There was a doorway near at hand--the floor of the house being one step
higher than the porch which was now flooded. Ruth was just about to drag
her chum into this doorway when a figure plunged out of it--a thin,
graceless figure in a rain-garment of some kind--and little else, as it
proved.
"Oh! oh! oh!" screamed the stranger as she spattered into the water in
her slippered feet. "I am killed! I am drowned!"
Helen began actually to giggle. It did not seem so tragic to her that
the hotel on the island should become suddenly surrounded by water, or
be battered by drifting buildings which the flood had uprooted. The
surprise and fright the woman expressed as she halted on the porch, was
calculated to arouse one's laughter.
"Oh, oh, oh!" said the woman, more feebly.
"Come right back into the house--do!" cried Ruth. "You won't get wet
there."
"But the house is falling down!" gasped the woman, and as she turned the
lamplight from the hall revealed her features, and Helen uttered a
stifled cry.
She recognized the woman's face. So did Ruth, and amazement possessed
both the girls. There was no mistaking the features of the irritable,
nervous teacher from New England, Miss Miggs!
"Do come into the house, Miss Miggs," urged Ruth. "It isn't going to
fall yet."
"How do you know?" snapped the school teacher, as obstinate as ever.
The cottage that had been battering the corner of the porch was now torn
away by the river and swept on, down the current. There sounded a great
hullabaloo from the ballroom. Although the river had not yet risen as
high as the dancing floor, the frightened revelers saw that the flood
was fairly upon them. At the back the darkies added their cries to the
screams of the hysterical guests.
Another drifting object struck and jarred the hotel. Miss Miggs repeated
her scream of fear, and darted into the hall with the same impetuosity
with which she had darted out.
"Who are you girls?" she demanded, peering at Ruth and Helen closely,
for she did not wear her spectacles. "Haven't I seen you before? I
declare! you're the girls who stole my ticket--the idea!"
At the moment--and in time to hear this accusation--Mrs. Holloway appeared
from down the hall. "Oh, Martha!" she cried. "Are you out of your bed?"
She gave the two girls from the North a sharp look as she spoke to the
teacher; but this was no time for an explanation of Miss Miggs' remark.
The school teacher immediately opened a volley of complaints:
"Well, I must say, Cousin Lydia, if I were you I'd build my house on
some secure foundation. And calling it a hotel, too! My mercy me! the
whole thing will be down like a house of cards in ten minutes, and we
shall be drowned."
"Oh, no, Cousin Martha," said the Southern woman. "We shall be all
right. The river will not rise much higher, and it will never tear the
hotel from its base. It is too large."
"Look at these other houses floating away, Lydia Holloway!" screamed
Miss Miggs.
"But they are only the huts from along shore----"
Her statement was interrupted by a terrific shock the hotel suffered as
a good-sized cottage--one of the nearest of the summer colony--smashed
against the hotel, rebounded, and drifted away down stream.
The two women and the two girls were flung together in a clinging group
for half a minute. Then Miss Martha Miggs tore herself away. "Let go of
me, you impudent young minxes!" she cried. "Are you trying to rob me
again?"
"Oh! the horrid thing!" gasped Helen; but Ruth kept her lips closed.
She knew anything they could say would make a bad matter worse. Already
the hotel proprietor's wife was looking at them very doubtfully.
It had stopped raining, but the damp wind swept into the open door and
chilled the girls in their thin frocks. Mrs. Holloway saw this and
remembered that she had to answer to Mrs. Parsons for her guests' well
being.
"Come back into this room," she commanded, and led Miss Miggs first by
the arm into an unlighted parlor. The windows looked up the river, and
as the quartette reached the middle of the room, the unhappy school
teacher emitted another shriek and pointed out of the nearest unshaded
window.
"What is the matter with you now, Martha Miggs?" demanded Mrs. Holloway,
in some exasperation. "If I had known you were in such an hysterical,
nervous state, I would not have invited you down here--and sent your
ticket and all--I assure you. I never saw such a person for startling
one."
"And lots of good the ticket did--with these girls stealing it from me,"
snapped Miss Miggs. "But look at that house next to yours. There! see it
heave? And there's a lighted lamp in that room."
Everybody saw the peril which the school teacher had observed. A lamp
stood on the center table in the parlor of the house next. This house
was set on a lower foundation than the hotel and the rising river,
surging about it, had begun to loosen it.
Even as they looked, the house tipped perceptibly, and the lighted lamp
fell from the table to the floor.
The burning oil was scattered about the room. Although everything was
saturated with rain outside, the interior of the cottage began to burn
furiously and the conflagration would soon endanger the hotel itself.
Helen broke down and began to cry. Ruth put her arm about her chum and
tried to soothe her. Some of the men came charging into the room,
thinking by the sudden flare of the conflagration, that this end of the
hotel was already on fire.
"Oh, dear! Goodness, me!" shrieked the school teacher, taking thought of
her dishabille, and she turned at once and fled upstairs. Mrs. Holloway
quietly fainted in an adjacent, comfortable chair. The men went out on
the porch to see if they could reach the burning cottage; but the water
was too deep and too swift between the two structures.
Ruth carefully attended the woman who had fainted. What had become of
Miss Miggs she did not know. Mrs. Holloway regained consciousness very
suddenly. She looked up at Ruth, recognized her, and shrank away from
the girl of the Red Mill.
"Don't--don't," she gasped. "I'm all right."
Mrs. Holloway's hand went to the bosom of her gown, she fumbled there a
minute, and then brought forth her purse. The feel of the money in it
seemed to reassure her; but Ruth knew what the gesture meant. What she
had heard her cousin say had impressed the hotel keeper's wife strongly.
Hearing the school teacher accuse the two Northern girls of stealing
from her, Mrs. Holloway considered herself unsafe in Ruth's hands.
"Oh, come away," urged Helen, who had likewise observed the woman's
action. "These people make me ill. I wish we were back North again among
our own kind."
"Hush!" warned Ruth. But in secret she felt justified in making the same
wish as her chum.