That very forenoon after the two smallest girls had set out on their
drive with Scalawag a telegram came to the old Corner House for Ruth.
As Agnes said, a telegram was "an event in their young sweet lives." And
this one did seem of great importance to Ruth. It was from Cecile
Shepard and read:
"Arrived Oakhurst. They will not let me see Luke."
Aside from the natural shock that the telegram itself furnished,
Cecile's declaration that she was not allowed to see her brother was
bound to make Ruth Kenway fear the worst.
"Oh!" she cried, "he must be very badly hurt indeed. It is much worse
than Cecile thought when she wrote. Oh, Agnes! what shall I do?"
"Telegraph her for particulars," suggested Agnes, quite practically. "A
broken wrist can't be such an awful thing, Ruthie."
"But his back! Suppose he has seriously hurt his back?"
"Goodness me! That would be awful, of course. He might grow a hump like
poor Fred Littleburg. But I don't believe that anything like that has
happened to Luke, Ruthie."
Her sister was not to be easily comforted. "Think! There must be
something very serious the matter or they would not keep his own sister
from seeing him." Ruth herself had had no word from Luke since the
accident.
Neither of the sisters knew that Cecile Shepard had never had occasion
to send a telegram before and had never received one in all her life.
But she learned that a message of ten words could be sent for thirty-two
cents to Milton, so she had divided what she wished to say in two equal
parts! The second half of her message, however, because of the mistake
of the filing clerk at the telegraph office in Oakhurst, did not arrive
at the Corner House for several hours after the first half of the
message.
Ruth Kenway meanwhile grew almost frantic as she considered the possible
misfortune that might have overtaken Luke Shepard. She grew quite as
"extracted"--to quote Dot--as Mrs. Pinkney was about the absence of Sammy.
"Well," Agnes finally declared, "if I felt as you do about it I would
not wait to hear from Mr. Howbridge. I'd start right now. Here's the
time table. I've looked up the trains. There is one at ten minutes to
one--twelve-fifty. I'll call Neale and he'll drive you down to the
station. You might have gone with the children if that telegram had come
earlier."
Agnes was not only practical, she was helpful on this occasion. She
packed Ruth's bag--and managed to get into it a more sensible variety of
articles than Sammy Pinkey had carried in his!
"Now, don't be worried about _us_," said Agnes, when Ruth, dressed for
departure, began to speak with anxiety about domestic affairs, including
the continued absence of the little girls. "Haven't we got Mrs.
McCall--and Linda? You _do_ take your duties so seriously, Ruth Kenway."
"Do you think so?" rejoined Ruth, smiling rather wanly at the flyaway
sister. "If anything should happen while I am gone--"
"Nothing will happen that wouldn't happen anyway, whether you are at
home or not," declared the positive Agnes.
Ruth made ready to go in such a hurry that nobody else in the Corner
House save Agnes herself realized that the older sister was going until
the moment that Neale O'Neil drove around to the front gate with the
car. Then Ruth ran into Aunt Sarah's room to kiss her good-bye. But Aunt
Sarah had always lived a life apart from the general existence of the
Corner House family and paid little attention to what her nieces did
save to criticise. Mrs. McCall was busy this day preserving--"up tae ma
eyen in wark, ma lassie"--and Ruth kissed her, called good-bye to Linda,
and ran to the front door before any of the three actually realized what
was afoot.
Agnes ran with her to the street. At the gate stood a dark-faced,
brilliantly dressed young woman, with huge gold rings in her ears,
several other pieces of jewelry worn in sight, and a flashing smile as
she halted the Kenway sisters with outstretched hand.
"Will the young ladies let me read their palms?" she said suavely. "I
can tell them the good fortune."
"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Agnes, pushing by the Gypsy. "We can't stop to
have our fortunes told now."
Ruth kept right on to the car.
"Do not neglect the opportunity of having the good fortune told, young
ladies," said the Gypsy girl shrewdly. "I can see that trouble is
feared. The dark young lady goes on a journey because of the threat of
_ill_ fortune. Perhaps it is not so bad as it seems."
Agnes was really impressed. Left to herself she actually would have
heeded the Gypsy's words. But Ruth hurried into the car, Neale reached
back and slammed the tonneau door, and they were off for the station
with only a few minutes to catch the twelve-fifty train.
"There!" ejaculated Agnes, standing at the curb to wave her hand and
look after the car.
"The blonde young lady does not believe the Gypsy can tell her something
that will happen--and in the near future?"
"Oh!" exclaimed Agnes. "I don't know." And she dragged her gaze from the
car and looked doubtfully upon the dark face of the Gypsy girl which was
now serious.
The latter said: "Something has sent the dark young lady from home in
much haste and anxiety?"
The question was answered of course before it was asked. Any observant
person could have seen as much. But Agnes's interest was attracted and
she nodded.
