The next morning Bessie was doomed to be disappointed. She had looked forward confidently to seeing Zara's father, and had come to believe that there was a good chance for her to clear away some of the mystery that hung so heavily over Zara's affairs, even though she made no great progress toward straightening out her own confused ideas regarding herself and the reason for the disappearance of her parents. But, instead of the telephone call to Jamieson's office, for which she had waited with poorly concealed impatience from breakfast until nearly noon, she had a visit from Jamieson himself. The lawyer looked discouraged.
"Bad news, Bessie," he said, as soon as he saw her. She was waiting for him on the porch, and her eyes lighted with eagerness as soon as she saw him coming. "They've stolen a march on me."
"Why, how do you mean? Won't I be able to see Zara's father, after all?"
"Not just yet. Brack is cleverer than I thought. He's got a lot of political pull, and he got hold of a judge I thought was above stooping to anything wrong. So he was able to get this judge to sign an order putting him in my place as lawyer for Zara's father. The only way you can see the prisoner now is for Brack to give you permission, and if I know Brack, that's the last thing he'll do."
Bessie showed her discouragement.
"I'm afraid you're right there," she said. "I saw him yesterday, after I left you."
"You did? Whew! There's something queer here, Bessie. Now, try to remember just what was said and tell me all about it."
It was not hard for Bessie, guided by a few questions from Jamieson, to do that, and in a few moments she had supplied him with a complete review of her interview with the shyster, Brack, He nodded approvingly when she had finished.
"You did just right," he said, cheerfully. "I guess Mr. Brack won't get much change out of you, Bessie. There's one thing sure, you managed to acquire a lot of sense while you lived in Hedgeville. The sort we call common sense, though I don't know why, because it's the rarest sort of sense there is. Keep on acting just like that when people ask you questions and try to get you to tell them things."
"Do you think anyone else is likely to do that, Mr. Jamieson?"
"You can't tell. I'm all in the dark, you see. This thing acts just like a Chinese puzzle. They're simple enough when you know how to fit the pieces together, and you wonder why they ever stumped you. But until you do guess them—" He stopped, with a comical shrug of his shoulders to indicate his helplessness and his bewilderment, and Bessie laughed.
Then Eleanor came out, and the story of Brack's shrewdness had to be told to her.
"What are you going to do now?" she asked.
Jamieson threw up his hands with a laugh.
"Wait—and keep my eyes open," he said. "I'm going to act as if I'd lost all interest in the case. That may fool Brack. Our best chance now, you see, is to wait for the other side to make a mistake. They've made some already; the chances are they'll do it again. Then we can nab them. What I want to do is to make them think they're quite safe, that they needn't be afraid of us any more."
"You won't need Bessie, then, right away?"
"No. Really, she worries me. I feel as if she weren't safe here. They seem to be afraid of her, and I wouldn't put it past them to try to get hold of her and keep her where she can't do any talking until they've done what they want to do."
"But, Charlie, they must know that she's told us everything she knows already. Why should they want to take her away now?"
"If I knew that I could answer a lot of other questions, too. But here's a guess. Suppose she knows something without knowing at all what it means, or how important it is? That might easily be. She might be able to clear up the whole mystery with some single, seemingly unimportant remark. They may have good reason to know she hasn't done it yet, but they may also be afraid that, at any time, she will entirely by accident give away their whole game. And I've got an idea that if their game ever is exposed, someone will be in danger of going to jail. See? I'd like to figure out some good safe place for Bessie, where she'd be out of the way of all their tricks."
Eleanor clapped her hands.
"Then I've got the very place!" she said. "This business has upset the plans I'd made, but now I'm going to take my Camp Fire Girls down to dad's farm in Cheney County. You laughed at me when I was made a Camp Fire Guardian, Charlie, but you're going to see now what a fine thing the movement is."
"I didn't mean to laugh at you, Eleanor," he said, contritely. "And I got over doing it long ago, anyhow. I used to think this Camp Fire thing was a joke—just something got up to please a lot of girls who wanted to wear khaki skirts and camp out because their brothers had joined the Boy Scouts and told them what a good time they were having."
"That's just like a man," said Eleanor, quietly triumphant. "None of you think girls can do anything worth while on their own account. The Camp Fire Girls didn't imitate the Boy Scouts, and they're not a bit like them, really. We haven't anything against the Boy Scouts, but we think we're going to do better work among girls than even the Scout movement does among boys. Well, anyhow, we're going down to the farm, and Bessie shall go along. If anyone tries to kidnap her while she's with the girls, they'll have a hard time. We stick together, let me tell you, and Wohelo means something."
