CHAPTER IV—THE MYSTERY OF JUNE WILDWOOD
Now, Trix Severn had maneuvered so as to get the very first dance with Neale O’Neil. Among all the boys who attended the upper grammar grades, and the High, of Milton, the boy who had been brought up in a circus was the best dancer. The older girls all were glad to get him for a partner.
Time had been when Trix sneered at “that circus boy,” but that was before he and the two older Corner House girls had saved Trix from a collapsing snow palace back in mid-winter.
Since that time she had taken up with Agnes Kenway as her very closest chum, and she had visited the old Corner House a good deal. When Agnes and her sister arrived at the party on this evening, with Neale as escort, Trix determined to have at least one dance with the popular boy.
“Oh, Neale!” she whispered, fluttering up to him in her very nicest way, “Ruth and Agnes will be half an hour primping, upstairs. The music is going to strike up. Do let us have the first dance.”
“All right,” said Neale, good-naturedly.
It was the moment later that the discovery was made of the masons’ shoes in the bundle he carried under his arm.
“Now we can’t dance,” repeated Agnes, when the laughter had somewhat subsided.
“Oh, Neale can dance just as well,” Trix said, carelessly. “Come on, Neale! You know this is our dance.”
Of course Neale could dance in his walking shoes. But he saw Agnes’ woebegone face and he hesitated.
“It’s too bad, Aggie,” he said. “If it wasn’t so far——”
“Why, Neale O’Neill” snapped Trix, unwisely. “You don’t mean to say you’d be foolish enough to go clear back to the Corner House for those girls’ slippers?”
Perhaps it was just this opposition that was needed to start Neale off. He pulled his cap from his pocket and turned toward the door, with a shrug. “I guess I can get back in an hour, Ag. Don’t you and Ruth dance much in your heavy shoes until then. You’ll tire yourselves all out.”
“Why, Neale O’Neill” cried Trix. “You won’t do it?”
Even Ruth murmured against the boy’s making the trip for the slippers. “We can get along, Neale,” she said, in her quiet way.
“And you promised to dance with me this first dance,” declared Trix, angrily, as the music began.
Neale did not pay much attention to her—at the moment. “It’s my fault, I guess,” he said, laughing. “I’ll go back for them, Ag.”
But Trix got right between him and the door. “Now! you sha’n’t go off and leave me in the lurch that way, Neale O’Neill” she cried, shrilly.
“Aw——There are other dances. Wait till I come back,” he said.
“You can dance in the shoes you have on,” Trix said, sharply.
“What if?”
“But we can’t, Trix,” interposed Agnes, much distressed. “Ruth and I, you know——”
“I don’t care!” interrupted Trix, boiling over at last. “You Corner House girls are the most selfish things! You’d spoil his fun for half the party——”
“Aw, don’t bother!” growled Neale, in much disgust.
“I will bother! You——”
“Guess she thinks she owns you, Neale,” chuckled one of the boys, adding fuel to the flames. Neale did not feel any too pleasant after that. He flung away from Trix Severn’s detaining grasp.
“I’m going—it isn’t any of your concern,” he muttered, to the angry girl.
Ruth bore Agnes away. She was half crying. The rift in the intimacy between her soulmate and herself was apparent to all.
To make the matter worse—according to Trix’s version—when Neale finally returned, almost breathless, with the mislaid slippers, he insisted, first of all, upon dancing with Ruth and Agnes. Then he would have favored Trix (Ruth had advised it), but the angry girl would not speak to him.
“He’s nothing but a low circus boy, anyway!” she told Lucy Poole. “And I don’t think really well-bred girls would care to have anything to do with him.”
Those who heard her laughed. They had known Trix Severn’s ways for a long time. She had been upon her good behavior; but it did not surprise her old acquaintances that she should act like this.
It made a difference to the Corner House girls, however, for it made their plans about going to Pleasant Cove uncertain.
The other girls knew that Trix had invited the Corner House girls for the first two weeks after graduation, and that Ruth had tentatively accepted. Therefore even Pearl Harrod—who wanted Ruth and her sisters, herself—scarcely knew whether to put in a claim for them or not.
Graduation Day was very near at hand; the very day following the closing of the Milton High, several family parties were to leave for the seaside resort which was so popular in this part of New England.
They had to pass through Bloomingsburg to get to it, but when the Kenways had lived in that city, they had never expected to spend any part of the summer season at such a beautiful summer resort as Pleasant Cove.
It was a bungalow colony, with several fine hotels, built around a tiny, old-fashioned fishing port. There was a still cove, a beautiful river emptying into it, and outside, a stretch of rocky Atlantic coast on which the ocean played grim tunes during stormy weather.
This was as much as the Corner House girls knew about it as yet. But they all looked forward to their first visit to the place with keen delight. Tess and Dot were talking about the expected trip a good deal of the time they were awake. Most of their doll-play was colored now by thoughts of Pleasant Cove.
They were not too busy to help Mrs. MacCall take the last of the winter clothing to the garret, however, and see her pack it away in the chests there. As she did this the housekeeper sprinkled, with lavish hand, the camphor balls among the layers of clothing.
Dot had tentatively tasted one of the hard, white balls, and shuddered. “But they do look so much like candy, Tess,” she said. Then she suddenly had another thought:
“Oh, Mrs. MacCall! what do you suppose the poor moths had to live on ’way back in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve wore any clothes?”
“Now, can you beat that?” demanded the housekeeper, of nobody in particular. “What won’t that young one get in her head!”
Meanwhile Ruth was helping Rosa Wildwood all she could, so that the girl from the South would be able to pass in the necessary examinations and stand high enough in the class to be promoted.
Housework certainly “told on” Rosa. Bob said “it jest seems t’ take th’ puckerin’ string all out’n her—an’ she jest draps down like a flower.”
“We’ll help her, Mr. Wildwood,” Ruth said. “But she really ought to have a rest.”
“Hi Godfrey!” ejaculated the coal heaver. “I tell her she kin let the housework go. We don’t have no visitors—savin’ an’ exceptin’ you, ma’am.”
“But she wants to keep the place decent, you see,” Ruth told him. “And she can scarcely do that and keep up with her studies—now. You see, she’s so weak.”
“Hi Godfrey!” exclaimed the man again. “Ain’t thar sech a thing as bein’ a mite too clean?”
But Bob Wildwood had an immense respect for Ruth; likewise he was grateful because she showed an interest in his last remaining daughter.
“I tell you, sir,” the oldest Corner House girl said, gravely. “Rosa needs a change and a rest. And all us girls are going to Pleasant Cove this summer. Will you let Rosa come down, too, for a while, if I pay her way and look out for her?”
The man was somewhat disturbed by the question. “Yuh see, Miss,” he observed, scratching his head thoughtfully, “she’s all I got. I’d plumb be lost ’ithout Rosa.”
“But only for a week or two.”
“I know. And I wouldn’t want tuh stand in her way. I crossed her sister too much—that’s what I did. Juniper was a sight more uppity than Rosa—otherwise she wouldn’t have flew the coop,” said Bob Wildwood, shaking his head.
