AN IMPORTANT ARRIVAL
Agnes _did_ fall asleep; but Ruth only dozed, if she closed her eyes
at all. The rumble of the storm shook the nerves of the oldest Corner
House girl—and no wonder!
Ruth felt the weight of responsibility for her sisters’ safety. If
anything happened while they were under canvas she knew that she would
be blamed.
Sometimes the spray swept in from the river and spattered on the
canvas like a drenching shower. The walls of the tent shook. She heard
many sounds without that she could not explain—and some of these
sounds frightened her.
Suppose the tent should blow down? The way the wind sometimes shook it
reminded Ruth of a dog shaking a bit of rag.
Then, when the wind held its breath for a moment, the roaring of the
sea in the distance was a savage sound to which the girl’s ears were
not attuned.
She had left the lantern lit and it swung from a rope tied to the
ridgepole of the tent, and beyond the half partition of canvas. Its
flickering light cast weird shadows upon the canvas roof.
Now and then the spray beat against the front of the tent, while the
roof shook and shivered as though determined to tear away from the
walls. Ruth wished she had gone all around the tent before dark to
make sure the pegs were driven well into the sand.
Occasionally children cried shrilly, for the noise of the elements
frightened them; Ruth was thankful that Tess and Dot slept on.
She slept herself at last; how long she did not know, for when she
awoke she was too greatly frightened to look at her watch. The wind
seemed suddenly to have increased. It seemed struggling to tear the
tent up by the roots!
And as the canvas shook, and swelled, and strove to burst its
fastenings, there came a sudden snap on one side and one of the pegs
flew high in the air at the end of its rope, coming down slap on the
roof of the tent!
“The peg has pulled out!” gasped Ruth, sitting up in her cot and
throwing off the blanket.
The canvas was straining and bellying fearfully at the point where the
peg had drawn. It was likely to draw the pegs on either side. Ruth
very well knew that if a broad enough opening was made for the wind to
get under, the tent would be torn from its fastenings.
She hopped out upon the matting and shook Agnes by the shoulder.
“Get up! Get up, Ag!” she called, breathlessly. “Help me.”
She ran to the front of the tent for the maul—a long-handled,
heavy-headed croquet-mallet. When she returned with it, Agnes was
trying to rub her eyes open.
“Come quick, Ag! We’ll be blown away,” declared Ruth.
“I—I——What’ll we do?” whimpered Agnes.
“We must hold the tent down. Come on! Get into your mackintosh. I’ll
get the lantern.”
Around the upright pole in the sleeping part of the tent were hung the
girls’ outer garments. Ruth got into her own raincoat and buttoned it
to her ankles. She left Agnes struggling with hers while she ran to
unhang the lantern. She knew the night must be as black as a pocket
outside.
“Wha—what you going to do?” stuttered Agnes.
“Drive the pegs in deeper. One of them pulled out.”
“Oh, dear! _Can_ we?”
“I guess we’ll have to, if we don’t want to lose our tent. Hear that
wind?”
“It—it sounds like cannon roaring.”
“Come on!”
“But that isn’t the front flap——”
“Think I’m going to unlace that front flap when the wind’s blowing
right into it?”
“Can’t we get out yonder, where the peg has been pulled?”
“But how’ll we get in again when all the stakes are driven down hard?”
snapped Ruth, beginning to unlace the flaps of the rear wall of the
tent.
“Oh! oh!” moaned Agnes. “Hear that wind?”
“I wouldn’t care if it only _hollered_,” gasped Ruth. “It’s what it
will do if it ever gets under this tent, that troubles me!”
She unlaced the flaps only a little way. “Come along with that
lantern, Ag. We’ve got to crawl under.”
“‘Get down and get under,’” giggled Agnes, hysterically.
But she brought the lantern and followed Ruth out of the tent, on
hands and knees. When they stood up and tried to go around to that
side of the tent where the peg had pulled out, the wind almost knocked
them down.
“And how the sleet cuts!” gasped Agnes, her arm across her eyes for
protection.
“It’s sand,” explained Ruth. “I thought it was spray from the river.
But a good deal of it is sand—just like a sand-storm in the desert.”
“Well!” grumbled Agnes, “I hope it’s killing a lot of those sandfleas
that bother us so. I don’t see how they can live and be blown about
this way.”
Ruth tackled the first post at the corner and beat it down as hard as
she could, Agnes holding the lantern so that the older girl could see
where to strike.
They went from one peg to the next, taking each in rotation. And when
they reached the one that had pulled out entirely, Ruth drove that
into the ground just as far as it would go.
Strangely enough, throughout all this business, Tess and Dot did not
awake. Ruth went clear around the tent, driving the stakes. The wind
howled; the sand and spray blew; and the voices of the Night and of
the Storm seemed fairly to yell at them. Still the smaller Corner
House girls slept through it all. Ruth and Agnes crept back into the
tent and laced the flaps down in safety.
A little later, before either of them fell asleep again, they heard
shouting and confusion at a distance. In the morning they learned that
two of the tents in the Enterprise Camp had blown down.
The shore was strewn with wreckage, too, when daybreak came; but the
wind seemed to have blown itself out. Many small craft had come
ashore, and some were damaged. It was not often that the summer
visitors at Pleasant Cove saw any such gale as this had been.