"You needn't preach to me, Eleanor," said the lawyer, laughing. "You converted me long ago. I'll stand for anything you do, anyhow. You're all right—you've got more sense than most men. It's a pity there aren't more girls like you."
"That's rank flattery, and it isn't true, anyhow," laughed Eleanor. "But if I am any better than I used to be, it's because I've learned not to think of myself first all the time. That's what the Camp Fire teaches us, you see. Work, and Health, and Love, that's what Wohelo means. And it means to work for others, and to love others, and to bring health to others as well as to yourself. Come down to the farm while we're there, and you'll see how it works out."
Jamieson got up.
"I probably will," he said, smiling as he held out his hand in farewell. "I'll have to come down to consult my client, you see."
"And you'll let us know if there's any news of Zara, Mr. Jamieson, won't you?" said Bessie. "I love the idea of going to the farm, but I rather hate to leave the city when I don't know what may be happening to Zara."
"You can't help her by staying here," said the lawyer, earnestly. "I'm quite sure of that. And I really think she's all right, and that she's being properly treated. After all, it's pretty hard to carry a girl like Zara off and keep her a prisoner against her will. It would be much better policy to treat her well, and keep her contented. It's quite plain that she thought she was going with friends when she went, or she would have made some sort of a row. And their best policy is to keep her quiet."
"But they didn't act that way before we got away from Hedgeville—clear away, I mean," said Bessie. "Farmer Weeks caught her in the road, you know, and locked her in that room the time that I followed her and helped her to get away through the woods."
"Yes, but that was a very different matter, Bessie. In that state Weeks had the law on his side. The court was ready to name him as her guardian, and to bind her over to him until she was twenty-one. In this state neither he nor anyone else, except her father, has any more right to keep her from going where she likes than they have to tell me what I must do—as long as we obey the law and don't do anything that is wrong."
"Then you think she's well and happy?"
"I'm quite sure of it," said Jamieson heartily. "This isn't some foreign country. It's America, where there are plenty of people to notice anything that seems wrong or out of the ordinary; And if they were treating Zara badly, she'd be pretty sure to find someone who would help her to get away."
"Yes, this is America," said Bessie, thoughtfully. "But you see, Zara has lived in countries where things are very different. And maybe she doesn't know her rights. After all, you know, she thinks her father hasn't done anything wrong, and still she's seen him put in prison and kept there. What I'm afraid of is that she'll get to think that this is just like the countries she knows best, and be afraid to do anything, or try to get help, no matter what they do."
"Well, we mustn't borrow trouble," said Jamieson, frowning slightly at the thoughts Bessie's words suggested to him. "We can't do anything more now, that's sure. Have a good time, and stop worrying. That's the best legal advice I can give you right now."
Once her mind was made up, Eleanor acted quickly. The outing at her father's farm, which was not at all like the Hoover farm in Hedgeville of which Bessie King had such unpleasant memories, was one that had long been promised to her girls, and she herself had been looking forward to going there. The troubles of Bessie and Zara had almost led her to abandon the idea of going there herself, and she had arranged for a friend to take her place as Guardian for a time. Now, however, she sent word to all her girls, and that very evening they met at the station and took the train for Deer Crossing, the little station that was nearest to the farm.
"They'll meet us in the farm wagons," said Eleanor, when the girls were all aboard. "So we'll have a ride through the moonlight to the farm—the moon rises early to-night, you know."
It was a jolly, happy ride in the train, and Bessie, renewing her acquaintance with the Camp Fire Girls, who had seemed to her and Zara, when they had first seen them, like creatures from another world, felt her depression wearing off. They had a car to themselves, thanks to the conductor, who had known Eleanor Mercer since she was a little girl, and as the train sped through the country scenes that were so familiar to Bessie, the girls laughed and talked and sang songs of the Camp Fire, and made happy plans for walks and tramps in the country about the farm.
"It's just like the country around Hedgeville, Miss Eleanor," said Bessie, as the Guardian stopped beside the seat she shared with her first chum among the Camp Fire Girls, Minnehaha. "The houses look the same, and the stone fences, and—oh, everything!"
"I wonder if you aren't a little bit homesick, down in your heart, Bessie?" laughed Miss Mercer. "Come, now, confess!"