Ruth, all tenderness for his bereavement, hastened to say: “Oh, you’ll find her again, sir. Surely you don’t believe she’s dead?”
“No. If she ain’t come to a bad end, she’s all right somewhar. But she’d oughter be home with her sister—and with me. Ye see, she was pretty—an’ smart. No end smart! She went off in bad comp’ny.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Wildwood?” asked Ruth, deeply interested.
“Travelin’ folks. They had a van an’ a couple team o’ mules, an’ the man sold bitters an’ corn-salve. The woman dressed mighty fine, an’ she took June’s eye.
“We follered ’em a long spell, me an’ Rosa. But we didn’t never ketch up to ’em. If we had, I’d sure tuck a hand-holt of that medicine man. He an’ his woman put all the foolishness inter Juniper’s haid.
“An’ Rosa misses her sister like poison, too,” finished Bob Wildwood, slowly shaking his head.
There seemed to be a mystery connected with the disappearance of Rosa’s sister, and Ruth Kenway was just as curious as she could be about it; but she stuck to her subject until Bob Wildwood agreed to spare his remaining daughter for at least a week’s visit to Pleasant Cove, while the Corner House girls would be there.
CHAPTER V—OFF FOR THE SEASIDE
The last hours of the school term were busy ones indeed. Even Tess had her troublesome “’zaminations.” At the study table on the last evening before her own grade had its closing exercises, Tess propounded the following:
“Ruthie, what’s a ’scutcheon?”
“Um—um,” said Ruth, far away.
“A what, child?” demanded Agnes.
“‘’Scutcheon?’”
“‘Escutcheon,’ she means,” chuckled Neale, who was present as usual at study hour.
“Well, what is it?” begged Tess, plaintively.
“Why?” demanded Ruth, suddenly waking up. “That’s a hard word for a small girl, Tess.”
“It says here,” quoth Tess, “that ‘There was a blot upon his escutcheon.’”
“Oh, yes—sure,” drawled Neale, as Ruth hesitated. “That must mean a fancy vest, Tess. And he spilled soup on it—sure!”
“Now Neale! how horrid!” admonished Ruth, while Agnes giggled.
“I do think you are all awful mean to me,” wailed Tess. “You don’t tell me a thing. You’re almost as mean as Trix Severn was to me to-day. I don’t want to go to her father’s hotel, so there! Have we got to, Ruthie?”
“What did she do to you, Tess?” demanded Agnes, with a curiosity she could not quench. For, deep as the chasm had grown between her and her former chum, she could not ignore Trix.
“She just turned up her nose at me,” complained Tess, “when I went by; and I heard her say to some girl she was with: ‘There goes one of them now. They pushed their way into our party, and I s’pose we’ve got to entertain them.’ Now, did we push our way in, Ruthie?”
Ruth was angry. It was not often that she displayed indignation, so that when she did so, the other girls—and even Neale—were the more impressed.
“Of course she was speaking of that wretched invitation she gave us to stay at her father’s hotel at Pleasant Cove,” said Ruth. “Well!”
“Oh, Ruthie! don’t say you won’t go,” begged Agnes.
“I’ll never go to that Overlook House unless we pay our way—be sure of that,” declared the angry Ruth.
“But we are going to the shore, Ruthie?” asked Tess.
“Yes.”
“Maybe Pearl Harrod will ask us again,” murmured Agnes, hopefully.
“I guess we can pay our way and be beholden to nobody,” said Ruth, shortly. “I will hire one of the tents, if nothing else. And we’ll start the very day after High closes, just as we planned.”
Despite the loss of her “soulmate,” Agnes was pretty cheerful. She was to graduate from grammar school; and although she was sorry to lose Miss Georgiana Shipman as a teacher, she was delighted to get out of “the pigtail classes,” as she rudely termed the lower grades.
“I’m going to do up my hair, Ruthie, whatever you say,” she declared, “just as soon as I get into high school next fall. I’m old enough to forget braids and hair-ribbons, I should hope!”
“Not yet, my child, not yet,” laughed Ruth. “Why! there are more girls in High who wear their hair down than up.”
“But I’m so big——”
“You mean, you’d be big,” chuckled Neale, “if you were only rolled out,” for he was always teasing Agnes about her plumpness.
“Well! I want to celebrate some way,” sighed Agnes. “Can’t we have a specially nice supper that night?”
“Surely, child,” said her sedate sister. “What do you want?”
“Well!” repeated Agnes, slowly; “you know I’ll never graduate from Grammar again. Couldn’t we kill some of those nice frying chickens of yours, Ruthie?”
“Oh, my!” cried Neale. “What have the poor chickens done that they should be slaughtered to make a Roman holiday?”
“Mr. Smartie!” snapped Agnes. “You be good, or you sha’n’t have any.”
“If that Tom Jonah hadn’t been busy on a certain night, none of us would have eaten those particular frying chickens,” laughed Neale. “I wonder if that Gypsy is running yet?”
“He didn’t get the frying chickens in the bag,” said Agnes. “They were in another coop. We hatched them in January and brought them up by hand. Say! I don’t believe you know much about natural history, Neale, anyway.”
“I guess he knows more than Sammy Pinkney does,” Tess said, again drawn into the conversation. “Teacher asked him to tell us two breeds of dairy cattle and which gives the most milk. She’d been reading to us about it out of a book. So Sammy says:
“‘The bull and the cow, Miss Andrews; and the cow gives the most milk.’”
Dot’s school held its closing exercises one morning, and Tess’ in the afternoon. Then came the graduation of Agnes and Neale O’Neil from the grammar school. Ruth was excused from her own classes at High long enough to attend her sister’s graduation.
Although the plump Corner House girl was no genius, she always stood well in her classes. Ruth saw to that, for what Agnes did not learn at school she had to study at home.
So she stood well up in her class, and she did look “too distractingly pretty,” as Mrs. MacCall declared, when she gave the last touches to Agnes’ dress before she started for school that last day. Miss Ann Titus, Milton’s most famous seamstress and “gossip-in-ordinary,” had outdone herself in making Agnes’ dress. No girl in her class—not even Trix Severn—was dressed so becomingly.
The envious Trix heard the commendations showered on her former friend, and her face grew sourer and her temper sharper. She well knew she had invited the Corner House girls to be her guests at Pleasant Cove; but she did not want them in her party now. She did not know how to get out of “the fix,” as she called it in her own mind.
She had intimated to two or three other girls who were going, however, that Agnes and Ruth had forced the invitation from her in a moment of weakness. If she had to number them of her party, Miss Trix proposed to make it just as unpleasant for the Kenway sisters as she could.
High school graduation was on Thursday. On Friday a special through train was put on by the railroad from Milton to Pleasant Cove. It was scheduled to leave the former station at ten o’clock.
Luckily Mrs. MacCall had insisted upon having all the trunks and bags packed the day before, for on this Friday morning the Corner House girls had little time for anything but saying “good-bye” to their many friends, both human and dumb.
