Ruth did not sleep at all well that night. Luckily, Helen had nothing on
_her_ mind or conscience, or she must have been disturbed by Ruth's
tossing and wakefulness. The other two girls in the big quartette
room--Mercy Curtis and Ann Hicks--were likewise unaware of Ruth's
restlessness.
The girl of the Red Mill felt that she could take nobody into her
confidence regarding the strange girl who said her name was Raby.
Perhaps Ruth had no right to aid the girl if she was a runaway; yet
there must be some very strong reason for making a girl prefer practical
starvation to the shelter of "them Perkinses."
Bread and water! The thought of the child being so hungry that she had
eaten discarded, dry bread, washed down with water from the fountain in
the campus, brought tears to Ruth's eyes.
"Oh! I wish I knew what was best to do for her," thought Ruth. "Should I
tell Mrs. Tellingham? Or, mightn't I get some of the girls interested in
her? Dear Helen has plenty of money, and she is just as tender-hearted
as she can be."
Yet Ruth had given her promise to take nobody into her confidence about
the half-wild girl; and, with Ruth Fielding, "a promise was a promise!"
In the morning, there was soon a buzz of excitement all over the school
regarding the strange happening at the fountain on the campus. One girl
whispered it to another, and the tale spread like wildfire. However, the
teachers and the principal did not hear of the affair.
Ruth's lips, she decided, were sealed for the present regarding the
mysterious girl who had pushed Sarah Fish into what Heavy declared was
"her proper element." The wildest and most improbable stories and
suspicions were circulated before assembly hour, regarding the Unknown.
There was so much said, and so many questions asked, in the quartette
room where Ruth was located, that she felt like running away herself.
But at mail time Madge Steele burst into the dormitory "charged to the
muzzle," as The Fox expressed it, with a new topic of conversation.
"What do you think, girls? Oh! what do you think?" she cried. "We're
going to live at Sunrise Farm."
"Ha! you ask us a question and answer it in the same breath," said
Mercy, with a snap. "Now you've spilled the beans and we don't care
anything about it at all."
"You _do_ care," declared Madge. "I ask _you_ first of all, Mercy. I
invite every one of you for the last week in June and the first two
weeks of July at Sunrise Farm----"
"Oh, wait!" exclaimed Mary Cox, otherwise "The Fox." "Do begin at the
beginning. I, for one, never heard of Sunrise Farm before."
"I--I believe _I_ have," said Ruth slowly. "But I don't suppose it can be
the same farm Madge means. It is a big stock farm and it's not many
miles from Darrowtown where I--I used to live once. _That_ farm belonged
to a family named Benson----"
"And a family named Steele owns it now," put in Madge, promptly. "It's
the very same farm. It's a big place--five hundred acres. It's on a big,
flat-topped hill. Father has been negotiating for the other farms around
about, and has gotten options on most of them, too. He's been doing it
very quietly.
"Now he says that the old house on the main farm is in good enough shape
for us to live there this summer, while he builds a bigger house. And
you shall all come with us--all you eight girls--the Brilliant Octette of
Briarwood Hall.
"And Bob will get Helen's brother, and Busy Izzy; and Belle shall invite
her brothers if she likes, and----"
"Say! are you figuring on having a standing army there?" demanded Mercy.
"That's all right. There is room. The old garret has been made over into
two great dormitories----"
"And you've been keeping all this to yourself, Madge Steele?" cried
Helen. "What a nice girl you are. It sounds lovely."
"And your mother and father will wish we had never arrived, after we've
been there two days," declared Heavy. "By the way, do they know I eat
three square meals each day?"
"Yes. And that if you are hungry, you get up in your sleep and find the
pantry," giggled The Fox.
"Might as well have all the important details understood right at the
start," said Heavy, firmly.
"If you'll all say you'll come," said Madge, smiling broadly, "we'll
just have the lov-li-est time!"
"But we'll have to write home for permission," Lluella Fairfax ventured.