"Had your sister," the Gypsy girl said, guessing easily enough at the
relationship of the two Corner House girls, "not been in such haste, she
could have learned something that will change the aspect of the
threatened trouble. More news is on the way."
Agnes was quite startled by this statement. Without explaining further
the Gypsy girl glided away, disappearing into Willow Street.
Agnes failed to see, as the Gypsy quite evidently did, the leisurely
approach of the telegraph messenger boy with the yellow envelope in his
hand and his eyes fixed upon the old Corner House.
Agnes ran within quickly. She was more than a little impressed by the
Gypsy girl's words, and a few minutes later when the front doorbell rang
and she took in the second telegram addressed to Ruth, she was pretty
well converted to fortune telling as an exact science.
* * * * *
Sammy Pinkney had marched out of the house late at night, as his mother
suspected, lugging his heavy extension-bag, with a more vague idea of
his immediate destination than was even usual when he set forth on such
escapades.
To "run away" seemed to Sammy the only thing for a boy to do when home
life and restrictions became in his opinion unbearable. It might be
questioned by stern disciplinarians if Mr. and Mrs. Pinkney had properly
punished Sammy after he had run away the first few times, the boy would
not have been cured of his wanderlust.
Fortunately, although Sammy's father was stern enough, he very well knew
that this desire for wandering could not be beaten out of the boy.
Merely if he were beaten, when he grew big enough to fend for himself in
the world, he would leave home and never return rather than face
corporal punishment.
"I was just such a kid when I was his age," admitted Mr. Pinkney. "My
father licked me for running away, so finally I ran away when I was
fourteen, and stayed away. Sammy has less reason for leaving home than I
had, and he'll get over his foolishness, get a better education than I
obtained, and be a better man, I hope, in the end. It's in the Pinkney
blood to rove."
This, of course, while perhaps being satisfactory to a man, did not at
all calm Sammy's mother. She expected the very worst to happen to her
son every time he disappeared; and as has been shown on this occasion,
the boy's absence stirred the community to its very dregs.
Had Mrs. Pinkney known that after tramping as far as the outskirts of
the town, and almost dropping from exhaustion, Sammy had gone to bed on
a pile of straw in an empty cow stable, she would have been even more
troubled than she was.
Sammy, however, came to no harm. He slept so soundly in fact on the rude
couch that it was mid-forenoon before he awoke--stiff, sore in muscles,
clamorously hungry, and in a frame of mind to go immediately home and
beg for breakfast.
He had more money tied up in his handkerchief, however, than he had ever
possessed before when he had run away. There was a store in sight at the
roadside not far ahead. He hid his bag in the bushes and bought
crackers, ham, cheese, and a big bottle of sarsaparilla, and so made a
hearty if not judicious breakfast and lunch.
At least, this picnic meal cured the slight attack of homesickness which
he suffered. He was no longer for turning back. The whole world was
before him and he strode away into it--lugging that extension-bag.
While his troubled mother was showing Agnes Kenway the unmistakable
traces of his departure for parts unknown, Sammy was trudging along
pretty contentedly, the bag awkwardly knocking against his knees, and
his sharp eyes alive to everything that went on along the road.
Sammy had little love for natural history or botany, or anything like
that. He suffered preparatory lessons in those branches of enforced
knowledge during the school year.
He did not care a bit to know the difference between a gray squirrel and
a striped chipmunk. They both chattered at him saucily, and he stopped
to try a shot at each of them with his gun.
To Sammy's mind they were legitimate game. He visualized himself
building a fire in a fence corner, skinning and cleaning his game and
roasting it over the flames for supper. But the squirrel and the
chipmunk visualized quite a different outcome to the adventure and they
refused to be shot by the amateur sportsman.
Sammy struck into a road that led across the canal by a curved bridge
and right out into a part of the country with which he was not at all
familiar. The houses were few and far between, and most of them were set
well back from the road.
Sometimes dogs barked at him, but he was not afraid of watch dogs. He
did not venture into the yards or up the private lanes. He had bought
enough crackers and cheese to make another meal when he should want it.
And there were sweet springs beside the road, or in the pastures where
the cattle grazed.
Few vehicles passed him in either direction. It was the time of the late
hay harvest and everybody was at work in the fields--and usually when he
saw the haymakers at all, they were far from the road.
He met no pedestrians at all. Being quite off the line of the railroad,
there were no tramps on this road, and of course there was nothing else
to harm the boy. His mother, in her anxiety, peopled the world with
those that would do Sammy harm. In truth, he was never safer in his
life!
But adventure? Why, the world was full of it, and Sammy Pinkney expected
to meet any number of exciting incidents as he went on.
"Sammy," Dot Kenway once said, "has just a _wunnerful_ 'magination. Why!
if he sees our old Sandyface creeping through the grass after a poor
little field mouse, Sammy can think she's a whole herd of tigers. His
'magination is just wunnerful!"