"THE NEVERGETOVERS"
After crossing the Cheslow Hills and the Lumano by the Long Bridge about
twenty miles below the Red Mill, the touring party debouched upon one of
the very best State roads. They left much of the dust from which they had
first suffered behind them, and Tom could now lead the way with the big
car without smothering the occupants of the honeymoon car in the rear.
The highway wound along a pretty ridge for some miles, with farms dotting
the landscape and lush meadows or fruit-growing farms dipping to the edge
of the distant river.
"Ah," sighed Henri Marchand. "Like _la belle_ France before the war. Such
peace and quietude we knew, too. Fortunate you are, my friends, that _le
Boche_ has not trampled these fields into bloody mire."
This comment he made when they halted the cars at a certain overlook to
view the landscape. But they could not stop often. Their first objective
inn was still a long way ahead.
They did not, however, reach the inn, which was a resort well known to
motorists. Five miles away Tom noticed that the car was acting strangely.
"What is it, Tom?" demanded Ruth quickly.
"Steering gear, I am afraid. Something is loose."
It did not take him long to make an examination, and in the meantime the
second car came alongside.
"It might hold out until we get to the hotel ahead; but I think we had
better stop before that time if we can," was Tom's comment. "I do not want
the thing to break and send us flying over a stone wall or up a tree."
"But you can fix it, Tom?" questioned Ruth.
"Sure! But it will take half an hour or more."
After that they ran along slowly and presently came in sight of a place
called the Drovers' Tavern.
"Not a very inviting place, but I guess it will do," was Ruth's
announcement after they had looked the inn over.
The girls and Aunt Kate alighted at the steps while the young men wheeled
the cars around to the sheds.
The housekeeper, who immediately announced herself as Susan Timmins, was
fussily determined to see that all was as it should be in the ladies'
chambers.
"I can't trust this gal I got to do the upstairs work," she declared,
saying it through her nose and with emphasis. "Just as sure as kin be,
if ye go for to help a poor relation you air always sorry for it."
She led the way up the main flight of stairs as she talked.
"This here gal will give me the nevergitovers, I know! She's my own
sister's child that married a good-for-nothing and is jest like her
father."
"Bella! You Bella! Turn on the light in these rooms. Is the pitchers
filled? And the beds turned down? If I find a speck of dust on this
furniture I'll nigh 'bout have the nevergitovers! That gal will drive me
to my grave, she will. Bella!"
Bella appeared--a rather good looking child of fourteen or so, slim as a
lath and with hungry eyes. She was dark--almost Gypsy-like. She stared at
Ruth, Helen and Jennie with all the amazement of the usual yokel. But it
was their dress, not themselves, Ruth saw, engaged Bella's interest.
"When you ladies want any help, you call for Bella," announced Miss Susan
Timmins. "And if she don't come running, you let me know, and I'll give
her her nevergitovers, now I tell ye!"
"No wonder this hotel is called 'Drovers' Tavern,'" said Jennie Stone.
"That woman certainly is a driver--a slave driver."
Ruth, meanwhile, was trying to make a friend of Bella.
"What is your name, my dear?" she asked the lathlike girl.
"You heard it," was the ungracious reply.
"Oh! Yes. 'Bella.' But your other name?"
"Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike. My father is Montague Fitzmaurice."
She said it proudly, with a lift of her tousled head and a straightening
of her thin shoulders.
"Oh!" fairly gasped Ruth Fielding. "It--it sounds quite impressive, I must
say. I guess you think a good deal of your father?"
"Aunt Suse don't," said the girl ungraciously. "My mother's dead. And pa
is resting this season. So I hafter stay here with Aunt Suse. I hate it!"
"Your father is--er--what is his business?" Ruth asked.
"He's one of the profession."
"A doctor?"
"Lands, no! He's a heavy."
"A _what_?"
"A heavy lead--and a good one. But these moving pictures knock out all
the really good people. There are no chances now for him to play
Shakespearean roles----"
"Your father is an actor!" cried Ruth.
"Of course. Montague Fitzmaurice. Surely you have heard the name?" said
the lathlike girl, tossing her head.
"Why--why----of course!" declared Ruth warmly. It was true. She had heard
the name. Bella had just pronounced it!
"Then you know what kind of an actor my pa is," said the proud child. "He
did not have a very good season last winter. He rehearsed with four
companies and was only out three weeks altogether. And one of the managers
did not pay at all."
"That is too bad."
"Yes. It's tough," admitted Bella. "But I liked it."
"You liked it when he was so unsuccessful?" repeated Ruth.
"Pa wasn't unsuccessful. He never is. He can play any part," declared the
girl proudly. "But the plays were punk. He says there are no good plays
written nowadays. That is why so many companies fail."
"But you said you liked it?"
"In New York," explained Bella. "While he was rehearsing pa could get
credit at Mother Grubson's boarding house on West Forty-fourth Street. I
helped her around the house. She said I was worth my keep. But Aunt Suse
says I don't earn my salt here."
"I am sure you do your best, Bella," Ruth observed.
"No, I don't. Nor you wouldn't if you worked for Aunt Suse. She says I'll
give her her nevergitovers--an' I hope I do!" with which final observation
she ran to unlace Aunt Kate's shoes.
"Poor little thing," said Ruth to Helen. "She is worse off than an orphan.
Her Aunt Susan is worse than Uncle Jabez ever was to me. And she has no
Aunt Alvirah to help her to bear it. We ought to do something for her."
"There! You've begun. Every waif and stray on our journey must be aided, I
suppose," pouted Helen, half exasperated.
But Tom was glad to see that Ruth had found a new interest. Bella waited
on the supper table, was snapped at by Miss Timmins, and driven from
pillar to post by that crotchety individual.
"Jimminy Christmas!" remarked Tom, "that Timmins woman must be a
reincarnation of one of the ancient Egyptians who was overseer in the
brickyard where Moses learned his trade. If they were all like her, no
wonder the Israelites went on a strike and marched out of Egypt."
They were all very careful, however, not to let Miss Susan Timmins hear
their comments. She had the true dictatorial spirit of the old-fashioned
New England school teacher. The guests of Drovers' Tavern were treated by
her much as she might have treated a class in the little red schoolhouse
up the road had she presided there.
She drove the guests to their chambers by the method of turning off the
electric light in the general sitting room at a quarter past ten. Each
room was furnished with a bayberry candle, and she announced that the
electricity all over the house would be switched off at eleven o'clock.
"That is late enough for any decent body to be up," she announced in her
decisive manner. "That's when I go to bed myself. I couldn't do so in
peace if I knew folks was burning them electric lights to all hours.
'Tain't safe in a thunder storm.
"Why, when we first got 'em, Jed Parraday from Wachuset come to town to do
his buyin' and stayed all night with us. He'd never seed a 'lectric bulb
before, and he didn't know how to blow it out. And he couldn't sleep in a
room with a light.
"So, what does the tarnal old fool do but unhook the cord so't the bulb
could be carried as far as the winder. And he hung it outside, shut the
winder down on it, drawed the shade and went to bed in the dark.
"Elnathan Spear, the constable, seen the light a-shining outside the
winder in the middle of the night and he thought 'twas burglars. He
_dreams_ of burglars, Elnathan does. But he ain't never caught none yet.
"On that occasion, howsomever, he was sure he'd got a whole gang of 'em,
and he waked up the whole hotel trying to find out what was going on. I
charged Parraday ha'f a dollar for burning extry 'lectricity, and he got
so mad he ain't stopped at the hotel since.
"He'd give one the nevergitovers, that man would!" she concluded.