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[Illustration: "WHY, SADIE RABY! WHO'D EVER EXPECT TO SEE YOU HERE?"]
Ruth Fielding
At Sunrise Farm
OR
WHAT BECAME OF THE RABY ORPHANS
BY
ALICE B. EMERSON
Author of "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill," "Ruth
Fielding at Snow Camp," Etc.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Books for Girls
BY ALICE B. EMERSON
RUTH FIELDING SERIES
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
Or, Jasper Parloe's Secret.
RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
Or, Solving the Campus Mystery.
RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
Or, Lost in the Backwoods.
RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
Or, Nita, the Girl Castaway.
RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
Or, Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys.
RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
Or, The Old Hunter's Treasure Box.
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
Or, What Became of the Raby Orphans.
RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
Or, The Missing Pearl Necklace.
Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York.
Copyright, 1915, by
Cupples & Leon Company
Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Sweet Briars and Sour Pickles 1
II. The Wild Girl 12
III. Sadie Raby's Story 23
IV. "Them Perkinses" 34
V. "The Tramping Girl" 45
VI. Seeking the Trail 53
VII. What Tom Cameron Saw 61
VIII. Traveling Toward Sunrise Farm 68
IX. The Sunrise Coach 77
X. "Touch and Go" 85
XI. Tobogganing in June 91
XII. A Number of Introductions 100
XIII. The Terrible Twins 108
XIV. "Why! Of Course!" 114
XV. The Tempest 120
XVI. The Runaway 128
XVII. The Black Douglass 135
XVIII. Sundry Plans 143
XIX. A Safe and Sane Fourth? 151
XX. The Raby Romance 158
XXI. A Very Busy Time 166
XXII. The Terrible Twins on the Rampage 173
XXIII. Lost 180
XXIV. "So That's All Right" 189
XXV. The Orphans' Fortune 198
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
CHAPTER I--SWEET BRIARS AND SOUR PICKLES
The single gas jet burning at the end of the corridor was so dim and
made so flickering a light that it added more to the shadows of the
passage than it provided illumination. It was hard to discover which
were realities and which shadows in the long gallery.
Not a ray of light appeared at any of the transoms over the dormitory
doors; yet that might not mean that there were no lights burning within
the duo and quartette rooms in the East Dormitory of Briarwood Hall.
There were ways of shrouding the telltale transoms and--without doubt--the
members of the advanced junior classes had learned such little tricks of
the trade of being a schoolgirl.
At one door--and it was the portal of the largest "quartette" room on the
floor--a tall figure kept guard. At first this figure was so silent and
motionless that it seemed like a shadow only. But when another shadow
crept toward it, rustling along the wall on tiptoe, the guard demanded,
hissingly:
"S-s-stop! who goes there?"
"Oh-oo! How you startled me, Madge Steele!"
"Sh!" commanded the guard. "Who goes there?"
"Why--why---- It's _I_."
"Give the password instantly. Answer!" commanded the guard again, and
with some vexation. "'I' isn't anybody."
"Oh, indeed? Let me tell you that _this_ 'I' is somebody--according to
the gym. scales. I gained three pounds over the Easter holidays," said
"Heavy" Jennie Stone, who had begun her reply with a giggle, but ended
it with a sigh.
"Password, Miss!" snapped the guard, grimly.
"Oh! of course!" Then the fat girl whispered shrilly:
"'Sincerity--befriend.' That is what 'S. B.' stands for, I s'pose.
Sweetbriars! and I have a big bag of sour pickles to offset the cloying
sweetness of the Sweetbriars," chuckled Heavy. "Besides, they say that
vinegar pickles will make you thin----"
"I don't need them for that purpose," admitted the guard at the door,
still in a whisper, but accepting the large, "warty" pickle Heavy thrust
into her hand.
"Will make _me_ thin, then," agreed the other. "Let me in, Madge."
The guard, sucking the pickle convulsively the while, opened the door
just a little way. A blanket had been hung on a frame inside in such a
manner that scarcely a gleam of lamplight reached the corridor when the
door was open.
"Pass the Sweetbriar!" choked Madge, with her mouth full and the tears
running down her cheeks. "My goodness, Jennie Stone! these pickles are
right out of vitriol!"
"Sour, aren't they?" chuckled Heavy. "I handed you a real one for fair,
that time, didn't I, Madge?"