"Perhaps I am," said Bessie, wonderingly. "I never thought of that. But it's just for the country, and the cows and the animals, and all the things I'm used to seeing. I wouldn't go back to Maw Hoover's for anything."
"You shan't, Bessie. I was only joking," said Eleanor, quickly. "I know just how you feel. I've been that way myself. When you get away from a place you begin very quickly to forget everything that was disagreeable that happened there, and you only remember the good times you had. That's why you're homesick."
"We'll be able to take walks and go for straw rides here, won't we, Wanaka?" asked Minnehaha. She used Eleanor's fire name, Wanaka, just as Minnehaha was her fire name; her own was Margery Burton.
"You'll have to, if you expect to be in fashion," laughed the Guardian. "And you shall learn to milk cows and find eggs and do all sorts of farm work, too. I expect Bessie will want to laugh often at you girls. You see, she knows all about that sort of thing, and you'll all be terrible greenhorns, I think."
"I ought to know about a farm," said Bessie. "I lived on one long enough. And I don't see why I should laugh at the rest of the girls. They know more about the city now than I ever will know. I've been there long enough to find that out, anyhow."
Just then the conductor put his head inside the door, and called "Deer Crossing!"
As the train slowed up, all the girls made a rush for their bags and bundles, and five minutes later they were standing and watching the disappearing train, waving to the amused conductor and trainmen, who were all on the platform of the last car. Then the train disappeared around a curve, and they had a chance to devote their attention to the two big farm wagons that were waiting near the station, each with its team of big Percherons and its smiling driver. The drivers were country boys, with fair, tousled hair, and both wore neat black suits. At the sight of them Eleanor burst into a laugh.
"Why, Sid Harris—and you, too, Walter Stubbs!" she cried. "This isn't Sunday! What are you doing in your store clothes, just as if you were on your way to church?"
Both the boys flushed and neither of them had a word to say.
"Did you get mixed up on the days of the week!" Eleanor went on, pitilessly.
All the girls were enjoying their confusion, and black-eyed Dolly Ransom, the tease of the party, laughed aloud.
"I bet they never saw so many girls together before, Miss Eleanor," she said, with a toss of her pretty head. "That's why they're so quiet! They probably don't have girls in the country."
"Don't they, just!" said Eleanor, laughing back at her. "Wait until you see them, Dolly. They'll put your nose out of joint, the girls around here. If you think you're going to have it all your own way with the boys out here, the way you do so much at home, you're mistaken."
Dolly tossed her head again. She looked at the confused, blushing boys on the wagons, who could hardly be expected to understand that Dolly was only teasing them, and wanted nothing better than a perfectly harmless flirtation.
"They're welcome to boys like those," she said airily. "I'll wait until I get home, Miss Eleanor."
Then she turned away, and Eleanor, her face serious for a moment, turned to Bessie.
"She'll wait until she's grown up, too, if I've got anything to say about it," she said. "Bessie, when Zara comes back, of course you'll be with her mostly. But I wish you'd make a friend of Dolly Ransom,—a real friend. Her mother's dead, and she has no sisters."
"I hope I can," said Bessie, simply. "I like her ever so much."
The farm was nearly five miles from the station, and the two big wagons made slow time with the heavy loads, especially as the roads were still muddy from a recent downpour. But none of the Camp Fire Girls seemed to mind the length of the trip.
Now that she was actually out in the heart of it, Bessie found that the country was not as much like that around Hedgeville as it had seemed to be from the train windows. The fields were better kept; there were no unpainted, dilapidated looking houses, such as those of Farmer Weeks and some of the other neighbors of the Hoovers in Hedgeville whom she remembered so well.
Neat fences, well kept up, marked off the fields, and, even to Bessie's eyes, although she was far from being an agricultural expert, the crops themselves looked better. She spoke of this to Eleanor.
"These aren't just ordinary farms," Eleanor explained. "My father and some other men who have plenty of money have bought up a lot of land around here, and they are working the farms, and making them pay just as much as possible. My father thinks it's a shame for so many boys and young men, whose fathers own farms, to go rushing off to the city and work in stores and factories. And they started out to find out why it was that way. They're business men, you see and as soon as they really began to think about it they found out what was wrong."
"Why the boys went to the city?" asked Bessie. "I should think that would be easy to see! It was around Hedgeville. Why, on a farm, the work never is done. It's work all day, and then get up before daylight to start again. And even Paw Hoover, who had a good farm, was always saying how poor he was, and how he wished he could make more money."
