THE KNIGHT OF THE WAYSIDE
The lady stared at the bedraggled party in amazed silence for a moment.
Then Mrs. Ford stepped impulsively forward.
"I don't wonder you look surprised," she said in her sweetly modulated
voice, "for this is rather an unheard of calling hour. But you see we
were caught in this awful downpour and had to seek your house for
refuge."
"Oh, I'm sorry!" exclaimed the lady, opening the door wider and
motioning them into the cheerfully lighted living room. "I didn't mean,"
she added with a smile, as they most willingly accepted her invitation,
"that I was sorry you came, but that you were forced to come by such
conditions. Won't you take off your things? But you are wet!" she
exclaimed, as the girls started to remove their dripping wraps.
"And we got it all," said Mrs. Ford with a wry smile, "just running
about twenty feet from our cars to your porch."
"Your cars!" the hostess repeated. "Then you motored down. If I had
known that I shouldn't have been so surprised at seeing you. Pedestrians
are rather rare on a night like this."
"Yes, and motorists, too, if they have any sense," said Mollie dryly, at
which they all laughed and their hostess looked still more interested.
"Please sit down and dry out a little," said the lady, indicating a
grate fire which had evidently only recently been lighted on account of
the chill in the air. "I'm glad I had the fire made. I must have known,"
she added with a gracious smile, "that you were coming to-night."
Then she excused herself, and the girls held out eager hands to the
fire.
"This is bliss," sighed Amy.
"Well, this is some contrast to about five minutes ago," chuckled Grace.
"I thought we were in for a night in the mud at least."
"I'll never say we aren't lucky again," agreed Betty, leaning an arm on
the mantel and getting her wet skirt as close to the fire as she could.
"We were just wondering," she added, addressing Mrs. Ford, "whether, if
Mollie's car got stuck, you would rather have Grace and me struggle on
to Bensington and get some help or stay and keep you company. Although,"
she added ruefully, "if we couldn't pull through that mud, I don't know
what we could find in Bensington to do it."
"Probably the only gasoline vehicles they have in the place are
jitneys," agreed Mollie, with a chuckle.
"I wonder," Amy broke in, apropos of nothing, "who our charming hostess
is. She seems so lovely. It seems odd to meet a person like her and a
house like this out in the wilderness."
"Yes, one does rather expect a farmer's wife and a rambling old
farmhouse so far out in the country," agreed Mrs. Ford.
"Well, maybe her husband is a scientific farmer," suggested Mollie,
adding wickedly as she turned a merry eye on Grace: "The kind Roy once
said he'd like to be. Remember, Grace?"
"Yes, I remember," Grace answered in a tone that indicated the memory
was not a pleasant one. "And I told him he had better drop that idea in
a hurry if he expected me--I mean--any girl--" she floundered, while
they laughed mockingly at her, "to have anything to do with him," she
finished rather weakly, while the girls giggled exasperatingly.
"Well, I don't know," remarked Betty, in an altruistic effort to pour
oil upon the troubled waters, "that I would particularly mind marrying a
scientific farmer if they all have houses like this and acres of ground
with orchards and cows and chickens--"
"And potato bugs," finished Grace, while the girls laughed merrily.
"Well," remarked Mollie, with a desperate gleam in her eye, "I'd marry
just about anybody who would give me a square meal."
"Goodness," remarked Betty, twinkling, "it's mighty lucky for Frank that
there aren't any young men of marriageable age on the horizon just now."
The next moment she regretted her innocent little speech, for she could
see that the mention of the boys had brought more vividly to Grace and
Mrs. Ford and Amy the thought of Will--dear, bright, merry Will--lying
wounded in some far-away hospital, how badly wounded they could not
know, and dared not think.
The silence that fell upon them was broken by the sound of their
hostess' voice, evidently issuing a command to some one in the kitchen.
Then the lady herself swept into the room.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long," she apologized, "but I
have had to help the maid get dinner on the table. She is a new one,
and, oh, so utterly helpless. Then, too, I was hoping my son would come
home, but since everything is ready and I know you must be starving, we
won't delay dinner any longer. If you will come, please--"
"But this is imposing upon good nature," protested Mrs. Ford, as the
lady held back the portiers and disclosed an inviting table set for
seven, elaborate with shining crystal and silver. "To drop down upon you
from a clear--or rather, a cloudy sky--"
They laughed, and their hostess dismissed the protest with a little wave
of her hand.
"It is a pleasure," she said, adding, as they took their places: "I am
only thankful that a lucky chance enabled me to entertain you well
to-night. I was expecting guests from the nearest farm, but since our
next door neighbors are five miles down the road, they hesitated to make
the trip because of the threatening weather. I guess it is just as well
for them they did not come," and she paused to listen to the rain which
was still pouring down in torrents.
Mrs. Ford made an appropriate answer, and the two ladies entered into a
little confidential chat that left the girls pretty much to their own
devices. And they were trying their best not to disgrace themselves and
to pay decorous attention to what their hostess was saying, while their
hearty young appetites were crying their protests aloud.