“Whatever will Tom Jonah think?” cried Tess, hugging the big dog that had taken up his abode at the Corner House so strangely. “He’ll think we have run away from him, poor fellow!”
“Oh! don’t you think that, Tom Jonah!” begged Dot, seizing the dog on the other side. “We all love you so! And we’ll come back to you.”
“You’ll give him just the best care ever, won’t you, Uncle Rufus?” cried Agnes.
“Sho’ will!” agreed the old colored man.
“Can’t we take him with us, Ruthie?” asked Dot.
Ruth would have been tempted to do just this had she been sure that they would hire a tent in the colony as soon as they reached Pleasant Cove. Tom Jonah was just the sort of a protector the Corner House girl would have chosen under those circumstances.
But Ruth was puzzled. She had not seen Pearl Harrod, and was not sure whether Pearl had completely filled her uncle’s bungalow with guests or not. Of one thing Ruth was sure: if they went to the Overlook House (Mr. Terrence Severn’s hotel), they would pay their board and refuse to be Trix’s guests.
When the carriage came for them, Tom Jonah stood at the gate and watched them get in and drive away with a rather depressed air. Dot and Tess waved their handkerchiefs from the carriage window at him as long as they could see the big dog.
There was much confusion at the station. Many people whom the girls knew were on the platform, or in the cars already. Trix Severn was very much in evidence. The Kenway sisters saw the other girls who were going to accept Miss Severn’s hospitality in a group at one side, but they hesitated to join this party.
Trix passed the Kenways twice and did not even look at them. Of course, she knew the sisters were there, but Ruth believed that the mean-spirited girl merely wished them to speak to her so that she could snub them publicly.
“Well, Ruthie Kenway!” exclaimed a voice suddenly behind the Corner House girls.
It was Pearl Harrod. Pearl was a bright-faced, big girl, jovial and kind-hearted. “I’ve just been looking for you everywhere,” pursued Pearl. “Here it is the last minute, and you haven’t told me whether you and the other girls are going to my uncle’s house or not.”
“Why—if you are sure you want us?” queried Ruth, with a little break in her voice.
“I should say yes!” exclaimed Pearl. “But I was afraid you had been asked by some one else.”
Trix turned and looked the four sisters over scornfully. Then she tossed her head. “Waiting like beggars for an invitation from somebody,” she said, loudly enough for all the girls nearby to hear. “You’d think, if those Corner House girls are as rich as they tell about, that they’d pay their way.”
CHAPTER VI—ON THE TRAIN
“Don’t you mind what that mean thing says,” whispered Pearl Harrod, quickly.
She had seen Ruth flush hotly and the tears spring to Agnes’ eyes when Trix Severn had spoken so ill-naturedly. The younger Corner House girls did not hear, but Ruth and Agnes were hurt to the quick.
“You are very, very kind, Pearl,” said Ruth. “But we had thought of going to the tent colony——”
“Didn’t Trix Severn ask you to her place?” demanded Pearl, hotly. “I know she did. And now she insults you. If she hadn’t asked you first, and seemed so thick with your sister, Ruth, I would have insisted long ago that you all come to uncle’s bungalow. There’s plenty of room, for my aunt and the girls won’t be down for a fortnight.”
“But, Pearl——”
“I’ll be mad if you don’t agree—now I know that Trix has released you, Ruth Kenway,” cried the good-hearted girl. “Now, don’t let’s say another word about it.”
“Oh, don’t be angry!” begged Ruth. “But won’t it look as though we were begging our way—as Trix says?”
“Pooh! who cares for Trix Severn?”
“You—you are very kind,” said Ruth, yielding at length.
“Then you come on. Hey, girls!” she shouted, running after her own particular friends who were climbing aboard the rear car. “I’ve gotten them to promise. The Corner House girls are going with us—for two weeks, anyway.”
At once the other girls addressed cheered and gathered the four Kenways into their group, with great rejoicing. The sting of Trix Severn’s unkindness was forgotten.
Mr. Howbridge, their guardian, came to the station to see them off, and shook hands with Ruth through the window of the car. When the train actually moved away, Neale O’Neil was there in the crowd, swinging his cap and wishing them heaps of fun. Neale expected to go to Pleasant Cove himself, later in the season.
This last car of the special train was a day coach; but the light-hearted girls did not mind the lack of conveniences and comforts to be obtained in the chair cars. The train was supposed to arrive at Pleasant Cove by three o’clock, and a five hour ride on a hot June day was only “fun” for the Corner House girls and their friends.
Ruth first of all got the brakeman to turn over a seat so that she and her three sisters could sit facing each other. Mrs. MacCall had put them up a nice hamper of luncheon and the older girl knew this would be better enjoyed if the seats were thus arranged.
Of course, there was the usual desire of some of the travelers to have windows open while others wished them closed. Cinders and dust flew in by the peck if the former arrangement prevailed, while the heat was intense if the sashes were down.
Tess and Dot were little disturbed by these physical ills. But they had their own worries. Dot, who had insisted on carrying the Alice-doll in her arms, was troubled mightily to remember whether she had packed the whole of the doll’s trousseau (this was supposed to be a wedding journey for the Alice-doll—a wedding journey in which the bridegroom had no part); while Tess wondered what would happen to Tom Jonah and Sandyface’s young family while they were all gone from the old Corner House.
“I feel condemned—I do, indeed, Dot,” sighed Tess. “We ought, at least, to have named those four kittens before we left. They’ll be awfully old before the christening—if we don’t come back at the end of our first two weeks.”
“What could happen to them?” demanded Dot.
“Why—croup—or measles—or chicken-pox. They’re only babies, you know. And if one should die,” added Tess, warmly, “we wouldn’t even know what name to put on its gravestone!”
“My! lots of things can happen in two weeks, I s’pose,” agreed Dot. “Do you think we ought to stay away from home so long?”
“I guess we’ll have to if Ruth and Aggie stay,” said Tess. “But I shall worry.”
Meanwhile Agnes, who sat with her back to the engine beside Ruth, had become interested in a couple sitting together not far down the car. They were strangers—and strangely dressed, as well.
“Oh, Ruth!” Agnes exclaimed, under her breath, “they look like Gypsies.”
“If they are, they are much better dressed than any Gypsies we ever saw before,” observed her sister.
“But how gay!”
This comment was just enough. The older one had shocking taste in millinery. She wore, too, long, pendant ear-rings and her fingers were covered with gaudy looking jewels. Her garments were rich in texture, but oddly made, and the contrasts in color were, as Agnes whispered, “fierce!”
“That girl with her is handsome, just the same,” Ruth declared.
“Oh! isn’t she!” whispered the enthusiastic Agnes. “A perfectly stunning brunette.”
If she were a Gypsy girl she was a very beautiful one. Her features were lovely and her complexion brilliant. When she smiled she flashed two rows of perfect teeth upon the beholder. She might have been a year or two older than Ruth.