"Of course we shall," chimed in Helen.
"Then do so at once," commanded the senior. "You see, this will be my
graduation party. No more Briarwood for me after this June, and I don't
know what I shall do when I go to Poughkeepsie next fall and leave all
you 'Infants' behind here----"
"_Infants!_ Listen to her!" shouted Belle Tingley. "Get out of here!"
and under a shower of sofa pillows Madge Steele had to retire from the
room.
Ruth slipped away easily after that, for the other girls were gabbling
so fast over the invitation for the early summer vacation, that they did
not notice her departure.
This was the hour she had promised to meet the strange girl in whom she
had taken such a great interest the night before--it was between the two
morning recitation hours.
She ran down past the end of the dormitory building into the head of the
long serpentine path, known as the Cedar Walk. The lines of closely
growing cedars sheltered her from observation from any of the girls'
windows.
The great bell in the clock tower boomed out ten strokes as Ruth reached
the muddy road at the end of the walk. Nobody was in sight. Ruth looked
up and down. Then she walked a little way in both directions to see if
the girl she had come to meet was approaching.
"I--I am afraid she isn't going to keep her word," thought Ruth. "And
yet--somehow--she seemed so frank and honest----"
She heard a shrill, but low whistle, and the sound made her start and
turn. She faced a thicket of scrubby bushes across the road. Suddenly
she saw a face appear from behind this screen--a girl's face.
"Oh! Is it you?" cried Ruth, starting in that direction.
"Cheese it! don't yell it out. Somebody'll hear you," said the girl,
hoarsely.
"Oh, dear me! you have a dreadful cold," urged Ruth, darting around the
clump of brush and coming face to face with the strange girl.
"Oh, _that_ don't give me so much worry," said the Raby girl. "Aw--My
goodness! Is that for _me_?"
Ruth had unfolded a paper covered parcel she carried. There were
sandwiches, two apples, a piece of cake, and half a box of chocolate
candies. Ruth had obtained these supplies with some difficulty.
"I didn't suppose you would have any breakfast," said Ruth, softly. "You
sit right down on that dry log and eat. Don't mind me. I--I was awake
most all night worrying about you being out here, hungry and alone."
The girl had begun to eat ravenously, and now, with her mouth full, she
gazed up at her new friend's face with a suddenness that made Ruth
pause.
"Say!" said the girl, with difficulty. "You're all right. I seen you
come down the path alone, but reckoned I'd better wait and see if you
didn't have somebody follerin' on behind. Ye might have give me away."
"Why! I told you I would tell nobody."
"Aw, yes--I know. Mebbe I'd oughter have believed ye; but I dunno. Lots
of folks has fooled me. Them Perkinses was as soft as butter when they
came to take me away from the orphanage. But now they treat me as mean
as dirt--yes, they do!"
"Oh, dear me! So you haven't any mother or father?"
"Not a one," confessed the other. "Didn't I tell you I was took from an
orphanage? Willie and Dickie was taken away by other folks. I wisht
somebody would ha' taken us all three together; but I'm mighty glad them
Perkinses didn't git the kids."
She sighed with present contentment, and wiped her fingers on her skirt.
For some moments Ruth had remained silent, listening to her. Now she had
for the first time the opportunity of examining the strange girl.
It had been too dark for her to see much of her the night before. Now
the light of day revealed a very unkempt and not at all attractive
figure. She might have been twelve--possibly fourteen. She was slight for
her age, but she might be stronger than she appeared to Ruth. Certainly
she was vigorous enough.
She had black hair which was in a dreadful tangle. Her complexion was
naturally dark, and she had a deep layer of tan, and over that quite a
thick layer of dirt. Her hands and wrists were stained and dirty, too.
She wore no hat, raw as the weather was. Her ragged dress was an old
faded gingham; over it she wore a three-quarter length coat of some
indeterminate, shoddy material, much soiled, and shapeless as a
mealsack. Her shoes and stockings were in keeping with the rest of her
outfit.
