A STRANGE MEETING
Breakfast on the farm was just such another meal as supper had been.
Again Bessie wondered at the profusion of good things that, at the
Hoovers, had always been kept for sale instead of being used on the
table. There was rich, thick cream, for instance, fresh fruit and all
sorts of good things, so that anyone whose whole acquaintance with
country fare was confined to what the Mercer farm provided might well
have believed all the tales of the good food of the farm. Bessie knew,
of course, without ever having thought much about it, that on many
American farms, despite the ease with which fresh fruits and vegetables
are to be had, a great deal of canned stuff is used.
"Bessie," said Eleanor, after breakfast, "this is rather different from
the Hoovers, isn't it?"
"It certainly is," agreed Bessie.
"Well, of course it isn't possible right now, Bessie, but I've been
thinking that some time, when Maw Hoover has gotten over her dislike for
you, you may be able to teach her and some of the other farm women in
Hedgeville how much more pleasant their lives could be."
Bessie looked surprised.
"Why, I don't believe I'll ever dare go back there," she said. "I
believe Maw Hoover would be willing to put me in prison if she could for
setting that barn on fire. I'm sure she thinks I did it. She wouldn't
believe it was Jake, with his silly trick of trying to frighten me with
those burning sticks."
"She'll find out the truth some time, Bessie, never fear. And think
about what I said. One of the great things this Camp Fire movement is
trying to do is to make women's lives healthier and happier all over the
country. And I don't believe that we've thought half enough of the women
on the farms so far. You've made me realize that."
"But there are lots and lots of Camp Fires in country places, aren't
there, Miss Eleanor? I read about ever so many of them."
"Yes, but not in the sort of country places I mean. There are Camp
Fires, and plenty of them, in the towns in the country, and even in the
bigger villages. But the places I'm thinking of are those like
Hedgeville, where all the village there is is just a post office and two
or three stores, where the people come in from the farms for miles
around to get their mail and buy a few things. You know how much good a
Camp Fire would do in Hedgeville, but it would be pretty hard to get one
started."
Bessie's eyes shone.
"Oh, I wish there was one!" she cried. "I know lots of the girls on the
farms there would love to do the things we do. They're nice girls, lots
of them, though they didn't like me much. You see, Jake Hoover used to
tell his maw lies about me, and she told them to her friends, and they
told their girls--and they believed them, of course. I think that was
one reason why I couldn't get along very well with the other girls."
"I think that's probably the real reason, Bessie, just as you say.
But if you go back you can make it different, I'm sure. You needn't be
afraid of Jake Hoover any more, I think, especially after what he did
at General Seeley's."
"Killing that poor pheasant? Wasn't that a mean thing for him to do?
They used to say he did some poaching, sometimes, around Hedgeville, but
then about everyone did there, I guess. But I didn't think he'd ever try
to catch such beautiful birds as the ones General Seeley had."
"I could forgive him for killing the bird much more easily than for
trying to get you blamed for doing it, Bessie. But let's change the
subject. How did you and Dolly Ransom get along?"
Bessie smiled at the recollection of the stream of questions she had had
to answer from her new roommate.
"She's great!" she said, enthusiastically. "I think we're going to be
fine friends, Miss Eleanor."
"I hope so. There isn't a bit of real harm in Dolly, but she's
mischievous and loves to tease, and I'm afraid that some time she'll go
too far and get herself into trouble without meaning to at all."
"She doesn't like her aunt, Miss Eleanor--the one she lives with now
that her father's away so much."
Miss Mercer made a wry face.
"Miss Ransom's lovely in many ways," she said, "but she doesn't
understand young girls, and she seems to think that Dolly ought to be
just as wise and staid and sober as if she were grown up. I think that
is the chief reason for Dolly's mischief. It has to have some way to
escape, and she's pretty well tied down at home. So I overlook a lot
of her tricks, when, if one of the other girls was guilty, I'd have to
speak pretty severely about it. Well, here she is now! Go off with her
if you like, Bessie."