Then she tried to sidle through the narrow opening, got stuck, and was
urged on by Madge pushing her. With a bang--punctuated by a chorus of
muffled exclamations from the girls already assembled--she tore away the
frame and the blanket and got through.
"Shut the door, quick, guard!" exclaimed Helen Cameron.
"Of course, that would be Heavy--entering like a female Samson and
tearing down the pillars of the temple," snapped Mercy Curtis, the lame
girl, in her sharp way.
"Please repair the damage, Helen," said Ruth Fielding, who presided at
the far end of the room, sitting cross-legged on one of the beds.
The other girls were arranged on the chairs, or upon the floor before
her. There was a goodly number of them, and they now included most of
the members of the secret society known at Briarwood Hall as the
"S. B.'s."
Ruth herself was a bright, brown-haired girl who, without possessing
many pretensions to real beauty of feature, still was quite good to look
at and proved particularly charming when one grew to know her well.
She was rather plump, happy of disposition, and with the kindest heart
in the world. She made both friends and enemies. No person of real
character can escape being disliked, now and then, by those of envious
disposition.
Ruth Fielding succeeded, usually, in winning to her those who at first
disliked her. And this, I claim, is a better gift than that of being
universally popular from the start.
Ruth had come from her old home in Darrowtown, where her parents died,
two years before, to the Red Mill on the Lumano River, where her
great-uncle, Jabez Potter, the miller, was inclined at first to shelter
her only as an object of his grudging charity. In the first volume of
this series, however, entitled "Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill; Or,
Jasper Parloe's Secret," the girl found her way--in a measure, at
least--to the uncle's crabbed heart.
Uncle Jabez was a just man, and he considered it his duty, when Helen
Cameron, Ruth's dearest friend, was sent to Briarwood Hall to school, to
send Ruth to the same institution. In the second volume, "Ruth Fielding
at Briarwood Hall; Or, Solving the Campus Mystery," was related the
adventures, friendships, rivalries, and fun of Ruth's and Helen's first
term at the old school.
In "Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp; Or, Lost in the Backwoods," was told the
adventures of Ruth and her friends at the Camerons' winter camp during
the Christmas holidays. At the end of the first year of school, they all
went to the seaside, to experience many adventures in "Ruth Fielding at
Lighthouse Point; Or, Nita, the Girl Castaway," the fourth volume of the
series.
A part of that eventful summer was spent by Ruth and her chums in
Montana, and the girl of the Red Mill was enabled to do old Uncle Jabez
such a favor that he willingly agreed to pay her expenses at Briarwood
Hall for another year. This is all told in "Ruth Fielding at Silver
Ranch; Or, Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys."
The girls returned to Briarwood Hall and in the sixth volume of the
series, entitled "Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island; Or, The Old Hunter's
Treasure Box," Ruth was privileged to help Jerry Sheming and his
unfortunate old uncle in the recovery of their title to Cliff Island in
Lake Tallahaska, while she and her friends had some thrilling and many
funny adventures during the mid-winter vacation.
The second half of this school year was now old. The Easter recess was
past and the girls were looking forward to the usual break-up in the
middle of June. The hardest of the work for the year was over. Those
girls who had been faithful in their studies prior to Easter could now
take something of a breathing spell, and the S. B.'s were determined to
initiate such candidates as had been on the waiting list for reception
into the secrets of the most popular society in the school.
The shrouded door of the quartette room occupied by Ruth, Helen, Mercy,
and Jane Ann Hicks, from Montana, was opened carefully again and again
until the outer guard, Madge Steele, had admitted all the candidates and
most of the members of the S. B. order who were expected.
Each girl was presented with at least half a big sour pickle from
Heavy's store; but really, the pickles had nothing to do with the
initiation of the neophytes.
There was a serious and helpful side to the society of the S. B.'s--as
witness the password. Ruth, who was the most active member of the
institution, realized, however, that the girls were so full of fun that
they must have some way of expressing themselves out of the ordinary.
Perhaps she had asked Mademoiselle Picolet, the French teacher, whose
room was in this dormitory, and Miss Scrimp, the matron, to overlook
this present infraction of the rules, for it must be admitted that the
retiring bell had rung half an hour before the gathering in this
particular room.
