With a murmured “excuse me,” Ruth arose from where she had been sitting
near Luke, and started into the house.
“Maybe it’s the police telephoning they have captured the two men!”
cried Agnes, who was as much given to looking for excitement, on certain
occasions, as was Sammy Pinkney.
“It couldn’t be,” commented Luke. “The police didn’t know the men were
wanted. And, as a matter of fact, I don’t see that we can make any
charges against them.”
“Didn’t they break into your cellar?” asked Hal, who had not heard all
the particulars, or else had forgotten some of them.
“No, they didn’t break in,” remarked Agnes. “In fact, they went there on
invitation, you might say.”
“Invitation!” cried Nally. “You don’t mean to say you _invited_ them
in?”
“I believe that’s what it is called in law,” went on Agnes. She had an
idea she was going to study law some day. “Ruth saw the men going into
our cellar and she did not forbid them. In fact, she actually told them
to enter—at least, a lawyer would call it that. It’s a sort of
invitation by inference where you don’t forbid a person to enter.”
“Well, I never would have let them go in if I hadn’t thought they were
from the water department,” said Ruth, who had come back to the porch in
time to hear the latter part of this talk.
“Which they weren’t,” remarked Neale. “I found out that much!”
“Was the telephone message anything about the men?” asked Agnes.
“No, just Carrie Poole saying she could come to-morrow night.”
“That’s good.”
Carrie Poole was one of a number of girl and boy friends invited to
another little gathering in honor of Nalbro and Hal.
“But, Luke, can you tell us any more about those men and their queer
talk of ten thousand dollars?” asked Neale.
“Not a thing,” answered the collegian. “I thought it queer at the time,
and for that reason I noticed the men rather more closely than otherwise
I should have done. But, as a matter of fact, I thought perhaps they
were talking of some moving picture plot, and so the thing went out of
my mind.”
“Moving picture plot! What do you mean?” demanded Agnes.
“Well, you know, every one is writing for the movies nowadays,” went on
Luke, smiling. “Every fellow in my class has one or more scenarios out,
hoping for an acceptance, and on the campus all you hear is continuity,
close-up, flashback and the like. And more than once, in trains, I’ve
overheard conversations something like this: ‘Well, we could kill off
the man and kidnap the girl.’ ‘It would be easy to have the house
robbed.’
“One might think some desperate crime was being planned, but all it is,
really, is a talk on the plot for a moving picture, or what they hope
will turn out to be one. So when I heard these men saying something
about ten thousand dollars and about not letting some one know or they
wouldn’t get anything, for a time I thought they might be writing a
moving picture scenario.”
“Do you think so now after you’ve had a second look at them?” asked
Neale.
“I certainly do not—especially after the way they ran,” answered Luke.
“And that makes me suspicious that they were around here for no good
purpose. If they had been, they would not have run when they saw that
Ruth had noticed them.”
“It’s just what they did before—the time Agnes and I were in to see Miss
Titus,” said Ruth. “I do hope it doesn’t mean anything! I hope they
haven’t any designs on the house.”
“Nonsense!” laughed Luke, patting her hand which was conveniently near
his as they sat together on the porch. “They’re just a couple of
tramps—that’s all.”
“But their talk of ten thousand dollars! Really, I don’t know that we
ought to go on this little picnic and leave Dot and Tess at home.”
“Take them with us,” suggested Neale.
“There isn’t room in the car.”
“I’ll come back and get them,” offered the good-natured lad; and so it
was arranged, though Ruth, after all, admitted that there could be no
real danger to her younger sisters with Uncle Rufus, Linda and sturdy
Mrs. MacCall in the house.
You may imagine with what delight Tess and Dot received the news that
they were to be permitted to go to the picnic. They had been mourning
the fact that they were obliged to stay at home, and they had just
concocted a scheme of sending over for Sammy Pinkney and his alligator
when there was a rift in the dark clouds.
“I’ll take my Alice-doll!” cried Dot.
“I’ll take Clarissa,” decided Tess. “She wears a black dress and I can
drop her in the mud and not care.” Tess lately had, for some reason
unfathomable by Ruth and Agnes, taken to playing with her dolls.
“Alice is going to wear white,” said Dot, with a superior air. “White is
best for picnics.”
“Um!” murmured Tess, who was not so particular.
Hal followed Luke and Neale out to the garage while the girls finished
their preparations for the lunch they were taking to the Glen.
“I’m anxious to see how you start that old boat,” remarked Hal, rubbing,
tenderly, his bruised knuckles.
“It’s easy. All you do is—this.” Neale turned the ignition key, stepped
on the starter switch, and the steady throb and hum of the motor at once
followed.
“You must have it charmed,” commented the Boston lad.
“You have to humor ’em,” chuckled Neale.
After all, it was not necessary for Neale to make a second trip to take
Tess and Dot to the Glen. A neighbor happened to be going out in that
direction and volunteered to take the younger girls.
“Coming home we can pile in anyhow,” remarked Agnes, “for there won’t be
so many lunch boxes and baskets.”
“You verged dangerously near the truth then,” solemnly remarked Luke. “I
shall empty at least half a dozen lunch boxes myself.”
