Ruth Fielding At Sunrise Farm Part 6

"I s'pect so," said Dolliver, scratching his head. "Ye see, Sim Perkins an' his wife air folks ye can't really go agin'-not _much_. Sim owns a good farm, an' pays his taxes, an' ain't a bad neighbor. But they've had trouble before naow with orphans. But before, 'twas boys."

"I just hope they all ran away!" cried Ruth, with emphasis.

"Wal-they did, by golly!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the stage driver, preparing to drive on.

"And if you see this poor girl, you won't tell anybody, will you, Mr.

Dolliver?" pleaded Ruth.

"I jes' sha'n't see her," said the man, his little eyes twinkling. "But you take my advice, Miss Fielding-don't _you_ see her, nuther!"

Ruth ran back to the school then-it was time. She could not think of her lessons properly because of her pity for Sadie Raby. Suppose that horrid man should find the poor girl!

Every time Ruth saw the red welt on her arm, where the whiplash had touched her, she wondered how many times Perkins had lashed Sadie when he was angry. It was a dreadful thought.

Although she had promised Sadie to keep her secret, Ruth wondered if she might not do the girl some good by telling Mrs. Tellingham about her.

Ruth was not afraid of the dignified princ.i.p.al of Briarwood Hall-she knew too well Mrs. Grace Tellingham's good heart.

She determined at least that if Sadie appeared at the end of the Cedar Walk the next day she would try to get the runaway girl to go with her to the princ.i.p.al's office. Surely the girl should not run wild in the woods and live any way and how she could-especially so early in the season, for there was still frost at night.

When Ruth ran down the long walk between the cedar trees the next forenoon at ten, there was n.o.body peering through the bushes where Sadie Raby had watched the day before. Ruth went up and down the road, into the woods a little way, too-and called, and called. No reply. Nothing answered but a chattering squirrel and a jay who seemed to object to any human being disturbing the usual tenor of the woods' life thereabout.

"Perhaps she'll come this afternoon," thought Ruth, and she hid the package of food she had brought, and went back to her cla.s.ses.

In the afternoon she had no better luck. The runaway did not appear. The food had not been touched. Ruth left the packet, hoping sadly that the girl might find it.

The next morning she went again. She even got up an hour earlier than usual and slipped out ahead of the other girls. The food had been disturbed-oh, yes! But by a dog or some "varmint." Sadie had not been to the rendezvous.

Hoping against hope, Ruth Fielding tacked a note in an envelope to the log on which she and Sadie had sat side by side. That was all she could do, save to go each day for a time to see if the strange girl had found the note.

There came a rain and the letter was turned to pulp. Then Ruth Fielding gave up hope of ever seeing Sadie Raby again. Old Dolliver told her that the orphan had never returned to "them Perkinses." For this Ruth might be thankful, if for nothing more.

The busy days and weeks pa.s.sed. All the girls of Ruth's clique were writing back and forth to their homes to arrange for the visit they expected to make to Madge Steele's summer home-Sunrise Farm. The senior was forever singing the praises of her father's new acquisition. Mr.

Steele had closed contracts to buy several of the neighboring farms, so that, altogether, he hoped to have more than a thousand acres in his estate.

"And, don't you _dare_ disappoint me, Ruthie Fielding," cried Madge, shaking her playfully. "We won't have any good time without you, and you haven't said you'd go yet!"

"But I can't say so until I know myself," Ruth told her. "Uncle Jabez--"

"That uncle of yours must be a regular ogre, just as Helen says."

"What does Mercy say about him?" asked Ruth, with a quiet smile. "Mercy knows him fully as well, and she has a sharp tongue."

"Humph! that's odd, too. She doesn't seem to think your Uncle Jabez is a very harsh man. She calls him 'Dusty Miller,' I know."

"Uncle Jabez has a p.r.i.c.kly rind, I guess," said Ruth. "But the meat inside is sweet. Only he's old-fashioned and he can't get used to new-fashioned ways. He doesn't see any reason for my 'traipsing around'

so much. I ought to be at the mill between schooltimes, helping Aunt Alvirah-so he says. And I am afraid he is right. I feel condemned--"

"You're too tender-hearted. Helen says he's as rich as can be and might hire a dozen girls to help 'Aunt Alviry'."

"He might, but he wouldn't," returned Ruth, smiling. "I can't tell you yet for sure that I can go to Sunrise Farm. I'd love to. I've always heard 'twas a beautiful place."