"I'll bet he was always buying new land, though," said Eleanor, looking wise.
"Yes, he was," admitted Bessie. "He always said that if he could get enough land he'd be rich."
"He probably had too much as it was, Bessie. The trouble with most farmers is that they don't know how to use the land they have, instead of that they haven't enough. They don't treat the soil right, and they won't spend money for good farm machinery and for rich fertilizers. If they did that, and studied farming, the way men study to be doctors or lawyers, they'd be better off. How many acres did Paw Hoover have? Well, it doesn't matter, but I'll bet that my father gets more out of one acre on his farm than Paw Hoover does out of two on his. You see, the man who's in charge of the farm went to college to study the business, and he knows all sorts of things that make a farm pay better."
"Paw Hoover was talking about that once, saying he wished he could send Jake to college to study farming. But Maw laughed at him, and Jake couldn't have gone, anyhow. He was so stupid that he never even got through school there in Hedgeville."
"I suppose he is stupid," said Eleanor. "But after all, Bessie, when a boy doesn't get along well in school it doesn't always mean that it's his fault. He may not be properly taught. Sometimes it's the school's fault, and not the pupil's."
"Other people got along all right," said Bessie. She wasn't quite prepared to say a good word for Jake Hoover yet. He had caused her too much trouble in the past.
"Why," she went on, "I used to have to do his lessons for him all the time. He just wouldn't study at home, Miss Eleanor, and in school he was so big, and such a bully, that most of the teachers were afraid of him."
"That just shows they weren't good teachers, Bessie. No good teacher is ever afraid of a bully. She has plenty of people to back her up if she really needs help. I don't say Jake Hoover is any better than he ought to be, but from all you tell me, part of his trouble may be because he hasn't been properly handled. But let's forget him, anyhow. Look over there. Do you see that white house on top of the hill?"
"Against the sun, so that it's sort of pink where the sun strikes it?" said Bessie. "Yes, what a lovely place!"
"Well, that's where we're going," said Eleanor.
"But—but that doesn't look a bit like a farmhouse!" said Bessie, surprised. "I thought—"
"You thought it would be more like the Hoover farm, didn't you?" laughed Eleanor. "Well, of course that's only our house, and Dad built a nice one, on the finest piece of land he could find, because we were going to spend a good deal of time there. There's electric light and running water in all the rooms and we're just as comfortable there as we would be in the city."
"It's beautiful, but really, Miss Eleanor, I don't believe most farmers could afford a place like that, even if they were a lot better off than Paw Hoover—"
"They could afford a lot of the comforts, Bessie, because they don't cost half as much as you'd think. The electric light, for instance, and the running water. The light comes from power that we get from the brook right on the farm, and it costs less than it does to light the house in the city. And the water is pumped from the well by a windmill that cost very little to put up. You see, there's a big tank on the roof, and whenever there's a wind, the mill is started to running and the tank is filled. Then there's enough water on hand to last even if there shouldn't be enough wind to turn the mill for two or three days, though that's something that very seldom happens. If all the farmers knew how easily they could have these little comforts, and how cheap they are, I believe more of them would put in those conveniences."
"Oh, how much easier it would have been at Hoover's if we'd had them!" sighed Bessie. "There we had to fill the lamps every day, and every bit of water we used in the house had to be drawn at the well and carried in pails. It was awfully hard work."
"You see, Maw Hoover didn't have such an easy time, Bessie," said Eleanor. "She had all that work about the house to do for years and years. She didn't need to be so mean to you, but, after all, she might have been nicer if she'd had a pleasanter life. It's easy to be nice and agreeable when everything is easy, and everything goes right, but when you have to work hard all the time, if you're a little bit inclined to be mean, the grind of doing the same thing day after day, year after year, seems to bring the meanness right out. I've seen lots of instances of that, and I'm perfectly sure that if I were a farmer's wife, and had to work like a slave I'd be a perfect shrew and there'd be no living with me at all."
They turned in from the road now, the wagon in which Bessie and Eleanor rode in the lead, and came into a pretty avenue that led up a gentle grade to the ridge on which the house was built. There were trees at each side to provide shade in the hot part of the day, and for a long distance on each side of the trees there were well kept lawns.
"My father likes a place to be beautiful as well as useful," said Eleanor, "so he had those lawns made when we built the house. All the farmers in the neighborhood thought it was an awful waste of good land, but since then some of them have come to see that if they ever wanted to sell their places people would like them better if they were pretty, and they've copied this place a good deal in the neighborhood.