It was a beautiful day, the Glen was looking its best after a light
shower, and there was a “romantic” waterfall among other natural
wonders. Nalbro called it romantic, and she ought to have known what
that word meant. As for Neale, he said he couldn’t see what there was in
a waterfall, anyhow.
“As the Irishman said, what’s to prevent it from coming down?” he
demanded. But no one paid much attention to this ancient joke.
“Now, Tess and Dot,” said Ruth, taking her younger sisters off to one
side when they had been safely delivered, “I don’t want you to give me
any trouble to-day.”
“We never do,” declared Tess.
“You don’t mean to, but you do,” said Ruth patiently and with a kind
smile. “Don’t go off by yourselves exploring, and——”
“Well, you don’t want us tagging around after you and Luke all day, do
you?” asked Tess, though why she should couple the names Ruth said she
could not imagine.
“I want you to be within call, if not within sight, all the while,” was
the stipulation. “There are many little places where you might wander
off and be lost. You needn’t ‘tag’ us around, as you call it, but don’t
get too far away.”
“We won’t,” promised Dot. “Oh, I just love it here and so does my
Alice-doll.”
Indeed they all seemed bent on having a good time, and when the lunch
had been put away until such time as it would be needed they strolled
about the Glen, talking and laughing.
As might be expected, there was a pairing off into couples. Agnes and
Neale found something to look at down one path, Nalbro and Hal declared
they wanted to get to the top of the waterfall, and Ruth remarked:
“Well, if they want to tire themselves out by scrambling up there, let
them. I think——”
“Here’s a quiet place—a regular bosky dell,” laughed Luke, and he led
the way.
And then, for a time, the murmuring talk of the young people mingled
with the murmur of the water as it slipped over the mossy, green stones.
It was, as might have been expected, Tess and Dot who put an end to what
seemed an ideal period, for Ruth soon heard the voice of Tess calling:
“Where are you? Where are you?”
“Oh, I wonder if anything has happened!” Ruth exclaimed, with a startled
glance at Luke, who sat beside her on a mossy bank.
“What’s wrong?” he cried, his stronger voice echoing through the forest.
Back came the unromantic answer:
“We’re hungry!”
“Oh, is it noon?” asked Ruth, looking at her wrist watch, and, finding
that it was half-past twelve, she added: “No wonder the poor things are
looking for us. We’ll eat!”
“It seems a pity to leave this,” remarked Luke, glancing around on their
trysting place.
“Oh, we can come back,” conceded Ruth.
“Thanks,” he said softly.
There was the usual merry ado about setting out the lunch boxes and
baskets, and the usual ants walked, true to form, into the butter and
cloyed themselves with sweetness in the sugar. But this is always
expected at picnics.
As Neale remarked:
“No outing is complete without them.”
But Nalbro rather shuddered when a grasshopper alighted on her slice of
bread and threw it quickly away from her with a muttered:
“Ugh! The horrid thing!”
“You don’t give him credit!” laughed Luke. “Like the bees to the
flowers, he was attracted by your magnetic personality.”
“Thank you!” murmured the Boston girl, flashing a look at Luke, who was
boldly regarding her. And Agnes, by means of her eyes, telegraphed some
message to Ruth.
After lunch, which, if it did nothing more, rendered Tess and Dot less
active, for it made them sleepy, there was a period of sitting about,
wondering what next to do, for it was too warm for much strenuous
exercise.
“Come on!” offered Nalbro suddenly, “I’ll tell the boys’ fortunes.”
“How?” asked Agnes.
“I’ll read their hands.”
“I’m first!”
“No, I!”
“She came with me!”
In turn Luke, Neale and Hal thus cried as they crowded around the
fascinating Boston girl—there was no denying that she was
fascinating—and pretty, though Agnes, at least, had no lack of beauty
and Ruth’s sweet face always gave pleasure to a beholder.
“Oh, I can’t tell your fortunes all at once. And no one must hear the
others’,” declared Nally, with a pretty air of bewilderment, as three
tanned hands were thrust toward her, each one eager to be first.
“Decide by lot then,” suggested Neale.
“How?” asked Nalbro.
“Shut your eyes and take a hand,” he went on, and this was done.
The Boston girl, with closed eyes, groped among the three palms held
before her, and whether it was accident or design, she took that of
Luke.
Then the other two lads, after some protesting, were sent out of hearing
while Nalbro proceeded to study and trace the lines in the hand of the
young collegian.
What she told him is neither here nor there, nor is what she pretended
to prophesy for Neale and Hal. But as she continued to be a center of
attraction for the young men, while Agnes and Ruth tidied up the
luncheon ground, there were uneasy glances cast in the direction of the
fortune-telling section of the Glen.
“Isn’t it queer how silly boys are about having their hands held?”
remarked Agnes, with a distinct “sniff.”
“She has a certain way about her,” admitted Ruth. “Perhaps we should be
a little more——”
“Giddy! Silly! Why don’t you say it?” challenged Agnes. “I didn’t
imagine Nally was like that. But you never know a girl until——”
“Hush!” suddenly commanded Ruth. “I thought I heard Tess calling! Yes,
she is! Oh, what has happened?”
Through the woods echoed the sobbing voice of a little girl shouting:
“She’s fallen in! She’s fallen in!”