DAISIES AND DANGERS
In the week following Tessie made a number of acquaintances about
Glenmoor, not the least among such being Frank Pierson, the grocer boy,
and glad to see a young girl on the big estate, Frank promptly asked
Tessie to take a ride out in the country with him some afternoon, and
quite as promptly, Tessie accepted the invitation.
"I have to deliver out Flosston way tomorrow," said Frank. "What do you
say to coming along?"
"Flosston!" repeated Tessie. She hesitated. Would she risk taking a
look at the town in the mill end of which were still located the
deserted members of her family?
"What's the matter? Don't you want to go?" pressed Frank, as she
withheld her reply.
"Oh, yes, of course I'll go," Tessie answered then, and having said she
would go, the question of caution seemed to have solved itself. After
all, the grocer would have no business in the factory district, and it
would be so good to see the familiar places again. Since her coming to
Jacqueline's everything seemed so much brighter, her old fears of
capture and perhaps detention in a corrective institution, had almost
disappeared, and the prospect of a country ride with Frank Pierson
afforded pleasant speculation indeed.
"You may bring me a big bunch of daisies," Jacqueline told her, in
granting permission for the afternoon out. "Since you came I have
almost lost Jerry. But then, he was so very good, I am sure he should
have been given a vacation."
The little grocery wagon did not have to delay for its passenger when
next afternoon Prank, with a clean blouse and his cap at exactly the
right tilt, called to deliver goods and "collect" Tessie.
Starting out along the broad avenue, Gyp, the brown horse, jauntily
drew the light yellow wagon, holding his head up quite as proudly as
any flashy cob that passed with the fancy equipage in turn-out for the
lovely afternoon driving. Presently, from the fashionable thoroughfare
Frank turned into the "Old Road," that wended along railroad and river
lines out Flosston way.
"You can drive here," he conceded, handing the reins to Tessie. "I
don't have to make another stop for half a mile."
"I used to drive long ago, when I was a little girl with pigtails," she
answered, taking the lines. "Gyp is gentle, isn't he?"
"Yep, mostly he is. But he scares up, once in a while. Doesn't like an
umbrella shot up under his nose, and I've seen him dance at a postal
card flaring up with the wind."
Entering Flosston, Tessie felt more emotion than she expected to
experience. That last night in the town, when she and Dagmar waited at
the station; their dispute over the road they should take; the finding
of the badge, and the return of the girl scouts in search of it: all
this surged over her like a cloud, covering the bright sunshine that
danced through the trees. Frank evidently observed her preoccupation,
for he made frantic efforts to be especially entertaining.
Once, when the post-office clerk emerged from the drug-store, Tessie
pulled her hat down until the pin at back tugged viciously in her coil
of black hair. That clerk might recognize her, and her folks surely
called for mail occasionally. But the clerk never raised his head, as
Gyp sauntered along, and it was a relief to make sure that her new and
different outfit was a complete disguise. No one would now recognize
her as Tessie Wartliz, of Fluffdown Mills.
"I have to get Miss Douglass some daisies. See that lovely field over
there! Could we stop long enough for me to gather a bunch?" she asked
Frank presently.
"Sure thing!" replied the boy merrily. "I only have to turn in a few
more boxes, and then my time's my own. Sometimes I take my sister
Bessie when I come out here, and once mother came. But she wanted to
knit. Can you beat that: knitting on a grocery wagon?"
"Oh, folks who like it knit in their sleep, I guess," replied Tessie,
giving the reins to Frank that he might turn safely into the field over
the rough little hill at the roadside.
"And say," went on Frank, "I put a chair in back for ma, and rode along
the avenue as innocent as a lamb. Of course I was whistling and can you
guess what happened?"
"Mother went out the back way?" asked Tessie.
"Surest thing you know. I looks back, and there went ma and her
cane-seat chair, doing a regular cake-walk, along the boulevard. Oh,
man! What she didn't say to me!" and Frank shouted a laugh that made
Gyp jump clear over the last hillock.