“I don’t know—somehow—she reminds me of somebody,” murmured the latter.
“Who?”
“The girl.”
“She reminds me of that chicken-thief Tom Jonah treed on the henhouse roof,” chuckled Agnes.
“Oh!” exclaimed Ruth; “all Gypsies can’t be alike.”
“Humph! you never heard a good word said for them,” sniffed Agnes.
“But that doesn’t prove there are not good ones. They are a wandering people and have no particular trade or standing in any community. Naturally they have a lot of crimes laid upon their shoulders that they never commit,” said the just Ruth.
“That was one of them that tried to steal your hens, just the same,” said Agnes.
“I suppose so,” admitted her sister. “But surely these two cannot belong to the same kind of Gypsies. See how richly they are dressed.”
“I guess that doesn’t make any difference,” said Agnes. “They are all cut off the same piece of goods,” and immediately she lost interest in the strange couple when Lucy Poole came up the aisle to speak to her.
Ruth had the gaily dressed woman and her companion on her mind a good deal. She often looked at them when they did not notice her. The woman must have been forty, but was straight, lithe, and of good figure. She sat on the outer end of the seat, having the girl between her and the window.
The latter seemed more and more familiar in appearance to Ruth as she looked, yet the Corner House girl could not say whom the girl looked like.
The latter scarcely spoke to her companion. Indeed, she kept her face toward the window for the most part, and seemed to be in a sullen mood. She had smiled once at Dot and the Alice-doll, and that was the only time Ruth had seen the dark, beautiful face with an attractive expression upon it.
The woman seemed talkative enough, but what language she jabbered to her companion the Corner House girl could not tell. She frequently leaned toward the dark girl, her bejeweled fingers seizing the sleeve of her waist, and her speech was both emphatic and loud.
The rattle of the train drowned, however, most of the woman’s words. Ruth arose and went the length of the car for a drink, just for the purpose of overhearing the strange speech of the Gypsy (if such the woman was) for she was sure the language was not English.
She heard nothing intelligible. Ruth folded a cup, filled it at the ice-water tank, and brought it back for the children. Pearl Harrod was sitting directly behind the two strangers, in a seat with Carrie Poole.
“Oh, I say, Ruth!” Pearl said, “is it a fact that Rosa Wildwood is coming down to the Cove next week?”
Ruth turned to answer. As she did so the girl in the seat with the Gypsy sprang to her feet, her face transfigured with amazement, or alarm—Ruth did not know which. The woman grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her back into the seat, saying something of a threatening nature to her companion.
In her excitement the woman knocked the cup of water from Ruth’s hand. She turned to apologize, and Ruth, looking over her head, saw the dark-skinned girl sitting back in her corner quite colorless and broken. The Corner House girl was sure, too, that the strange girl’s lips formed the name “Rosa Wildwood”—but she made no sound.
“It is all right,” Ruth assured the Gypsy woman. “No harm done.”
“I am the ver’ awkward one—eh?” repeated the woman, with a hard smile.
“It does not matter,” said Ruth. “I can get another cup of water.”
She returned to do so. All the while she was wondering what the incident meant. It was not merely a chance happening, she was sure. Something about the name of her schoolmate, Rosa Wildwood, had frightened the beautiful girl who was evidently in the Gypsy woman’s care.
Ruth grew quite excited as she drew another cup of water, and she swiftly planned to discover the mystery, as she started up the aisle of the coach a second time.
CHAPTER VII—SOMETHING AHEAD
Pearl Harrod was now busily talking with Carrie Poole again; she had probably forgotten about Rosa Wildwood for the time being. But Ruth stopped at her seat—the seat directly behind that occupied by the two strangers.
“You asked about Rosa, Pearl?” said Ruth, speaking loudly enough, she was sure, for the girl in front to hear.
“Oh, hello! don’t spill that water again, Ruthie,” laughed Pearl. “Yes. I asked if she were coming down to the Cove!”
“Yes. Rosa Wildwood expects to come next week. I am going to find her a boarding place.”
Ruth spoke very distinctly, and she kept her eyes fastened upon the back of the strange girl’s head. But the latter gave no sign of having heard—at least, she appeared not to be interested in the name which had before so startled her.
“I don’t see how the poor girl can afford it,” Carrie Poole said, not unkindly. “They say she and her father are very poor.”
“Mr. Bob Wildwood works regularly. He doesn’t drink any more,” Ruth explained, intentionally speaking so that those in the forward seat could hear if they wished to listen.
“Rosa is an awfully sweet girl,” said Carrie.
“I love that little Southern drawl of hers!” cried Pearl. “She says ‘Ah reckon so’ in just the cunningest way!”
“She is very frail,” Ruth continued, clearly. “I was afraid she would break down before the school term closed. Now it has been arranged for her to stay at Pleasant Cove until she gains strength. Dr. Forsythe says it will do her a world of good.”
“We’ll give her a good time, all right,” declared Pearl. “Wish we could have her with us——”
“Not at the bungalow,” said Ruth. “Nor at the hotel. We want a quiet place for her. I shall find it.”
Not a sign did the girl in front give that she heard any of this conversation. Yet Ruth believed there was a curious intentness in her manner—she held her head very still as though she were secretly listening, while apparently giving all her attention to what the train passed.
“What does your uncle call his bungalow—where we shall stop?” asked Ruth of Pearl.
“Why, the Spoondrift—don’t you remember? It’s at this end of the cove, near the river, and we have bathing rights on the shore. It’s a fine place. You’ll love it, Ruth Kenway.”
“I expect to,” said Ruth, seriously. “And you were very kind to ask me to stay two whole weeks with you,” and Ruth passed on.
She had intentionally said enough so that, if the strange girl were listening, she would learn just where Ruth could be found at Pleasant Cove.
For the Corner House girl felt that the dark beauty with the Gypsy woman held some keen interest in Rosa Wildwood. Of course—right at the start—the story of Rosa’s lost sister, June, had come into Ruth’s mind.
Yet, as the Corner House girl looked at the stranger, she could not say truthfully that it was Rosa of whom this girl reminded her. Ruth conjured before her mind’s eye the fair, delicate beauty of Bob Wildwood’s daughter; the two girls possessed no feature in common—and in complexion they were, of course, diametrically opposed.
This girl was dark enough and savage enough looking to be a Gypsy. Ruth scouted the idea that she might be Juniper Wildwood, who had run away with a traveling “medicine man” and his wife.
Nevertheless, Ruth believed that the strange girl must know something about the lost June Wildwood. She had been startled when Rosa’s name was mentioned. The Corner House girl was deeply interested in the affair; but at present she did not want to take anybody into her confidence about it—not even Agnes.
The girls did not remain quietly in their seats, by any manner of means. First there was a crowd blocking the aisle in one part of the car, then in another. Agnes was in and out of her seat half a dozen times between stations. The heat and dust was ignored as the girls shouted pleasantries back and forth; the air was vibrant with laughter.