"We're very glad, because right now Cheney County is the prettiest farming section anywhere around, and the crops are about the best in the state, too. So, you see, we seem to have shown them that they can have pretty places and still make money. And sometimes those lawns are used for grazing sheep, so they're useful as well as ornamental."
Then in a few minutes they were at the house, and the smiling housekeeper, whom Eleanor introduced to the girls as Mrs. Farnham, greeted them.
"Come right in," she said, heartily. "There's supper ready and waiting—fried chicken, and corn bread, and honey, and creamed potatoes, and fresh milk, and apple pie and—"
"Stop, stop, do, Mrs. Farnham!" pleaded Eleanor. "You'll make me so hungry that I won't want to wash my hands!"
And the supper, when they came to it, was just as good to taste as it was to hear about. Everything they ate, it seemed, came from the farm. No store goods were ever used on the table in that house. And Bessie, used to a farm where chickens, except when they were old and tough, were never eaten, but kept for sale, wondered at the goodness of everything.
That night, although it was not part of the plan, there was an informal camp fire, held about a blazing pyre of logs. But it did not last long, for everyone was tired and ready indeed for the signal that Eleanor gave early by lifting her voice in the notes of the good-night song, Lay Me to Sleep in Sheltering Flame.
Bessie, rather to her surprise, found that she was not to room with Margery Burton, or Minnehaha, as she had expected, but was to share a big room, under the roof, with Dolly Ransom, the merry, mischievous Kiama, as she was known to her comrades of the fire.
"Do you mind if I snore?" asked Dolly promptly, when they were alone together. "Because I probably shall, and everyone makes such a fuss, and acts as if it was my fault."
"I'm so tired I shan't even hear you," said Bessie, with a laugh. "Snore all you like, I won't mind!"
Dolly looked surprised, and pouted a little.
"If you don't mind, there's no use doing it," she said, after a moment, and Bessie laughed again at this unconscious confession.
"I thought you couldn't help it," she said with a smile.
Dolly looked a little confused.
"I can't sometimes, when I've got a cold," she said. "But they go on so about it then that I have sometimes tried to do it, just to get even."
"You're a tease, Kiama," said Bessie, merrily, "and I guess it's that that you can't help. But go ahead and try to tease me as much as you like. I won't mind."
"Then I won't do it," decided Dolly, suddenly. "It's fun teasing people when they get mad, but what's the use when they think it's a joke?"
Bessie had seen little of Dolly in the first days of her acquaintance with the Manasquan Camp Fire, but now, as they appraised one another, knowing that they were to be very intimate during their stay on the farm, Bessie decided that she was going to like her new friend very much.
Not as much as Zara, probably—that would be natural, for Zara was Bessie's first chum, and her best, and Bessie's loyalty was one of her chief traits. But she was not the sort of a girl who can have only one friend. Usually girls who say that mean that they can have only one close friend at a time, and what happens is that they have innumerable chums, each of whom seems to be the best while the friendship lasts. Bessie wanted to be friendly with everyone, and what Eleanor had begun to tell her about Dolly made her think that perhaps the mischief maker of the Camp Fire was lonely like herself.
"You're just like me—you haven't any mother or sister, have you?" said Dolly, after they were both in bed.
Bessie was glad of the darkness that hid the quick flush that stained her cheeks. Since she had talked with Brack she was beginning to feel that there was something shameful about her position, although, had she stopped to think, she would have known that no one who knew the facts would blame her, even if her parents had behaved badly in deserting her. And, as a matter of fact, Bessie clung to the belief that her parents had not acted of their own free will in leaving her so long with the Hoovers. She thought, and meant to keep on thinking, that they had been unable to help themselves, and that some time, when good fortune came to them again, she would see them and that they would make up to her in love for all the empty, unhappy years in Hedgeville.
"Yes, I'm like you, Dolly," she answered, finally. "I don't know what's become of my parents. I wish I did."
"I know what's become of mine," said Dolly, her voice suddenly hard—too hard for so young a girl. "My mother's dead. She died when I was a baby. And my father doesn't care what becomes of me. He lives in Europe, and once in a while he sends me money but he doesn't seem to want to see me, ever."
"Where do you live, Dolly?" asked Bessie.
"Oh, with my Aunt Mabel," said Dolly. "You'll see her when we go back to town for I'm going to have you come and visit me if you will. She's an old maid, and she's terribly proper, and if ever I start to have any fun she thinks it must be wicked, and tries to make me stop. But I fool her—you just bet I do!"
