildings and “ells” added to the great old house, but the two huge chimneys, one at either end, pronounced the building to be of the architecture of the earliest settlers in this section of the State.

There were beds of old-fashioned flowers; there was a summerhouse on the lawn, covered with vines; altogether it was a most beautiful and “homey” looking place.

“Whose place is it?” repeated the questioner.

“Oh, that? Caslon’s,” grunted Bob. “He’s the chap who won’t sell out to father. Mean old thing.”

“Why, it’s a love of an old place!” exclaimed Helen.

“Yes. It is the one house father was going to let stand on the hill beside our own. You see, we wanted to put our superintendent in it.”

Just then an old gentleman came out of the summer house. He was a portly, gray mustached, bald-headed man, in clean linen trousers and a white shirt with a short, starched bosom. He wore no collar or necktie, but looked clean and comfortable. He smiled at the young people on the coach jovially.

Behind him stood a motherly lady some years his junior. She was buxom and smiling, too.

Bobbins jerked his head around and snapped his whip over the leaders’ ears. “These are the people,” he said.

“Who?” asked Belle Tingley.

“The Caslons.”

“But they’re real nice looking people,” Helen exclaimed, in wonder.

“Well, they’re a thorn—or a pair of thorns—in my father’s flesh. You’d better not boost them before him.”

“And they don’t want to sell their old home?” queried Ruth, softly. Then to herself, she whispered: “And who could blame them? I wouldn’t sell it, either, if it were mine.”