"Oh, Miss Mercer, what do we have to do this morning?" shouted Dolly as
soon as she saw Bessie and the Guardian.
"What you like until after lunch, Dolly. Then perhaps we may want to
arrange to do something all together--have a cooking lesson, or learn
something about the farm. We'll see. But you and Bessie might as well go
over the place now and get acquainted with it. Bessie can probably find
her way about easier than you city girls."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Dolly. "Come on, Bessie! I bet we can have lots
of sport."
So they went off, and, though Bessie wanted to see the great barn in
which the horses were kept, Dolly wanted to go toward the road at the
entrance of the place, and Bessie yielded, since the choice of direction
didn't seem a bit important then.
"I saw one of those boys who drove us up last night going off this way,"
Dolly explained, guilelessly, "and, Bessie, he looked ever so much nicer
in his blue overalls than he did in that horrible, stiff, black suit he
was wearing last night."
"You shouldn't laugh at his clothes. They're his very best, Dolly. The
overalls are just his working clothes, and you'd hurt his feelings
terribly if he knew that you were laughing at the store clothes. He
probably had to save up his money for a long time to buy them."
"Oh, well, I don't care! I wonder if there's any place around here where
you can buy ice-cream soda? I'm just dying to have some."
"I thought you were going without soda and candy for a month to get an
honor bead, Dolly."
"Oh, bother! I was, but it was too hard. I got a soda when I'd gone
without for two weeks, and I never thought of the old honor bead until
I'd begun to drink it. So that discouraged me, and I gave it up."
"But don't you feel much better when you don't eat candy and drink sodas
between meals?"
"I don't know--maybe I do. Yes, I guess I do. But they taste so good,
Bessie!"
"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to do without the soda here."
Dolly was still really leading the way, and now, her eyes on a blue clad
figure, she decided to leave the avenue of trees that led to the road
and cut across a field.
"Don't you love the smell of hay, Bessie?" asked Dolly. "I think it's
fine. That's one of the things I like best about the country, and being
on a farm."
"I guess I know it too well to get excited about it, Dolly. You see,
I've lived on a farm almost all my life, and so things like that aren't
new to me. But it is lovely and, yes, I do believe I've missed it, there
in the city."
"Wouldn't you rather live in the city, though?"
"Yes, because I wasn't happy where I was in the country, and in the city
I've had everything to make me happy. I suppose you'd rather live in the
country, though?"
"No, indeed! I like to hear the city noises at night, and to see all the
people. And I like to go to the theatre, when my aunt lets me go to a
matinee, and to the moving picture shows, and everything like that.
Don't you love the movies?"
"I never went, so I don't know."
"Not really? You don't mean they haven't even got a moving picture place
In Hedgeville? I never heard of such a thing!"
Bessie laughed.
"Moving pictures are pretty new, Dolly. No one could go to them until
a little while ago, no matter where they lived, or how much money they
had. And I guess people got along all right without them."
"Yes, but they had to get along without lots of things until they were
invented--telephones and electric lights, and lots and lots of useful
things like that. But you wouldn't expect us to get along without them
now, would you?"
"I guess it's only the things we know about that we really need, Dolly.
If we don't know about a lot of these modern things, we keep right along
getting on without them. Like Hedgeville--the only man there who has a
telephone is Farmer Weeks."
"Yes," said Dolly triumphantly, "and he's got more money than all the
rest of the people in the place put together, hasn't he!"
Bessie laughed.
"And all this just because you want an ice-cream soda! What will you do
if you really can't have one, Dolly?"
"I don't know! I'm just hankering for one--my mouth is watering from
thinking about it!"
"We might ask this boy. Miss Eleanor said his name was Stubbs, Walter
Stubbs."
Bessie smiled to herself as she saw how surprised Dolly was trying to
seem at the discovery that they had come to the part of the field where
Walter was working. He was red to the ears, but Bessie could tell from
the way he was looking at Dolly that the city girl, with her smart
clothes and her pretty face, had already made a deep impression on the
farm boy. Now as the two girls approached, he looked at them sheepishly,
standing first on one foot, and then on the other.