"Best to sit on stationary seats when one goes grocery riding,"
commented Tessie. "Now I'll pick daisies, and you can whistle all you
like."
"But I'm goin' to pick," insisted Frank. "I'll race you," and with the
boy's proverbial love of sport, even picking daisies became a novel
game.
It took but a short time to fill arms with the plentiful white
blossoms, tacked on their green stems with gold buttons, and presently
Tessie was ready to embark again, after Frank had deposited both
bunches of daisies in an empty box back of the seat.
Out on the road once more, Tessie caught sight of a girl she knew well.
It was Nettie Paine, who sold spools of crochet cotton in the little
fancy shop, and how glad Tessie would be to stop and buy a few spools
just now! She could make such a pretty camisole top--but--no, it would
be foolish to take such a risk. So she reluctantly turned her head away
from the fancy-goods store.
"Now, just one more stop!" Frank announced. "I have to buy some things
at the stationers. You hold Gyp in, Stacia. We're quite near the track,
and he doesn't love the Limited Express."
But Stacia (or Tessie) allowed the reins to lay loosely in her lap as
she watched a girl scout in uniform approach. She was alone and tramped
with a sure tread that might have marked her a True Tred had Tessie any
knowledge of the troop's name. "Those girls are everywhere," she told
herself, and then fell to day dreams of girl scout possibilities.
Buried in thought, Tessie forgot Frank's warning to look out for the
express, until a shrill whistle rent the air and Gyp sprang forward,
almost tossing the girl from her seat on the wagon.
Frantically she yelled at the little horse to "Whoa!" But on he dashed,
and the gates were down directly ahead!
Realizing her danger and leaning forward in her panic of fear,
something happened to the rein, for she felt it fall, and even the
power of pulling on Gyp's head was now lost.
And the express could be seen rounding the curve!
Prayers rose to Tessie's lips while terror gripped her heart.
Moments were like hours, yet time had no proportion in the fear of
death that seemed almost certain.
Then just as the frightened little animal shied clear of a telegraph
pole, and with head high in the air seemed to make a final dash, he was
suddenly pulled back. The jolt threw Tessie against the side curtain.
The little girl scout--she whom Tessie had noticed but a few minutes
before, was now hanging on the reins!
But Gyp was dragging her on. Would she, too, be killed? If some man
would only come to their rescue!
Then everything seemed to whirl before Tessie's distorted vision.
Things "got black and went out." Next, she felt herself tumble back in
the box of daisies.
But Gyp had stopped! The girl scout had pulled him up somehow, and now
Frank was there talking, and shouting, and praising the girl who had
saved Tessie's life.
"And she wouldn't even give her name," he was calling to Tessie. "Some
narrow escape, I'll say. Why, that express no more than shot by when
you touched the gates. If you hadn't looked so dead, I might have got
that girl's name, but she's in one of those cottages by now. Well,
we'll beat it for home," and he turned cautiously into the broader
roadway. "Gyp, you'll go on a light diet for this, see if you don't!"
But all the joy of her lovely ride was erased in the perilous
experience. And again the influence of the girl scouts forced its way
into her uncertain life. Truly the little heroes in that modest uniform
deserved such merit badges as the one so lately given to Jacqueline
Douglass.
But it would not be wise to recount to the invalid child anything of
this wild adventure. This Tessie felt instinctively. Nevertheless, when
that night Jacqueline was placed in her dining chair, and while
chatting with her brother she proudly displayed the clover leaf pin in
a new little velvet case, Tessie wondered what could have been the
original feat of heroism for which this badge had been bestowed.
"And the girl who saved my life deserves the highest award," she
reflected, "although no one will ever know, I suppose. She risked her
own life in the attempt." Such was Tessie's decision, while that little
scout was congratulating herself on having really saved a life "without
anyone knowing who did it." She had HER secret now and it was
delightful to cuddle so securely in her happy little heart.