They were quiet for a minute, and then Dolly broke out again.
"I don't believe Aunt Mabel ever was young!" she said fiercely. "She doesn't act as if she'd ever been a girl. And she seems to think I ought to be just as sober and quiet as if I were her age—and she's fifty! Isn't that dreadful, Bessie!"
"I think you'd have a hard time acting as if you were fifty, Dolly," said Bessie, honestly, and trying to suppress a laugh but in vain. "You don't, do you?"
"Of course not!" said Dolly, giggling frankly, and seemingly not at all hurt because Bessie did not take the recital of her troubles more seriously. "Aunt Mabel would like you, I don't mean that you're stiff and priggish like her, but you seem quieter than most of the girls, and more serious minded. I bet you like school."
"I do," laughed Bessie. "But I like vacations too, don't you? This is the first time I ever really had one, though. I've always had to work harder in summer than in winter before this."
"I think that's dreadful, Bessie. Listen! You know all about farms, don't you? Let's go off by ourselves to-morrow and explore, shall we?"
"Maybe," said Bessie. "We'll see what we're supposed to do."
"All right! I'm sleepy, too. Bother what we're supposed to do, Bessie! Let's do what we like. This is vacation, and you're supposed to do what you like in vacation time. So you see it's all right, anyhow. We can do what we like and what we're supposed to do both. That's the way it ought always to be, I think."
"They'd say we ought to want to do what we're supposed to do, you know, Dolly. That's the safe way. Then you can't go wrong."
"Well—but do you always want to do what you're supposed to do?"
"I'm afraid not. Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
Breakfast on the farm was just such another meal as supper had been. Again Bessie wondered at the profusion of good things that, at the Hoovers, had always been kept for sale instead of being used on the table. There was rich, thick cream, for instance, fresh fruit and all sorts of good things, so that anyone whose whole acquaintance with country fare was confined to what the Mercer farm provided might well have believed all the tales of the good food of the farm. Bessie knew, of course, without ever having thought much about it, that on many American farms, despite the ease with which fresh fruits and vegetables are to be had, a great deal of canned stuff is used.
"Bessie," said Eleanor, after breakfast, "this is rather different from the Hoovers, isn't it?"
"It certainly is," agreed Bessie.
"Well, of course it isn't possible right now, Bessie, but I've been thinking that some time, when Maw Hoover has gotten over her dislike for you, you may be able to teach her and some of the other farm women in Hedgeville how much more pleasant their lives could be."
Bessie looked surprised.
"Why, I don't believe I'll ever dare go back there," she said. "I believe Maw Hoover would be willing to put me in prison if she could for setting that barn on fire. I'm sure she thinks I did it. She wouldn't believe it was Jake, with his silly trick of trying to frighten me with those burning sticks."
"She'll find out the truth some time, Bessie, never fear. And think about what I said. One of the great things this Camp Fire movement is trying to do is to make women's lives healthier and happier all over the country. And I don't believe that we've thought half enough of the women on the farms so far. You've made me realize that."
"But there are lots and lots of Camp Fires in country places, aren't there, Miss Eleanor? I read about ever so many of them."
"Yes, but not in the sort of country places I mean. There are Camp Fires, and plenty of them, in the towns in the country, and even in the bigger villages. But the places I'm thinking of are those like Hedgeville, where all the village there is is just a post office and two or three stores, where the people come in from the farms for miles around to get their mail and buy a few things. You know how much good a Camp Fire would do in Hedgeville, but it would be pretty hard to get one started."
Bessie's eyes shone.
"Oh, I wish there was one!" she cried. "I know lots of the girls on the farms there would love to do the things we do. They're nice girls, lots of them, though they didn't like me much. You see, Jake Hoover used to tell his maw lies about me, and she told them to her friends, and they told their girls—and they believed them, of course. I think that was one reason why I couldn't get along very well with the other girls."
"I think that's probably the real reason, Bessie, just as you say. But if you go back you can make it different, I'm sure. You needn't be afraid of Jake Hoover any more, I think, especially after what he did at General Seeley's."
"Killing that poor pheasant? Wasn't that a mean thing for him to do? They used to say he did some poaching, sometimes, around Hedgeville, but then about everyone did there, I guess. But I didn't think he'd ever try to catch such beautiful birds as the ones General Seeley had."