Altogether her appearance touched Ruth Fielding deeply. This Raby girl
was an orphan. Ruth remembered keenly the time when the loss of her own
parents was still a fresh wound. Supposing no kind friends had been
raised up for her? Suppose there had been no Red Mill for her to go to?
She might have been much the same sort of castaway as this.
"Tell me who you are--tell me all about yourself--do!" begged the girl of
the Red Mill, sitting down beside the other on the log. "I am an orphan
as well as you, my dear. Really, I am."
"Was you in the orphanage?" demanded the Raby girl, quickly.
"Oh, no. I had friends----"
"You warn't never a reg'lar orphan, then," was the sharp response.
"Tell me about it," urged Ruth.
"Me an' the kids was taken to the orphanage just as soon as Mom died,"
said the girl, in quite a matter-of-fact manner. "Pa died two months
before. It was sudden. But Mom had been sickly for a long time--I can
remember. I was six."
"And how old are you now?" asked Ruth.
"Twelve and a half. They puts us out to work at twelve anyhow, so them
Perkinses got me," explained the child. "I was pretty sharp and foxy
when we went to the orphanage. The kids was only two and a half----"
"Both of them?" cried Ruth.
"Yep. They're twins, Willie and Dickie is. An' awful smart--an' pretty
before they lopped off their curls at the orphanage. I was glad Mom was
dead then," said the girl, nodding. "She'd been heart-broke to see 'em
at first without their long curls.
"I dunno now--not rightly--just what's become of 'em," went on the girl.
"Mebbe they come back to the orphanage. The folks that took 'em was nice
enough, I guess, but the man thought two boys would be too much for his
wife to take care of. She was a weakly lookin' critter.
"But the matron always said they shouldn't go away for keeps, unless
they went together. My goodness me! they'd never be happy apart," said
the strange girl, wagging her head confidentially. "And they're only
nine now. There's three years yet for the matron to find them a good
home. Ye see, folks take young orphans on trial. I wisht them Perkinses
had taken _me_ on trial and then had sent me back. Or, I wisht they'd
let the orphans take folks on trial instead of the other way 'round."
"Oh, it must be very hard!" murmured Ruth. "And you and your little
brothers had to be separated?'
"Yep. And Willie and Dickie liked their sister Sade a heap," and the
girl suddenly "knuckled" her eyes with her dirty hand to wipe away the
tears. "Huh! I'm a big baby, ain't I? Well! that's how it is."
"And you really have run away from the people that took you from the
orphanage, Sadie?"
"Betcher! So would you. Mis' Perkins is awful cross, an' he's crosser! I
got enough----"
"Wouldn't they take you back at the orphanage?"
"Nope. No runaways there. I've seen other girls come back and they made
'em go right away again with the same folks. You see, there's a Board,
or sumpin'; an' the Board finds out all about the folks that take away
the orphans in the first place. Then they won't never own up that they
was fooled, that Board won't. They allus say it's the kids' fault if
they ain't suited."
Suddenly the girl jumped up and peered through the bushes. Ruth had
heard the thumping of horses' hoofs on the wet road.
"My goodness!" gasped Sadie Raby. "Here's ol' Perkins hisself. He's come
clean over this road to look for me. Don't you tell him----"
She seized Ruth's wrist with her claw-like little hand.
"Don't you be afraid," said Ruth. "And take this." She thrust a
closely-folded dollar bill into the girl's grimy fingers. "I wish it was
more. I'll come here again to-morrow----"
The other had darted into the woods ere she had ceased speaking.
Somebody shouted "Whoa!" in a very harsh voice, and then a heavy pair of
cowhide boots landed solidly in the road.
"I see ye, ye little witch!" exclaimed the harsh voice. "Come out o'
there before I tan ye with this whip!" and the whip in question snapped
viciously as the speaker pounded violently through the clump of bushes,
right upon the startled Ruth.