“I’m just as anxious to see the ocean as I can be,” declared Lucy Poole who, like the Corner House girls, had never been to Pleasant Cove before.
“Oh, dear me!” scoffed her cousin Carrie. “It’s only a big, big pond! Our frog pond at home looks like a piece of the ocean—when it’s calm.”
The others laughed and Pearl said: “Guess Lucy wants to see Old Ocean in its might, eh? Big storm, whales, great ships——”
“A sea serpent!” cried Agnes.
“Of course—if there is such a thing,” admitted Lucy. “A sea serpent must be an awfully interesting sight.”
“There aren’t any more,” said Pearl. “Father Neptune’s all out of stock.”
“I guess the sea serpent is something like the snakes alcoholic victims think they see,” proposed Carrie.
“Oh, no,” proclaimed Agnes. “Here’s what I read about the sea serpent:
“‘The old sea serpent used to rave
And fiercely roam about;
He hit a prohibition wave,
And that’s what knocked him out.’”
“‘Perils of the Deep!’” laughed Ruth. “But even if we don’t see serpents in the ocean, I expect we’ll have plenty of adventures down there at the shore.”
Which prophecy was strangely fulfilled.
The train reached Bloomingsburg about one o’clock, and was immediately shifted to the single-tracked branch line that connected that small city with Pleasant Cove. The speed of the train after leaving Bloomingsburg was not great, for it was often held up for trains coming from the shore to pass.
The adult passengers grew impatient and wearied. There were many complaints, and the babies began to fret and cry. But our friends in the last coach remained in a jolly and—for the most part—kindly mood.
Trix Severn had taken her crowd into a forward coach. Her father owning one of the big hotels at the Cove, the railroad company had presented him with a sheaf of chair coupons. So, as Pearl Harrod laughingly said, “Trix’s party was as swell as a wet sponge.”
“I don’t suppose any of that crowd at the Overlook House will talk to us,” said Pearl. “Just the same, I guess I can show you girls a good time at Spoondrift. Uncle always lets us do just as we like. He’s the dearest man.”
The train rattled on and on. The alternate pine forests and swamp lands seemed interminable. Now and then they went through a cut, the railroad bisecting a hickory ridge.
But soon there was a change in the air. When the cinders and dust did not sift into the windows, there was a smell of salt marsh. The air seemed suddenly cleaner. At one station where they stopped, a salt creek came in, and there was a dock, and boats, and barrels of clams and fish piled on the platform ready for the next up-train.
“Regular maritime smell——whew!” sighed Carrie Poole, holding her nose delicately.
“Oh! The whole of Pleasant Cove doesn’t smell like this, does it?” demanded her cousin.
“Only the old part of it—the old village.”
“Well! that’s lucky,” said Lucy. “If this odor prevailed I should say the place ought to be called Un-pleasant Cove.”
“How far are we from the jumping-off place?” demanded Agnes. “I’d like to get out and run.”
Pearl stooped to look out under one of the drawn shades. “Why!” she said, “there are only two more stops before we reach the Cove station. It’s a winding way the railroad follows. But if we got off about here and went right through those woods yonder, we’d reach the Spoondrift bungalow in an hour. I’ve walked over here to Jumpertown many a time.”
“Jumpertown?”
“Yes. That’s what they called it before the real estate speculators gave it the fancy name of ‘Ridgedale Station.’”
At that moment the train suddenly slowed down. The brakes grated upon the wheels and everybody clung to the seats for support. One of the brakemen ran through from the front and the girls clamored to know the cause of the stoppage.
“Bridge down up front,” said the railroad employee. “Tide rose last night and loosened the supports. We’ve got to wait.”
“Oh, dear me!” was the general wail. When they could get hold of the conductor the girls demanded to know the length of time they would be delayed.
“Can’t tell you, young ladies,” declared the man of the punch. “There’s a repair gang at work on it now.”
“An hour?” demanded Pearl Harrod.
“Oh, longer than that,” the conductor assured her.
“But what shall we do? We want to get to the bungalow and air the bedclothes, and all that, before dark,” she cried.
“Guess you’ll have to walk, then,” said the conductor, laughing, and went away.
“That’s just what we’ll do,” Pearl said to her friends. “Can the children walk three miles, Ruth?”
“Surely they can!” Agnes cried. “If they can’t, we’ll carry them.”
Ruth was doubtful of the wisdom of the move, but her opinion was not asked.
“Come on! let’s get out quietly. We’ll fool all these other folks,” said Pearl. “We’ll get to Pleasant Cove long before they do.”
CHAPTER VIII—THE GYPSY CAMP
There were two things that encouraged Ruth Kenway, the oldest Corner House girl, to accompany Pearl Harrod’s party through the woods without objection. Pearl told her that when they reached the highway on the other side of the timber in all probability they would be overtaken by an auto-bus that ran four times a day between a station on a rival railroad line and the Cove.
This was one thing. The other reason for Ruth’s leaving the train with her sisters, and without objection, was the fact that the strangely dressed woman and the pretty, dark girl had left it already.
When the train first stopped and the brakeman announced the accident ahead, the woman had spoken to the girl and they both had risen and left the car. Perhaps nobody had noticed them but Ruth. The strange girl had not looked at Ruth when she passed her, but the woman had bowed and smiled in a cat-like fashion.
Pearl said they would follow a path through the timber to the road; and she pointed out the direction through the window. Ruth saw the woman and girl strike into this very path and disappear.
So curiosity, too, led the oldest Corner House girl to agree to Pearl’s plan. The party of ten girls, including Ruth, Agnes, Tess and Dot Kenway, slipped out of the car without being questioned by any of the older people there. Nobody observed them enter the cool and fragrant woods. Chattering and laughing, they were quickly in the shadowy depths and out of sight of the hot train.
“Oh, isn’t this heavenly!” cried Agnes, tossing up her hat by the ribbons that were supposed to tie it under her plump chin.
The green tunnel of the wood-path stretched a long way before them. It was paved with pine needles and last-year’s oak leaves.
Ruth looked sharply ahead, but did not see either the woman or the girl, in whom she was so much interested. Either they had gone on very rapidly, or had turned aside into the wood.
Dot had made no complaint upon being forced to leave the train; but she clung very tightly now to the Alice-doll, and finally ventured to ask Tess:
“What—what do you think is the chance for bears in this wood, Tess? Don’t you think there may be some?”
“Bears? Whoever heard the like? Of course not, child,” said Tess, in her most elder-sisterly way. “What gave you such an idea as that?”
“Well—it’s a strange woods, Tess. We aren’t really acquainted here.”
“But Pearl is,” declared Tess, stoutly.
“I don’t care. I’d rather have Tom Jonah with us. Suppose a bear should jump out and grab Alice?” and she hugged the doll all the closer in her arms. For her own safety she evidently was not anxious.
The girls, after their ride in the train, were like young colts let loose in a paddock. They sang and laughed and capered; and when they came to a softly carpeted hollow, Pearl Harrod led the way and rolled down the slope, instead of walking down in a “decorous manner, as high school young ladies should,” quoth Carrie.
