The little “out of tune” feeling which had begun to manifest itself in
the hearts of Ruth and Agnes was instantly dispelled as they heard the
voice of Dot crying—for it was Dot they heard.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Nalbro, for she was so intent on finishing
the telling of Hal’s fortune, holding his hand in her warm one, that she
had not caught the alarm.
“Something has happened to Tess or Dot—maybe both,” gasped Ruth, as she
sped past.
“One of them has fallen in the brook, probably,” added Agnes, for the
waterfall was the result of a small brook toppling down an incline. It
was not a wide stream; nor was it deep, except in a few places.
“Come on, Neale!” cried Luke, springing up from a hummock where he was
lying under a tree, possibly thinking over the “fortune” that Nalbro had
outlined for him. “To the rescue!”
“I don’t imagine it amounts to much. Those kids are always falling in or
falling out or getting into some sort of trouble,” commented Neale.
Nevertheless, he followed Luke, and now Nalbro and Hal joined in.
At intervals the cry came from Dot:
“She’s fallen in! She’s fallen in!”
It was by this cry that Ruth, with the others following her, was able to
get to the place whence Dot had sounded the alarm. Ruth saw her little
sister through a fringe of bushes on the edge of the brook.
“Dot, what is it? Where is Tess?” demanded Ruth, not stopping to inquire
whether Tess had fallen in, since it seemed obvious, with Dot there in
plain sight, and not wet.
“I don’t know!” sobbed Dot.
“What don’t you know?” demanded Agnes, catching Dot by the arm and
giving her a little shake to quiet the hysterical sobbing that was
rendering Dot unintelligible.
“I don’t know where Tess is,” Dot sobbed. “She went down there with her
Clarissa-doll——” She pointed toward a part of the stream that the boys
knew to be deep, and went on: “Then I heard her yell and there was a
splash and——Oh, she’s fallen in, I know she has!”
The boys waited no longer, but dashed away in the direction of the spot
Dot had pointed out. Agnes and Nalbro remained to comfort Dot, who was
now wiping away her tears on the dress of her Alice-doll, and Ruth
followed the boys.
It was Luke who first shouted back some definite news.
“I have found her!” he announced.
“Is she—is she——” Ruth could not form the words.
“She’s all right!” came the reassuring answer. “But she’s soaking wet.
Tess, come out of that!” he commanded.
By this time the others had pushed through the underbrush and had come
upon a scene which, after a moment, brought roars of laughter from Neale
and Hal. And Luke, after a glance at Ruth to make sure she was smiling,
joined in.
They simply could not help it.
There sat Tess on a flat rock in a shallow place in the middle of the
brook and she was washing her doll’s dress. The water was flowing down
on either side of Tess, as if she might be a rock herself, as she sat
there in the midst of the brook.
[Illustration: There sat Tess on a flat rock in a shallow place
in the middle of the brook.]
The stream was up to her waist as she sat down, but she was wetter than
this, for she was splashed up to her shoulders, and as she held up the
black dress of Clarissa, to see if it needed further scrubbing, water
ran from the garment down her freckled face.
“Tess Kenway! What in the world are you doing?” demanded Ruth. “Come
right out of there this instant!”
“All right,” said Tess calmly. “I guess Clarissa’s dress is clean,
anyhow.”
“Why did you do it? Why are you sitting there?” went on Ruth, for Tess
had not yet arisen.
“Did you fall in?” Agnes wanted to know.
“Yes, I did,” answered Tess slowly. “And when I was wet I thought I
might as well stay in and be wetter and wash Clarissa’s dress. It was
easier out here, and I found a rock just like a washboard.”
“Oh, you terrible child!” scolded Agnes. “You have frightened us all!
How did it happen? If it hadn’t been for Dot’s calling that you had
fallen in, we might never have known it.”
“Pooh! I was going to tell you, anyhow, so there!” said Tess.
“Yes, but when?” asked Ruth. “Why did you leave Dot?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t wash her Alice-doll’s dress, and I wanted to wash
mine,” explained Tess. “So I came down here.”
“And left Dot alone? That wasn’t kind,” commented Ruth. “She heard you
fall in.”
“She couldn’t have.”
“Yes, I did, too,” declared Dot, for she had been brought along by
Nalbro and Agnes to the scene of the immersion. “I heard you splash.”
“Pooh! That wasn’t me; that was a rock,” laughed Tess, shaking her wet
hair out of her eyes while Ruth endeavored to wring some water from her
skirts. “I was leaning over a rock to wash Clarissa’s dress,” she
proceeded, “and the rock splashed in. I guess that’s what you heard,”
she said to Dot, “because I didn’t make any noise—that is, not much—when
I slipped in.”
“Then you did fall in?” asked Agnes.
“Yes, I fell in,” admitted Tess. “But that was after the rock splashed,
and Dot couldn’t have heard me. I slipped in and got my feet wet and it
felt so nice—and I was wet anyhow—that I waded out and sat down. You
ought to see that rock! It’s all ribs and crinkles like a regular
washboard. If you could take it home, I’ll show you where it is!”
She tried to pull away from Ruth as if with the intention of wading out
into the stream again, but her sister held her back.
“No, none of that any more!” decided Ruth.