"I could forgive him for killing the bird much more easily than for trying to get you blamed for doing it, Bessie. But let's change the subject. How did you and Dolly Ransom get along?"
Bessie smiled at the recollection of the stream of questions she had had to answer from her new roommate.
"She's great!" she said, enthusiastically. "I think we're going to be fine friends, Miss Eleanor."
"I hope so. There isn't a bit of real harm in Dolly, but she's mischievous and loves to tease, and I'm afraid that some time she'll go too far and get herself into trouble without meaning to at all."
"She doesn't like her aunt, Miss Eleanor—the one she lives with now that her father's away so much."
Miss Mercer made a wry face.
"Miss Ransom's lovely in many ways," she said, "but she doesn't understand young girls, and she seems to think that Dolly ought to be just as wise and staid and sober as if she were grown up. I think that is the chief reason for Dolly's mischief. It has to have some way to escape, and she's pretty well tied down at home. So I overlook a lot of her tricks, when, if one of the other girls was guilty, I'd have to speak pretty severely about it. Well, here she is now! Go off with her if you like, Bessie."
"Oh, Miss Mercer, what do we have to do this morning?" shouted Dolly as soon as she saw Bessie and the Guardian.
"What you like until after lunch, Dolly. Then perhaps we may want to arrange to do something all together—have a cooking lesson, or learn something about the farm. We'll see. But you and Bessie might as well go over the place now and get acquainted with it. Bessie can probably find her way about easier than you city girls."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Dolly. "Come on, Bessie! I bet we can have lots of sport."
So they went off, and, though Bessie wanted to see the great barn in which the horses were kept, Dolly wanted to go toward the road at the entrance of the place, and Bessie yielded, since the choice of direction didn't seem a bit important then.
"I saw one of those boys who drove us up last night going off this way," Dolly explained, guilelessly, "and, Bessie, he looked ever so much nicer in his blue overalls than he did in that horrible, stiff, black suit he was wearing last night."
"You shouldn't laugh at his clothes. They're his very best, Dolly. The overalls are just his working clothes, and you'd hurt his feelings terribly if he knew that you were laughing at the store clothes. He probably had to save up his money for a long time to buy them."
"Oh, well, I don't care! I wonder if there's any place around here where you can buy ice-cream soda? I'm just dying to have some."
"I thought you were going without soda and candy for a month to get an honor bead, Dolly."
"Oh, bother! I was, but it was too hard. I got a soda when I'd gone without for two weeks, and I never thought of the old honor bead until I'd begun to drink it. So that discouraged me, and I gave it up."
"But don't you feel much better when you don't eat candy and drink sodas between meals?"
"I don't know—maybe I do. Yes, I guess I do. But they taste so good, Bessie!"
"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to do without the soda here."
Dolly was still really leading the way, and now, her eyes on a blue clad figure, she decided to leave the avenue of trees that led to the road and cut across a field.
"Don't you love the smell of hay, Bessie?" asked Dolly. "I think it's fine. That's one of the things I like best about the country, and being on a farm."
"I guess I know it too well to get excited about it, Dolly. You see, I've lived on a farm almost all my life, and so things like that aren't new to me. But it is lovely and, yes, I do believe I've missed it, there in the city."
"Wouldn't you rather live in the city, though?"
"Yes, because I wasn't happy where I was in the country, and in the city I've had everything to make me happy. I suppose you'd rather live in the country, though?"
"No, indeed! I like to hear the city noises at night, and to see all the people. And I like to go to the theatre, when my aunt lets me go to a matinee, and to the moving picture shows, and everything like that. Don't you love the movies?"
"I never went, so I don't know."
"Not really? You don't mean they haven't even got a moving picture place In Hedgeville? I never heard of such a thing!"
Bessie laughed.
"Moving pictures are pretty new, Dolly. No one could go to them until a little while ago, no matter where they lived, or how much money they had. And I guess people got along all right without them."
"Yes, but they had to get along without lots of things until they were invented—telephones and electric lights, and lots and lots of useful things like that. But you wouldn't expect us to get along without them now, would you?"
"I guess it's only the things we know about that we really need, Dolly. If we don't know about a lot of these modern things, we keep right along getting on without them. Like Hedgeville—the only man there who has a telephone is Farmer Weeks."
"Yes," said Dolly triumphantly, "and he's got more money than all the rest of the people in the place put together, hasn't he!"
Bessie laughed.
"And all this just because you want an ice-cream soda! What will you do if you really can't have one, Dolly?"