“If our dear, de-ar teachers should see us now!” gasped Pearl sitting up at the foot of the slide, with a peck of pine needles in her hair and her frock all tousled.
Their only baggage was the lunch baskets and boxes. All other of their personal possessions were on the train, in the baggage car. But the remains of the luncheons came in very nicely. Before they had gone a mile through the wood they were all loudly proclaiming their hunger.
So they found a spring, and camped about it, eating the remainder of the lunches to the very last crumb. And such a hilarious “feed” as it was!
Ruth forgot all about the Gypsy woman and the girl who had so puzzled her by her actions. The rest by the spring refreshed even Dot. She was plucky, if she was little; and she made no complaint at all about the long walk through the stretch of timber.
The party did not hurry after that rest. It was still early in the afternoon and Pearl, referring to her watch, said they would surely catch the auto-stage that passed on the main road about four o’clock.
“You see, there are no servants at the bungalow yet,” Pearl explained. “Uncle has been taking his meals at one of the small boarding-houses nearby, that opens early. He is a great fisherman, and always goes down early and ‘roughs it’ at the bungalow until my aunt comes down.
“But she thought we girls would be able to get on all right—with Uncle Phil to give us a hand if we need him. We’ll have to air bedclothes, and get in groceries, and otherwise start housekeeping to-night.”
“Why! it will be great fun,” Ruth said. “Just like playing house together.”
“Say!” cried Agnes. “We want more than ‘play-house’ food to eat—now I warn you! No sweet crackers and ‘cambric tea’ for mine, if you please!”
“Oh! if I ask him,” said Pearl, laughing, “I know Uncle Phil will take us to his boarding-house to supper to-night—if we get there late. But I want to show him what ten girls can do toward housekeeping.”
“There’ll be plenty of cooks to spoil the broth,” sighed Agnes. “Did you ever see me fry an egg?”
Ruth began to laugh. The single occasion when Agnes had tried her hand at the breakfast eggs was a day marked for remembrance at the old Corner House.
“What can you do to a defenseless egg, Aggie?” Lucy Poole demanded.
“Plenty!” declared Agnes, shaking her head. “When I get through with an egg, a lump of butter, and a frying-pan, there is left a residue of charred ‘what is it?’ in the bottom of the pan, an odor of burned grease in the kitchen—and me in hysterics! It was an awful occasion when I tackled that egg. I’ve not felt just right about approaching an egg since that never-to-be-forgotten day.”
“I was left home to cook for my father, once,” said Carrie Poole, seriously, “and he asked to have boiled rice for supper. Mother never let me cook much, and I didn’t know a thing about rice.
“But I saw the grains were awfully small, and I knew my father liked a great, heaping bowlful when he had it, so I told the grocery boy to bring two pounds, and I tried to cook it all.”
A general laugh hailed this announcement. Agnes asked: “What happened, Carrie? I don’t know anything about rice myself—’cepting that it’s good in cakes and you throw it after brides for luck—and—and Chinamen live on it.”
“Wait!” urged Carrie, solemnly. “It’s nothing to laugh at. I began cooking it in a four quart saucepan, so as to give it plenty of room; and when father came in just before supper time, I had the whole top of our big range covered with pots and pans into which I had dipped the overflow of that two pounds of rice!
“Oh, yes, I had!” said Carrie, warmly, while the others screamed with laughter. “And I had gotten so excited by that time that I begged father to go out to the washhouse and bring in the big clothes boiler, so’s to see if I could keep the stuff from running over onto the stove.
“You never saw such a mess,” concluded Carrie, shaking her head. “And we had to eat rice for a week!”
It was just here that Agnes spied something far ahead beside the woodspath.
“Oh!” she cried, “are we in sight of the tent colony you tell about, so soon?”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Pearl Harrod. “We’re nowhere near the river.”
“But there’s a tent!” exclaimed Agnes, earnestly.
“And I see the top of another,” said Lucy Poole.
“Dirty brown things, both of them. Look more like Indian wigwams,” announced Ann Presby.
“My goodness, girls! there are the Gypsies Uncle Phil wrote about,” said Pearl, in some excitement. “Let’s get our fortunes told.”
“Oh, dear me,” said Ruth, rather worriedly. “I don’t just like Gypsies.”
“Oh, you haven’t got to hug and kiss them!” laughed Pearl. “Come on! they’re lots of fun.”
But when the party of girls drew nearer to the Gypsy camp, this particular tribe of Nomads did not appear to be “lots of fun,” after all.
In the first place, the tents—as Ann had said—were very shabby and dirty. The two covered wagons were dilapidated, too. Gypsies usually have good horses, but those the girls saw feeding in the little glade were mere “crowbaits.”
Several low-browed, roughly dressed men sat in a group on the grass playing cards. They were smoking, and one was tipping a black bottle to his lips just as the girls from Milton came near.
“Let’s hurry right by, Pearl!” begged Ruth.
Pearl, however, was not as observant as the Corner House girl. She failed to see danger in the situation, or in the looks the disturbed men cast upon the unprotected party of girls. As several of the fellows rose, Pearl called to them:
“Where’s your Pythoness? Where is the Queen of the Gypsies? We want our fortunes told.”
One man—a tall fellow with a scarred face—turned and shouted something in a strange tongue at the tents. Ruth recognized the language in which the woman had talked to the dark-faced girl on the train.
And then, the next moment, Ruth caught sight of the face of the very woman in question, peering from between the flaps of one of the dingy tents.
CHAPTER IX—THE SPOONDRIFT BUNGALOW
“I don’t think these are very nice looking men, do you, Tess?” Dot seriously asked her sister as the party halted before the Gypsy camp.
“Why, Dot!” gasped Tess. “That man there is the very fellow who tried to steal Ruth’s chickens!”
“Oh—o-o!”
“Yes, he is,” whispered the amazed Tess. “He’s the young man Tom Jonah chased up on to the henhouse roof.”
“Well,” said the philosophical Dot, “he can’t steal our chickens here.”
“Just the same I wish Tom Jonah was here with us. I—I’d feel better about meeting him,” confessed Tess.
The other girls did not hear this conversation between the two youngest Kenways. Ruth and Agnes, however, were really troubled by the meeting with the Gypsies; the former was, in addition, suspicious of the woman who had been on the train with them.
This strange woman did not come out of the tent. Indeed, almost at once she disappeared, dropping the curtain. She did not wish to be observed by the girls from Milton.
“Oh, come on!” cried the reckless Pearl. “They’ll only ask us a dime each. ‘Cross their palms with silver,’ you know. And they do tell the queerest things sometimes.”
“I don’t believe we’d better stop this afternoon, Pearl,” ventured Ruth, as one of the rough fellows drew nearer to the girls.
“Let the little ladies wait but a short time,” said this man. “They will have revealed to them all they wish to know.”
He had an ugly leer, and had Pearl looked at him she would have been frightened by his expression. But she was searching her chain-purse for dimes. It did not look to Ruth Kenway as though that purse would last long in the company of these evil fellows.