"Do you work all the time?" Dolly asked him, impishly, darting a look at
Bessie.
"Cal'late to--most of the time," said Walter.
"Don't you ever have any fun? Don't you ever meet a couple of girls and
treat them to ice-cream soda, for instance?"
"Oh, sure!" said Walter. "Year ago come October Si Hinkle an' I, we went
to the city for the day with the gals we was buzzin' then an' we bought
'em each an ice-cream sody."
"Did you have to go to the city to do that?" said Dolly.
"Sure! Ain't no place nigher'n that. Over to Deer Crossin' there's a man
has lemon pop in bottles sometimes, but he ain't got no founting like we
saw in the city, nor no ice-cream, neither."
Dolly was a picture of woe and disappointment.
"Tell yer what, though," said Walter, bashfully. "Saturday night there's
a goin' to be an ice-cream festival over to the Methodist Church at the
Crossing, an' I'm aimin' ter go, though my folks is Baptists. I'll treat
yer to a plate of ice-cream over there."
"Will you, really?" said Dolly, brightening up and looking as pleased as
if the ice-cream soda she wanted so much had suddenly been set down
before her in the field.
"I sure will," said Walter, hugely pleased. "Say, they play all sorts of
games over there--forfeits an' post office an'--"
Bessie had to laugh at Dolly's look of mystification.
"Come on, Dolly," she said. "We mustn't keep Walter from his work or
he'll be getting into trouble. We can see him again some time when he
isn't so busy." And as they walked off she told Dolly about the country
games the boy had spoken of--games in which kissing played a large part.
"The country isn't as nice as I thought," said Dolly dolefully. "I'm so
thirsty, and there's no place to buy even sarsaparilla!"
"Maybe not, but I can show you something better than that for your
thirst, Dolly. See that rocky place over there, under the trees! I'll
bet there's a spring there. Let's find out."
Sure enough, there was a spring, carefully covered, and a cup, so that
anyone working in the fields could get water, and even Dolly had to
admit that no ice-cream soda had ever quenched her thirst as well.
"What delicious water!" she exclaimed. "Where's the ice?"
"There isn't any, silly!" laughed Bessie. "It's cold like that because
it comes bubbling right up out of the ground."
"I bet that's just the sort of water they sell in bottles in the city,
because it's so much purer than the city water," said Dolly. "But that's
an awfully little spring, Bessie."
"The basin isn't very big, but that doesn't mean that there isn't always
plenty of water. You see, no matter how much you take out, there's
always more coming. See that little brook? Well, this spring feeds that,
and it runs off and joins other brooks, but there's always water here
just the same. Of course, in a drought, if there was no rain for a long
time, it might dry up, but it doesn't look as if that ever happened
here."
"Well, it is good water, and that's a lot better than nothing," said
Dolly. "Come on! We started for the road. Let's go down and sit on the
fence and watch the people go by."
So they made their way on through the field until they came to the road,
and there they sat on the fence, enjoying some apples that Bessie had
pronounced eatable, after several attempts by Dolly to consume some from
half a dozen trees that would have caused her a good deal of pain later.
Two or three automobiles passed as they sat there, and Dolly looked at
their occupants enviously.
"If we had a car, Bessie," she said, "we could get to some place where
they sell ice-cream soda in no time, and be back in plenty of time for
lunch, too. I wish some friend of mine would come along in one of those
motors!"
None did, but, vastly to Bessie's surprise, they had not been there
long before a big green touring car that had shot by them a few minutes
before so fast that they could not see its occupants at all, came back,
doubling on its course, and stopped in the road just before them. And on
the driver's seat, discarding his goggles so that Bessie could recognize
him, was Mr. Holmes--the man who had taken her and Miss Mercer for a
ride, and whom she felt she had so much reason to distrust!
"This is good fortune! I'm very glad indeed to see you," he said,
cordially, to Bessie. "Miss King, is it not--Miss Bessie King, Miss
Mercer's friend? Won't you introduce me to the other young lady!"