"I don't know! I'm just hankering for one—my mouth is watering from thinking about it!"
"We might ask this boy. Miss Eleanor said his name was Stubbs, Walter Stubbs."
Bessie smiled to herself as she saw how surprised Dolly was trying to seem at the discovery that they had come to the part of the field where Walter was working. He was red to the ears, but Bessie could tell from the way he was looking at Dolly that the city girl, with her smart clothes and her pretty face, had already made a deep impression on the farm boy. Now as the two girls approached, he looked at them sheepishly, standing first on one foot, and then on the other.
"Do you work all the time?" Dolly asked him, impishly, darting a look at Bessie.
"Cal'late to—most of the time," said Walter.
"Don't you ever have any fun? Don't you ever meet a couple of girls and treat them to ice-cream soda, for instance?"
"Oh, sure!" said Walter. "Year ago come October Si Hinkle an' I, we went to the city for the day with the gals we was buzzin' then an' we bought 'em each an ice-cream sody."
"Did you have to go to the city to do that?" said Dolly.
"Sure! Ain't no place nigher'n that. Over to Deer Crossin' there's a man has lemon pop in bottles sometimes, but he ain't got no founting like we saw in the city, nor no ice-cream, neither."
Dolly was a picture of woe and disappointment.
"Tell yer what, though," said Walter, bashfully. "Saturday night there's a goin' to be an ice-cream festival over to the Methodist Church at the Crossing, an' I'm aimin' ter go, though my folks is Baptists. I'll treat yer to a plate of ice-cream over there."
"Will you, really?" said Dolly, brightening up and looking as pleased as if the ice-cream soda she wanted so much had suddenly been set down before her in the field.
"I sure will," said Walter, hugely pleased. "Say, they play all sorts of games over there—forfeits an' post office an'—"
Bessie had to laugh at Dolly's look of mystification.
"Come on, Dolly," she said. "We mustn't keep Walter from his work or he'll be getting into trouble. We can see him again some time when he isn't so busy." And as they walked off she told Dolly about the country games the boy had spoken of—games in which kissing played a large part.
"The country isn't as nice as I thought," said Dolly dolefully. "I'm so thirsty, and there's no place to buy even sarsaparilla!"
"Maybe not, but I can show you something better than that for your thirst, Dolly. See that rocky place over there, under the trees! I'll bet there's a spring there. Let's find out."
Sure enough, there was a spring, carefully covered, and a cup, so that anyone working in the fields could get water, and even Dolly had to admit that no ice-cream soda had ever quenched her thirst as well.
"What delicious water!" she exclaimed. "Where's the ice?"
"There isn't any, silly!" laughed Bessie. "It's cold like that because it comes bubbling right up out of the ground."
"I bet that's just the sort of water they sell in bottles in the city, because it's so much purer than the city water," said Dolly. "But that's an awfully little spring, Bessie."
"The basin isn't very big, but that doesn't mean that there isn't always plenty of water. You see, no matter how much you take out, there's always more coming. See that little brook? Well, this spring feeds that, and it runs off and joins other brooks, but there's always water here just the same. Of course, in a drought, if there was no rain for a long time, it might dry up, but it doesn't look as if that ever happened here."
"Well, it is good water, and that's a lot better than nothing," said Dolly. "Come on! We started for the road. Let's go down and sit on the fence and watch the people go by."
So they made their way on through the field until they came to the road, and there they sat on the fence, enjoying some apples that Bessie had pronounced eatable, after several attempts by Dolly to consume some from half a dozen trees that would have caused her a good deal of pain later. Two or three automobiles passed as they sat there, and Dolly looked at their occupants enviously.
"If we had a car, Bessie," she said, "we could get to some place where they sell ice-cream soda in no time, and be back in plenty of time for lunch, too. I wish some friend of mine would come along in one of those motors!"
None did, but, vastly to Bessie's surprise, they had not been there long before a big green touring car that had shot by them a few minutes before so fast that they could not see its occupants at all, came back, doubling on its course, and stopped in the road just before them. And on the driver's seat, discarding his goggles so that Bessie could recognize him, was Mr. Holmes—the man who had taken her and Miss Mercer for a ride, and whom she felt she had so much reason to distrust!
"This is good fortune! I'm very glad indeed to see you," he said, cordially, to Bessie. "Miss King, is it not—Miss Bessie King, Miss Mercer's friend? Won't you introduce me to the other young lady!"