Now the same tent flap was pushed aside again and into the open hobbled an old crone. She seemed to be a toothless creature, and leaned upon a crutch. Gray strands of coarse hair straggled over her wrinkled forehead. She had a hump on her back—or seemed to have, for she wore a long cloak, the bedraggled tail of which touched the ground.
She hobbled across the lawn toward the girls. Ruth watched her closely for, it seemed, she came more hurriedly than seemed necessary.
A dog—one of the mongrels that infested the camp—ran at her, and the old crone struck at the creature with her crutch; he ran away yelping. She was plainly more vigorous of arm than one would have believed from her decrepit appearance.
The grinning fellows separated as the old hag came forward. She did not speak to them, but she was muttering to herself.
“Incantations!” whispered Pearl. “Isn’t she enough to give you the delicious shudders? Oh!”
Pearl was evidently enjoying the adventure to the full, but some of the girls besides Ruth and Agnes, did not feel so very pleasant. When one of the fellows took hold of Carrie Poole’s wrist-watch with a grimy finger and thumb, she screamed.
“Don’t fear, little lady,” said the tall, grim man, and he struck the officious fellow with his elbow in the ribs. “He means nothing harmful. Here is Zaliska, the Queen of the Romany. She is very old and very wise. She will tell you much for a silver shilling; but she will tell you more for two-bits.”
“He means a quarter,” said Pearl, explaining. “But a quarter’s too much. Show her your palms, girls. This is my treat. I have ten dimes.”
The tall man had motioned his fellows back, but they were arranged around the party of girls in such a way that, no matter which way they turned, one of the ruffians was right before them!
“Oh, Ruth! I am frightened!” whispered Agnes in her sister’s ear.
“Sh! don’t scare the children,” Ruth said, her first thought for Tess and Dot.
The old crone hobbled directly to Ruth and put out a brown claw. Ruth extended her own right hand tremblingly. The hag was mumbling something or other, but Ruth could not hear what she said at first, the other girls were chattering so.
Then she noticed that the grip of the old Gypsy was a firm one. The back of her hand seemed wrinkled and puckered; but suddenly Ruth knew that this was the effect of grease paint!
This was a made-up old woman—not a real old woman, at all!
The discovery frightened the Corner House girl almost as much as the rough men frightened her. “Zaliska” was a disguised creature.
She clung to Ruth’s hand firmly when the girl would have pulled it away, and now Ruth heard her hiss:
“Get you away from this place. Get you away with your friends—quick. And do not come back at all.”
Ruth was shaking with hysterical terror. The creature clung to her hand and mumbled this warning over and over again.
“What’s she telling you, Ruth?” demanded the hilarious Pearl.
“Trouble! trouble!” mumbled the supposed fortune-teller, shaking her head, but accepting the next girl’s dime.
Ruth whispered swiftly to Pearl: “Oh! let us get out of here. These men mean to rob us—I am sure.”
“They would not dare,” began the startled Pearl.
Just then there was a creaking of heavy wheels, and a voice shouting to oxen. The Gypsies glanced swiftly and covertly at one another, falling back farther from the vicinity of the girls.
Indeed, several of them returned to the card game. The fortune-teller mumbled her foolish prophecies quickly. Into the glade, along a wood-path from the thicker timber, came two spans of oxen dragging three great logs. A pleasant-faced young man swung the ox-goad and spoke cheerily to the slow-moving, ponderous animals.
“Let’s go at once, Pearl!” begged Ruth. “We’ll keep close to this lumberman. Dot and Tess can ride on the logs.”
“Come on, girls! I think this old woman is a faker,” cried Pearl. “She can’t even tell me whether I’m going to marry a blond man, or a brunette!”
“Don’t go yet, little ladies,” said the tall man, suavely. “Zaliska can tell you much——”
“Let’s go, girls!” cried Carrie Poole, snatching her hand away from the supposed old woman.
Ruth and Agnes had already seized their sisters and were hurrying them toward the lumberman.
“Whoa, Buck! Whoa, Bright!” shouted the teamster, cracking the whiplash before the leading span of oxen. “Sh-h! Steady. What’s the matter, girls?”
“Won’t you take us to the main road where we can get the stage for Pleasant Cove?” cried Ruth.
“Sure, Miss. Going right there. Want to ride?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” cried the Corner House girls.
“That will be great fun!” shouted some of the others. “Come on!”
They clambered all over the logs, that were chained together and swung from the axle of the rear pair of wheels. The Gypsies began gathering around and some of them muttered threateningly, but the lumberman cracked his whip and the oxen started easily.
“Cling on, girls!” advised the driver. “No skylarking up there. Soon have you out to the pike road. And you want to keep away from that Gypsy camp. They are a tough lot—very different from the crowd that camped there last year and the year before. We farmers are getting about ready to run them out, now I tell ye!”
Ruth said nothing—not even to Agnes—about what she had discovered. She had penetrated “Queen Zaliska’s” disguise. She believed that the supposed old crone was the handsome, dark girl whom she had observed so narrowly on the train.
Perhaps nobody but Ruth, of the party of ten girls, really understood that they had been in peril from the Gypsies. She believed that, had they not gotten away from the camp as they had, the men would have robbed them.
The Gypsies were afraid of the husky lumberman, and they did not follow the girls. Once on the highway, Pearl declared the auto-stage would be along in ten minutes or so, and they bade the lumberman good-bye with a feeling of perfect safety.
The Gypsies had not dared follow the party. Soon the stage came along, and for ten cents each the girls rode into Pleasant Cove. There were only a few other passengers, and the party from Milton sat on top and had a lot of fun.
Pearl pointed out the byroad that led down to the river beach where the tent colony was set up, but the stage went right past Spoondrift bungalow, and the girls got down and charged that dwelling “like a horde of Huns,” Agnes declared.
Uncle Phillip Harrod was at home, and welcomed them kindly. “Help yourselves, girls, and go as far as you like,” he said, waving both hands, and retired to a corner of the piazza with his book and a pipe.
The girls took him at his word. They were very busy till nightfall. Then, however, everything was ready for their occupancy of the bungalow, and supper was cooking on the kerosene range.
They had forgotten the Gypsies—all but Ruth. She was bound to be puzzled by the disguised “queen” and wondered secretly what the masquerade meant, and who the beautiful girl was who posed as “Zaliska”?
CHAPTER X—SOME EXCITEMENT
“But why ‘Spoondrift’?” demanded Lucy. “What does it mean?”
“‘Spoondrift’ is the spray from the tops of the waves,” explained Pearl. “We think the name is awfully pretty.”
“And so is the bungalow—and the Cove,” sighed Ruth.
“And we’re going to have a scrumptious time here!” declared Agnes.
Tess and Dot were frankly sleepy, and Lucy begged the privilege of seeing them to bed.
“That’s real kind of you, I’m sure, Lute,” said Agnes.