"And it is, indeed! It's going to be the finest gentleman's estate in that section, when father gets through with it. He's going to make it a great, big, paying farm-so he says. If it wasn't for that man Caslon, we'd own the whole hill all the way around, as well as the top of it."

"Who's that?" asked Ruth, surprised that Madge should speak so sharply about the unknown Caslon.

"Why, he owns one of the farms adjoining. Father's bought all the neighbors up but Caslon. _He_ won't sell. But I reckon father will find a way to make him, before he gets through. Father usually carries his point," added Madge, with much pride in Mr. Steele's business ac.u.men.

Uncle Jabez had not yet said Ruth could go with the crowd to the Steeles' summer home; Aunt Alvirah wrote that he was "studyin' about it." But there was so much to do at Briarwood as the end of the school year approached, that the girl of the Red Mill had little time to worry about the subject.

Although Ruth and Helen Cameron were far from graduation themselves, they both had parts of some prominence in the exercises which were to close the year at Briarwood Hall. Ruth was in a quartette selected from the Glee Club for some special music, and Helen had a small violin solo part in one of the orchestral numbers.

Not many of the juniors, unless they belonged to either the school orchestra or the Glee Club, would appear to much advantage at graduation. The upper senior cla.s.s was in the limelight-and Madge Steele was the only one of Ruth's close friends who was to receive her diploma.

"We who aren't seniors have to sit around like b.u.mps on a log," growled Heavy. "Might as well go home for good the day before."

"You should have learned to play, or sing, or something," advised one of the other girls, laughing at Heavy's apparently woebegone face.

"Did you ever hear me try to sing, Lluella?" demanded the plump young lady. "I like music myself-I'm very fond of it, no matter how it sounds!

But I can't even stand my own chest-tones."

Preparations for the great day went on apace. There was to be a professional director for the augmented orchestra and he insisted, because of the acoustics of the hall, upon building an elevated extension to the stage, upon which to stand to conduct the music.

"Gee!" gasped Heavy, when she saw it the first time. "What's the diving-board for?"

"That's not a diving-board," snapped Mercy Curtis. "It's the lookout station for the captain to watch the high C's."

The bustle and confusion of departure punctuated the final day of the term, too. There were so many girls to say good-bye to for the summer; and some, of course, would never come back to Briarwood Hall again-as scholars, at least.

In the midst of the excitement Ruth received a letter in the crabbed hand of dear old Aunt Alvirah. The old lady enclosed a small money order, fearing that Ruth might not have all the money she needed for her home-coming. But the best item in the letter beside the expression of Aunt Alvirah's love, was the statement that "Your Uncle Jabe, he's come round to agreeing you should go to that Sunrise Farm place with your young friends. I made him let me hire a tramping girl that came by, and we got the house all rid up, so when you come home, my pretty, all you got to do is to visit."

"And I _will_ visit with her-the unselfish old dear!" Ruth told herself.

"Dear me! how very, very good everybody is to me. But I am afraid poor Uncle Jabez wouldn't be so kind if he wasn't influenced by Aunt Alvirah."

CHAPTER V-"THE TRAMPING GAL"

The old clock that had hung in the Red Mill kitchen from the time of Uncle Jabez Potter's grandfather-and that was early time on the Lumano, indeed!-hesitatingly tolled the hour of four.

Daybreak was just behind the eastern hills. A light mist swathed the silent current of the river. Here and there, along the water's edge, a tall tree seemed floating in the air, its bole and roots cut off by the drifting mist.

"Oh, it is very, very beautiful here!" sighed Ruth Fielding, kneeling at the open window and looking out upon the awakening world-as she had done many and many another early morning since first she was given this little gable-windowed room for her very own.

The sweet, clean, cool air breathed in upon her bare throat and shoulders, revealed through the lace tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of her night robe. Ruth loved linen like other girls, and although Uncle Jabez gave her spending money with a rather n.i.g.g.ardly hand, she and Aunt Alvirah knew how to make the pennies "go a long way" in purchasing and making her gowns and undergarments.

There lay over a chair, too, a pretty, light blue, silk trimmed crepe-cloth kimona, with warm, fur-edged slippers to match, on the floor. The moment she heard Uncle Jabez rattle the stove-shaker in the kitchen, Ruth slipped into this robe, and thrust her bare feet into the slippers. Her braids she drew over her shoulders-one on either side-as she hurried out of the little chamber and down the back stairs.