At last came the new maid whom their hostess had described as 'so
utterly helpless,' looking to the famished girls an angelic being,
bearing about her an aroma of tomato soup and fried chicken, more
tempting than ambrosia.
Without any perceptible hesitation, the girls immediately began to eat
and continued the agreeable occupation without interruption to the end
of the meal, save for an answer to a question or two asked by their
hostess.
The helpless maid was just bringing in an enormous layer cake to the
accompaniment of admiring glances from the girls when the sound of a
latch key in the door made the lady of the house look up with a start.
"It must be my son!" she said, rising hastily, "if you will excuse me a
moment--"
Then came the sound of a hearty greeting in a masculine voice, followed
by a slithery sound of wet clothing. Evidently the newcomer was
divesting himself of some uncomfortably damp apparel. They could hear
his mother speaking in a low voice--probably she was preparing him to
meet the unexpected guests.
"By Jove! did you say two cars?" they heard him exclaim, and it suddenly
seemed to them there was something familiar about his voice. "Now I
wonder--all right, Mother. Just give me a minute to get some dry
clothes on and I'll be right with you. Gosh, but I'm starved!"
The girls smiled sympathetically, for was it only half an hour ago they
had been in that identically uncomfortable state.
"I bet he's nice," said Mollie to Betty, in a whisper just before their
hostess once more entered the room. "Anybody with an appetite like that,
has to be."
"Oh, you shouldn't have waited for me," said the lady, noting that the
ice cream that had followed hard on the heels of the chocolate cake had
begun to melt. "I don't know what to do with that boy," she added,
smiling with a mixture of irritation and fond indulgence. "When he gets
out on his motorcycle, miles mean nothing to him and time means less. He
is always late to dinner."
"I shouldn't think he would have found the riding very pleasant
to-night," said Betty smiling. "In fact, it is a wonder he could ride at
all--the roads are almost impassable."
"Quite impassable, you mean," put in Mollie.
"Oh, he has conquered that difficulty," their hostess explained, her
eyes once more lighting with pride in her son. "He has a sort of path
through the woods, which, while it perhaps lacks the comforts of a state
road, at least is not inches deep in mud. He did get caught that way
once and was several hours coming a few miles."
"She said he rode a motorcycle," remarked Grace to Mollie with apparent
irrelevance as the lady turned to speak to Mrs. Ford.
"Well, what about it?" inquired Mollie, as she proceeded with wonderful
concentration to spear one last small but delicious piece of chocolate
on the end of her fork.
"Doesn't that convey anything to your benighted mind?" Grace was
drawling sarcastically when Betty leaned toward her eagerly.
"I thought his voice sounded familiar," she said. "Of course we know who
he is now."
"Good evening, everybody," said the familiar voice, and they turned to
find its owner strolling toward them across the room.
"Mr. Joe Barnes!" cried Mollie impulsively, then checked herself and
slowly grew red.
"That's who," sang out Joe Barnes slangily, and in the laughter and
greetings that followed Mollie forgot her embarrassment.
Only Joe Barnes' mother looked completely surprised and taken aback.
"You know each other, then," she rather stated than asked as there was a
lull in the conversation. "I had no idea--"
"Of course you hadn't," agreed her son, as he took the vacant seat
beside her and turned upon her a pair of very handsome laughing eyes. "I
didn't either until a few minutes ago, and we haven't been acquainted
more than a few hours."
"Your son did us the favor of helping us out of a difficulty this
afternoon," Mrs. Ford explained, taking pity on the lady's bewilderment.
"To be explicit, he performed the very disagreeable operation of putting
a new tire on the front wheel of our car."
"Oh, so that's it," laughed Mrs. Barnes.
"Mother, what do you say to cutting out ceremony and getting down to
brass tacks?" put in Joe Barnes, eyeing hungrily the plate of steaming
soup the maid had set before him.
"We don't serve them," said his mother demurely. "But I shouldn't wonder
if what we have would prove more digestible."
So Joe Barnes entertained them with fun and jokes while he devoured the
different courses with a thoroughness that awoke the admiration of the
girls.
But no matter how conscientiously Joe did justice to the good things set
before him, there was not a moment when he was not conscious of
Betty--Betty on the other side of the table, dimpling and sending him
back sally for sally with ready wit. What lucky chance had prompted
nature to send a thunderstorm that afternoon? The jolly old lady was
certainly on his side!
Then when Joe had decided that nothing remained to devour, the party
adjourned to the living room, where the former put some records on the
phonograph.
The Barnes had a collection of very wonderful records, and for more than
an hour the girls sat entranced as, one by one, Joe produced for their
enjoyment, the greatest artists of the musical world.
Finally some one suggested that Betty play some of the songs they had
loved in those service-filled days at the Hostess House. As the girlish
voices rang out in one patriotic song after another, Joe Barnes, who was
seated on the edge of a table with one foot swinging idly, fidgeted
uneasily, while over his face came a sober, almost sullen expression.
"Gee, I wish they wouldn't!" he murmured to himself.