“Don’t you praise her,” sniffed Carrie. “I know Lute. She’s sleepy, herself. You won’t see her downstairs again to-night.”
“I don’t care,” yawned Lucy Poole, following Tess and Dot. “I sleep so slowly that it takes a long time for me to get a good night’s rest.”
“Well! of all things!” ejaculated Carrie, as her cousin departed, following the two smaller girls. “What do you know about that?”
“Almost as stupid as the inhabitants of London,” chuckled Agnes.
“What do you mean by that, Ag?” demanded Ann Presby. “The people of London aren’t any more stupid than those of other cities, are they?”
“I don’t know,” returned Agnes; “but the book says ‘the population of London is very dense.’”
“Fine! fine!” cried Carrie Poole, laughing. “Oh! these ‘literal’ folk. You know, my Grandfather Poole has an awfully bald head. He was telling us once that in some famous battle of the Civil War in which he took part, his head was grazed by a bullet. My little brother Jimmy stared at his head thoughtfully for a minute, and then he said:
“‘My, Grandpa, there’s not much grazing up there now, is there?’”
These stories began the evening. Everybody had some story or joke to relate, and finally the girls began to guess riddles. Somebody propounded the old one about the wind: “What is it that goes all around the house and yet makes no tracks?” and Agnes had a new answer for it:
“Germs!” she shouted. “You know, Miss Georgiana gave us a lecture about them, and I bet we’re just surrounded by deadly bacilli right now.”
“Those aren’t germs—they’re mosquitos, Ag!” laughed Pearl, slapping vigorously at one of the pests. “Pleasant Cove isn’t entirely free from them.”
“And they are presenting their bills pretty lively, too,” yawned Ruth. “The bedrooms are screened. I believe we’d all better seek the haven of bed unless we want to be splotchy to-morrow from mosquito bites.”
In the morning the older girls divided the housework between them, and so got it all done in short order. The baggage had come up from the station the evening before, and they unpacked.
Then they set forth to explore the fishing port, as well as the more modern part of Pleasant Cove.
As they brisked along the walk past Mr. Terrence Severn’s Overlook House, they spied Trix and her party on the big veranda. The girls hailed each other back and forth; only Trix and the Corner House girls did not speak.
“We can’t speak to her if she won’t speak to us,” said Ruth to Agnes. “Now, never you mind, Aggie. She’ll get over her tantrum in time.”
The party from Spoondrift bungalow got back in season to get luncheon; after which they rested and then bathed. It was the Corner House girls’ first experience of salt water bathing and they all enjoyed it—even Dot.
“It does make you suck in your breath awfully hard when the waves lap upon you,” she confessed. “But there was the Alice-doll sitting on the shore watching me, and so I couldn’t let her see that I was afraid!”
Ruth, more than the other girls, aided Pearl in looking after housekeeping affairs. It was she who discovered the broken lamp in the front hall.
The bungalow was lighted by oil-lamps, and they used candles in the bed chambers; while there was a marvelous “blue-flame” kerosene range in the kitchen.
Not all of the girls understood the handling of kerosene lamps, and Pearl told a funny story about her own little sister who had never seen any lights but gas or electric.
“When she came down here to Uncle Phil’s bungalow for the first time, she was all excited about the lamps. She told mamma that ‘Uncle Phil had his ’lectricity in a lamp right on the supper table. It’s a queer kind of a light, for they fill it with water out of a can.’”
The hanging lamp in the front hall was set inside a melon-shaped globe. Finding that, as Ruth pointed out, it could not be used, Pearl made another trip to the village before teatime and in the local “department store” bought another lamp.
“I am afraid you ought not to use that lamp, Pearl,” Ruth said, when she saw that the chimney was not tall enough to stick out of the top of the globe.
“Pooh! why not? Guess it’s just as good as the old chimney was,” said Pearl.
“Seems to me Mrs. MacCall says that chimneys should always be tall enough to come up through the globe. I don’t know just why——”
“Oh, pshaw!” interrupted Pearl. “It’s all right, I fancy.”
Neither girl had recourse to “applied physics.” Had she done so she could easily have discovered just why it was unwise to use a lamp with a short chimney inside such a shaped globe as that hanging in chains in the front hall of the bungalow.
Ruth forgot the matter. It was Pearl herself who lit the hall lamp that evening. As before, they sat on the porch and played games and sang or told stories, all the long, bright evening.
Tess and Dot had gone to bed at half after eight. It was an hour later that Lucy suddenly said:
“I smell smoke.”
“It isn’t Mr. Harrod,” said Ann. “He’s gone down to the Casino.”
“It isn’t tobacco smoke I smell,” declared Lucy, springing up.
“Oh, Lute!” shrieked Agnes. “Look at the door!”
A cloud of black, thick smoke was belching out of the front hall upon the veranda. One of the other girls shrieked “Fire!”
Those next few minutes were terribly exciting for all hands at the Spoondrift bungalow. A single glance into the hall showed Ruth Kenway that the hanging lamp had burst, and the place was all ablaze.
There was but one stairway, and the children were in one of the low-ceilinged rooms above. Tess and Dot could only be reached by climbing up the long, sloping roof of the bungalow, and getting in at the chamber window.
While some of the girls ran for water—which was useless in the quantity they could bring from the kitchen tap in pots and pans—and others ran screaming along the street for help, Ruth “shinnied” right up one of the piazza pillars and squirmed out upon the shingled roof.
She tore her dress, and hurt her knees and hands; but she did not think of this havoc at the moment. She got to the window of the room in which her sisters slept, and screamed for Tess and Dot, but in their first sleep the smaller girls were completely “dead to the world.”
There was the screen to be reckoned with before the oldest Corner House girl could enter. It was set into the window from the inside, and she could neither lift the window-sash nor stir the screen. So she beat the tough wire in with her fists, and they bled and hurt her dreadfully! Nevertheless, she got through, falling into the room just as the stifling smoke from below began to pour in around the bedroom door.
“Tess! Dot! Hurry up! Get up!” she shrieked, shaking them both.
Tess aroused, whimpering. Ruth seized Dot bodily, flung a blanket around her, and put her out of the window upon the roof. Then she dragged Tess to the window and made her climb out after her sister.
“Oh, oh!” gasped Tess, alive at last to the cause of the excitement. “Save the Alice-doll, Ruthie. Save Dot’s Alice-doll!”
And Ruth actually went back, groping through the gathering smoke, for the doll. With it she scrambled out upon the shingles.
By that time the street was noisy with shouting people. Mr. Harrod came with a fire extinguisher and attacked the flames. Other men came and helped the girls down from the roof.
Agnes had fainted when she realized the danger her sisters were in. Some of the other girls were quite hysterical. Neighbors took them all in for the night.
It was quite an hour before the fire was completely out. Then the Spoondrift bungalow certainly was in a mess.
“It will take carpenters and painters a fortnight and more to repair the damage,” said Mr. Harrod the next morning. “Luckily none of your guests lost their clothing, Pearl; but you will all have to go to the hotel to finish your visit to Pleasant Cove.”