Everything was all right with the Corner House girls, and Ruth decided
they would stick to the tent, in spite of the fact that some of the
camping families were frightened away from the tent colonies by this
disgraceful exhibition of Mr. Wind!
The smaller Kenways, as well as the bigger girls, were enjoying the
out-of-door life immensely. They were already as brown as berries.
They ran all day, bare-headed and bare-legged, on the sands. It was
plain to be seen that the change from Milton to Pleasant Cove was
doing all the Corner House girls a world of good.
And during the extremely pleasant days that immediately followed the
night of the big wind, many new colonists came to the tents. Two big
tents were erected in the Willowbend Camp, for Joe Eldred and _his_
friends—and that included, of course, Neale O’Neil. But the Milton
boys would not arrive until the next week.
On Monday afternoon the Corner House girls walked down to the railroad
station to greet Rosa Wildwood. It had been a very hot day in town and
it was really hot at Pleasant Cove, as well.
“Oh! you poor thing!” gasped Ruth, receiving Rosa in her strong arms
as she stumbled off the car steps with her bag.
“I’m as thin as the last run of shad, am I not?” asked Rosa, laughing.
“That train was _awful_! I am baked. It’s never like this down South.
The air is so much dryer there; there isn’t this humidity. Oh!”
“Well, you’re here all right now, Rosa,” cried Ruth. “We have a nice,
easy carriage for you to ride in. And the _dearest_ place for you to
live!”
“And scrumptious eating, Rose,” added Agnes.
“With the little old woman who lives in a shoe,” declared Tess, eager
to add her bit of information.
Dot’s finger had strayed to the corner of her mouth, as she stared.
For she had never met Rosa before, and she was naturally rather a
bashful child.
“Now!” cried Ruth, again. “Where is he?”
“Who?” demanded Agnes, staring all about. “Neale didn’t come, did he?”
“Oh, he’s up in the baggage-car ahead,” said Rosa, laughing.
“You sit right down here till I get him,” Ruth commanded.
“Here’s the check,” Rosa said, and to the amazement of the other
Corner House girls Ruth ran right away toward the head of the train
with the baggage check, and without saying another word.
There were two baggage cars on the long train and from the open door
of the first one the man was throwing trunks and bags onto the big
wheel-truck.
So Ruth ran on to the other car. The side-door was wheeled back just
as she arrived, and a glad bark welcomed her appearance.
Tom Jonah stood in the doorway, straining at his leash held in the
hands of the baggageman. His tongue lolled out on his chest like a red
necktie, and he was laughing just as plainly as ever a dog _did_
laugh.
“I see he knows you, Miss,” said the man. “You don’t have to prove
property. He sure is glad to see you,” and he accepted the check.
“No gladder than I am to see him,” said Ruth. “Let him jump down,
please.”
She caught the leather strap as the baggageman tossed it toward her,
and Tom Jonah bounded about her in an ecstasy of delight.
“Down, sir!” she commanded. “Now, Tom Jonah, come and see the girls.
But behave.”
He barked loudly, but trotted along beside her most sedately. Tess and
Dot had heard him, and deserting Rosa and Agnes, they came flying up
the platform to meet Ruth and the big dog.
The two younger Corner House girls hugged Tom Jonah, and he licked
their hands in greeting. Agnes was as extravagantly glad to see him as
were the others.
“How did you come to send for him, Ruthie?” Agnes cried.
“I thought we might need a chaperon at the tent,” laughed Ruth.
“The Gyps!” exclaimed Agnes, under her breath. “Let them come now, if
they want to. You’re a smart girl, Ruthie.”
“Sh!” commanded the older sister. “Don’t let the children hear.”
They helped Rosa into the wagonette and then climbed in after her.
Ruth had taken off Tom Jonah’s leash and the good old dog trotted
after the carriage as it rolled through Main Street and out upon the
Shore Road toward the tent colonies.
Rosa brought all the news of home to the Corner House girls and many
messages from Mrs. MacCall and Uncle Rufus. Of course, they could
expect no word from Aunt Sarah, for it was not her way to be
sympathetic or show any deep interest in what her adopted nieces were
doing.
The girls from the old Corner House might have been a little homesick
had there not been so much to take up their attention each hour at
Pleasant Cove.
They brought Rosa to the little old woman who lived in a shoe, and the
moment Mrs. Bobster saw how weak and white she was her sympathy went
out to her.
“Tut, tut, tut!” she said, clucking almost as loudly as Agamemnon
himself. “We’ll soon fix you up, my dear. If you stay long enough here
at the beach, you’ll be as brown and strong as these other gals.”
Rosa put her arm about Ruth’s neck when the Corner House girls were
about to leave.
“This is a heavenly place, Ruth Kenway, and you are an angel for
bringing me down heah. I don’t know what greater thing anybody could
do fo’ me—and you aren’t even kin!”
“Don’t bother, Rosa. I haven’t done much——”
“There’s nothing in the world—but one thing—that could make me
happier.”
Ruth looked at her curiously, and Rosa added:
“To find June. I hope to find her some day—yes, I do.”
“And suppose I should help you do _that_?” laughed the oldest Corner
House girl.