“Oh, but you’re a _sight_!” giggled Agnes.
“Pooh! Let ’em dry on me,” suggested Tess indifferently. “I’ve been wet
before, lots of times. If you had been here I could have taken
Alice-doll’s dress out and washed it,” she said to Dot.
“I wouldn’t have her dress washed. It’s clean now. And you can’t tell
whether your doll’s old black dress is clean or not.”
“Oh, it’s clean,” declared Tess. “I sozzled it in the water a lot of
times and I rubbed it on the washboard rock.”
“Well, you’ve given us all something of a fright,” sighed Ruth. “Though
I don’t suppose you meant it. Dear me! we haven’t anything dry to put on
you, though I suppose we might go to some house.”
“I’ll run her back in the car and let Mrs. MacCall look after her,”
offered Neale. “I’ve got to get gasoline, anyhow.”
“All right,” agreed Ruth, and so Tess had the advantage of getting an
extra ride, and all by herself, in the machine with Neale.
“Honestly, it was comical,” said Agnes, telling some of her girl friends
about it afterward. “In her wet, bedraggled clothes, Tess sat on the
rear seat, as prim and stiff as some old-fashioned lady, and she seemed
to be pretending that she was some millionaire’s wife out in her auto
taking the air.”
This was just Tess—a queer little body if ever there was one.
“Oh, ye puir bairn!” cried Mrs. MacCall, when she saw Tess. “An’ are ye
the only one saved?”
“Gracious, you don’t think all the rest are drowned, do you?” laughed
Neale.
“I was fearin’ that,” murmured the housekeeper. “I was fearin’.”
Tess was soon clothed again in dry garments and she went back to the
picnic ground with Neale after he had stopped at the service station to
have the gas tank filled.
The day was nearly over—and a glorious one it had been in spite of the
accident to Tess—and soon the jolly little party was on the way home,
all managing to crowd into the one automobile.
“Oh, I am having such a wonderful time!” sighed Nalbro that evening on
the porch, when the boys had come over for a little talk. “It was
darling of you girls to ask me down.”
“We are glad you are enjoying it,” said Ruth. “And we hope you can stay
a long time.”
“If it weren’t for getting ready to go to boarding school—which means
having a lot more frocks made,” murmured the Boston girl—“I could stay
longer.”
“I wish our dressmaker was up to ‘frocks,’ don’t you, Ruth?” Agnes
asked, with a half envious sigh. “But poor Miss Titus, though she does
have a sign reading ‘Modes,’ has never risen above a gown—and she used
to call everything a dress.”
“Sickening—that’s what I call it,” grunted Neale. “What say you,
fellows?”
“Oh, you boys make me tired!” declared Agnes. “You’re fussier over one
necktie than we are over two dresses! Aren’t they, Nally?”
“I should say so!”
And so the merry quips were exchanged.
“Speaking of water,” remarked Luke, as he came out with a glass which
Ruth had requested him to get, “are you girls going to do anything about
those strange men?”
“What can we do?” demanded Ruth. “We don’t know who they are, and we
aren’t even certain that they did anything more than make a mistake.”
“It might have been a mistake, getting into your cellar once,” commented
Neale. “But when the same men have been seen hanging around the Corner
House—well, it’s time something was done, in my opinion.”
“What would you do?” inquired Ruth. “I have thought of speaking to Mr.
Howbridge about it.”
“Let me mention it to the police,” offered Neale. “I know the chief and
all the officers who have this beat—there are different ones on
different nights. I’ll tell them to keep their eyes open for suspicious
characters.”
“I wish you would,” said Ruth. “And I’ll also speak to Mr. Howbridge
about it.”
“If you girls are nervous,” said Luke, speaking particularly for the
benefit of Ruth, “I can leave Neale and come over to stay here
to-night.”
“What? With me on the job? Boy, you are insulting!” cried Hal, in mock
heroics. “Why, I’ll defy any twain of alleged water inspectors that ever
misread a meter!”
“Oh, we’re not a bit afraid,” said Ruth.
“We have Uncle Rufus and Linda, to say nothing of Mrs. MacCall,” added
Agnes.
“Well, you can always get Neale and me on the telephone,” suggested
Luke, with a laugh.
“And by the time you got over here we’d be kidnaped!” declared Agnes.
“No, we’ll depend on Uncle Rufus.”
However, there was no need for any dependence, for nothing untoward
happened that night.
For the next evening a little affair had been planned, to which some
guests Nalbro Hastings had not yet met were invited. Ruth and Agnes were
busy arranging the details of this, and planning with Mrs. MacCall what
the refreshments should be, when Tess came in looking somewhat warm and
excited.
“What have you been doing, dear?” asked Ruth, smoothing her hair.
“Oh, Dot and I just now gave Uncle Rufus a shower,” explained Tess.
“A shower?” Ruth cried.
“You mean you have been giving one of your dolls a bridal-engagement
shower, and you let Uncle Rufus in on some of the things?” questioned
Agnes. “It was kind of you, but——”
“No, we gave him a regular shower. Like a showerbath, you know.”
“You what?” gasped Ruth.
“That’s it. Yes, a shower. Dot’s doing it now. I got tired. It’s lots of
fun! Oh, she wet him good that time! Look!”
She pointed out of the window.