"All here!" breathed Ruth, at last, and Madge was called in. The
candidates were placed in the middle of the floor. Ann Hicks, the girl
from Silver Ranch, was one of these. Ann had proved her character and
made herself popular in the school against considerable odds, as related
in the preceding volume. Now, the honor of being admitted into the
secret society was added to the other marks of the school's approval.
"Candidates," said Ruth, addressing in most solemn tones the group of
girls before her, "you are about to be initiated into the degree of the
Marble Harp. As Infants, when you first entered the school, you were all
made acquainted with the legend of the Marble Harp.
"The figure of _Harmony_, presiding over the fountain in the middle of
the campus, was modeled by the sculptor from the only daughter of the
man who originally owned Briarwood Park before it became a school. Said
sculptor and daughter--in the most approved fashion of the present day
school of romanticist authors--ran away with each other, were married
without the father's approval, and both are supposed to have died
miserably in a studio-garret.
"The heart-broken father naturally left his cur-r-r-se upon the
fountain, and it is said--mind you, this is hearsay," added Ruth,
solemnly, "that whenever anything of moment is about to transpire at
Briarwood Hall, or any calamity befall, the strings of the marble harp
held in the hands of _Harmony_, are heard to twang.
"Of course, as has been pointed out before, the fact that the harp is in
the shape of a _lyre_, must be considered, too, if one is to accept this
legend. But, however, and nevertheless," pursued Ruth, "it has been
decided that the candidates here assembled must join in the Mackintosh
March, and, in procession, led by our Outer Guard and followed--not to
say _herded_--by our Rear Guard, must proceed once around the campus,
down into the garden, and circle the fountain, chanting, as you have
been instructed, the marching song.
"All ready! You all have your mackintoshes, as instructed? Into them at
once," commanded Ruth. "Into line--one after the other. Now, Outer
Guard!"
The lights were extinguished; the blanket at the door was removed; Madge
Steele led the way and Heavy, as the Rear Guard, was last in the line.
Shrouded in the hoods of the mackintoshes, scarcely one of the girls
would have been recognized by any curious teacher or matron.
Ruth hopped down from the bed, and the remaining Sweetbriars ran
giggling to the windows. It was a drizzly, dark night. The paths about
the campus glistened, and the lamps upon the posts flickered dimly.
Out of the front door filed the procession; when they were far enough
away from the buildings which surrounded the campus, they began the
chant, based upon Tom Moore's famous old song:
"The harp that once through Briarwood Hall
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute o'er the campus fount
As though that soul were dead."
Madge Steele, with her strong voice, led the chant. The girls, crowded
at the open windows, began to giggle, for they could hear Heavy, at the
end of the procession, sing out a very different verse.
"That rascal ought to be fined for that," murmured The Fox, the
sandy-haired girl next to Ruth.
"But, isn't she funny?" gasped Helen, on the other side of the Chief of
the S. B.'s.
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Belle Tingley. "I hope Sarah Fish got there ahead
of them. _Won't_ they be surprised when they get a baptism of a glass of
water each from the fountain, as they go by?"
"They'll think the statue has come to life, sure enough, if it doesn't
twang the lyre," quoth Helen.
"They'll get an unexpected ducking," giggled Lluella Fairfax.
"It won't hurt them," Ruth said, placidly. "That's why I insisted upon
the mackintoshes."
"It's just as dark down there by the fountain as it can be," spoke
Helen, with a little shiver. "D'you remember, Ruthie, how they hazed us
there when we were Infants?"
"Don't I!" agreed her chum.
"If Sarah is careful, she can stand right up there against the statue
and never be seen, while she can reach the water to throw it at the
girls easily. There!" cried Belle. "They're turning down the walk to the
steps. I can see them."
They all could see them--dimly. Like shadows the procession descended to
the marble fountain, still chanting softly the refrain of the marching
song. Suddenly a shriek--a very vigorous and startling sound--rang out
across the campus.
"It's begun!" giggled Belle.
But the sound was repeated--then in a thrilling chorus. Ruth was
startled. She exclaimed:
"That wasn't either of the candidates. It was Sarah who screamed. There!
It is Sarah again. Something has happened!"
Something certainly had happened. There had been an unexpected fault
somewhere in the initiation. The procession burst like a bombshell, and
the girls scattered through the wet campus, utterly terrified, and
screaming as they ran.